As part of our involvement in the Storylines project, we recently took a Poetry Playspace out of our usual setting and on to a train…

Lead artist Carmen Marcus provided us all with beautifully planned and presented workbooks, crammed with amazing writing exercises timed to coincide with every station stop from Middlesbrough to Bishop Aukland, and back again.

In among the prompts there was also time to have a ‘gaze moment’, allowing the scenery to flash past, sparking memories or allowing for sudden inspiration in the scenes of nature outside.

Carmen even provided beautiful ‘wild cards’ by artist Jackie Morris, to suggest aspects of nature should there be nothing to see outside – but of course, there was plenty to see, and plenty to chat about too.

This poem from Sandra Falconer talks about the nostalgia of re-visiting old destinations, seeing them through A Rose-Tinted Train Window…

It takes a train to carry me back 

Up the tracks to the land of my youth 

As the miles roll by, the years of exile are gone, 

Thornaby, Eaglescliffe, Allen’s West, 

Cooling towers and city streets give way 

To farmland and wooded hills, 

Allotments and travellers’ ponies, 

I swear the air smells sweeter 

And the branches of the rowan trees 

Wave, to welcome me home 

Heighington, Aycliffe, Shildon, 

I rode down these lanes 

Played truant in that haybarn 

I know this terrain and it knows me 

Winding streets behind the station 

Sandstone church beneath that spire 

Wriggling tadpoles in Johnny Best’s Beck 

Through the rose-tinted glass I see people still young 

Living, laughing, playing, staying, 

Why didn’t I? 

The train home is cancelled 

It feels as if the old country 

Has wrapped her mother’s arms around me 

Willing me to stay 

As the taxi drives off, I whisper 

I’ll be back, I promise. 

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