Poetry in Action at Bolsover Castle
Researcher Abbi Flint reflects on a visit to Bolsover Castle’s Festival of the Arts and its connection with the site’s poetic histories and legacies.
On Sunday 1st June I went along to the Festival of the Arts which was held in the grounds of Bolsover Castle, celebrating connections between creativity, community, and heritage. Across the site there were performances of storytelling, song and poetry, facilitated by Arts Derbyshire, Rotten Poetry, and The Poetry Takeaway. Whilst there, I enjoyed hearing comic and political songs and engaging spoken word performances about a wide range of topics, including: the irritations of motorway driving; the challenges of aging; spiders; and colour spectrums.
This event echoes the historic uses of the Castle grounds as a place of poetic performance and celebration. Although the Castle’s origins stretch back into the late eleventh century, most of the current structure was built for the Cavendish family in the seventeenth century; initiated by Sir Charles Cavendish and continued by his son William. The Cavendish family seat was several miles away at Welbeck, and Bolsover was principally used as an extravagant retreat for celebrating and entertaining – their party palace! On the 30th July 1634, the Castle walls resounded with the music, song, and verses of a masque – Loves Welcome at Bolsover – written by Ben Jonson and performed as part of entertainments for King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, commissioned by the Earl of Newcastle, William Cavendish.
The ‘Little Castle’ at Bolsover, photograph by Abbi Flint
On my visit, I was particularly keen to see The Poetry Takeaway in action as part of English Heritage’s wider Inspiring Voices programme, the Heritage Portrait of England project, which ‘creates unique poems inspired by everyday heritage’. Bolsover is one of three sites for the pilot phase of this creative engagement project.
The Poetry Takeaway takes the form of a repurposed burger van which brings poets and poetry to everyday settings. For the festival at Bolsover, ‘Head Chef’ Michael Bolger worked with a team of local poets and even some young poets from a local school. Members of the public were invited to commission a poem, on a topic of their choosing, from one of the ‘poet chefs’, which was then written, read aloud, and parcelled up for them to take-away, all within the space of a quarter of an hour!
The Poetry Takeaway is a modern version of the ‘bespoke poetry’ tradition going back into previous centuries and closely connected with Bolsover’s history. Poets often produced as gifts ‘occasional’ poems – poems written for specific occasions. My research turned up many poems written for and about members of the Cavendish family who spent time at Bolsover, including Ben Jonson's poem on William Cavendish’s equestrian skills, Richard Flecknoe’s short epigrams, such as Of a Worthy Nobleman, or William Duke of Newcastle, and one on William’s second wife, the writer and philosopher Margaret Cavendish, who ‘Makes each place where she comes, a Library’ (On The Dutchess of Newcastles Closset).
The Poetry Takeaway at Bolsover Castle, photograph by Abbi Flint
At the Festival in Bolsover Castle, families with toddlers in pushchairs, teenagers, and older individual visitors approached The Poetry Takeaway to commission a personalised poem on a range of topics. Those I heard related to family, pets, important life events, and memories evoked by visiting the site. Michael chatted with me about The Poetry Takeaway's emphasis on inclusivity and accessibility. It brings poetry to people wherever they are, demonstrating that poetry lives in the everyday not just at poetry events or on library and bookshop shelves. Michael emphasised that everyone was welcome and encouraged to request a poem, whether they were keen poetry readers or felt that poetry wasn’t really for them.
It struck me that the real power of the Takeaway goes beyond the personalised poems produced. These are of course extraordinary gifts and expressions of the remarkable poetic skills of the chefs; able to write engaging and moving verses to order, in such a short space of time! But part of the magic is also in the interactions, the conversations between the visitors and poets about their lives and experiences that informed the poems. This simple act of community and care, moments of sharing and listening, speaks to the power of poetry to forge these care-full, attentive and place-rooted creative connections, that are also at the heart of our Poetry, Heritage, and Community project. It demonstrates and reaffirms that poetry – even bespoke poetry – isn’t just for elite audiences and patrons (such as the Cavendishes or the King and Queen they entertained). Poetry is for everyone.
With thanks to Ruth Haycock and the English Heritage team at Bolsover Castle and The Poetry Takeaway for the opportunity to attend this event and see the Takeaway in action. The poet-chefs who took part in this event were Matt Abbott, Emma Birdie, Navkiran Mann, Leanne Moden, and Georgina Wilding, alongside Head Chef Michael Bolger.
