Beverley Fry
Beverley is an artist who writes, and she kept journals through years of child rearing and painting for exhibitions.
She says: "It began as an exercise from 'A Course in Miracles', and was meant to be for six weeks, but I kept it up for thirteen years!”
In the 1990s she joined Bridgnorth Writers, where she has been proud to hear so much inspiring work from many writers through the years. At the 2011 Wenlock Poetry Festival she heard Miriam Margolyes read from the festival anthology. “Miriam paused after reading mine, looked up and announced, ‘This is good. Who wrote it?’ Anna Dreda indicated me. At that moment, I was sketching her. She was sat in the big Guildhall throne where her little feet didn’t quite touch the ground. My poem was 'The Angelus.'
Beverley was artist in residence there that year. Previously she had been invited by London Southbank to sketch many famous poets performing for the Festival of Britain celebrations.
Beverley is an active exhibiting artist who was selected for Portrait Artist of the Year where she painted Kirstie Wark.
Click for more details and examples of Bev's work.
Beverley has published Panning, a collection of poems and sketches.
Click to read Bev's poem For Sandy.
Excerpt from 'River'
... I didn't mention, his voice was slow and cold.
I didn't say when iced over, he paused again,
the weird sonic sounds of geese, the slide,
slip and slap of great flat feet. Their milky moon shapes gaggling above as I
shift below in sluggish depths.
Winter daylight seldom comes to call. Here he sighs.
She sends week heat through thick stems.
It travels from the peat-brown, mole-brown pelts of long pods – those pointing puff-seed rods ...
The Angelus
From down the drab field edge
their voices come,
through the mean hedge’s yellow leaves
and slimy caterpillar stench
to the quiet back-road
where I rest straddling my bike.
Angelus bells,
a rhythmic chop-chop
between picked up conversation,
carry above lines of blunted necks.
Beyond are tight, spaced, round buds,
rolled out,
full as roses in receding rows.
These short sentinels regiment the moves
of two bent figures,
faces low lit, clothes dirt-grey,
as they move in unison –
bow, bend, cut, de-leaf
the cold weighty winter balls
that unite them with a rugby throw
and catch in frost-bitten hands.
Each cabbage cracks its green skull
in the rising head-scrum of the crate.
Memorials
Old leaves fall, released in reds and gold,
they see-saw down and land
one over another like a healers hand.
Dark slabs.
Lined up,
with their gravely carved words.
Most express loss and family names,
Arthur-James, Mildred, Fred,
many listed names above
the humps and dips of gathered moss.
The dead they share this field bed.
It's a kind of night flight, and
like passengers they sleep.
Destination unknown,
just endless dark
and endless deep.