Arachne Press pulled off a seven-venue, four-nation, simultaneous festival of stories and poetry on the theme of Time & Tide last week, including two of my poems (seen here being performed in Hasting’s Fisherman’s museum). 
This is the sixth Solstice Shorts Festival to light up the darkest day of the year. Festival Director, Cherry Potts put out a call for stories set on, or beside, the sea or tidal rivers, with a historical flavour. Sailing under the title of Time & Tide (named for the Suffragette’s newspaper), Cherry was keen for this year’s festival to include pieces with a strong female voice.
My poem ‘The Fisherman’s Daughter’ is inspired by Brighton’s fishing heritage, and was performed in Lisbon (Portugal), Maryport, Hastings, Greenwich (England) and Clydeside (Scotland). My second poem about ‘mail order’ brides for British soldiers on a remote Atlantic island, was performed at Peterhead, Clydeside, Lisbon, Maryport and Greenwich. Neither poem made it to the Welsh event in Holyhead, but three countries out of four is a good innings!
In the slick, darkly covered anthology Time & Tide, you can find every story and poem performed at each of the venues of this year’s Festival – wonderful pieces to stir the blood on long, dark nights, including tales of diaspora, refugees, sex in beach huts, cockle women, Crosby Beach, Noah’s wife, the wisdom of halibut, and much, much more. 
There was live-streaming from each venue, and you can watch some of these films on Facebook. Facebook Solstice Shorts page It’s fascinating to see how different actors bring their own take to the exact same poem or story. 
I managed to make it to the Hastings gig, which was held in the enthralling (if slightly chilly) Fisherman’s Museum – a beautiful old church where men would worship before facing the dangers at sea. We were plied with mulled wine and mince pies by the volunteers who run this gem of a museum, and the turn-out (on a rain-battered day) was hearteningly good, with standing room only (well, two of us had to sit on a box!). The actors gave forth from a lectern on the deck of a fishing boat in what proved to be the perfect setting, both acoustically and thematically.
Thank you to Joan Taylor-Rowan for organising the Hastings leg of the Festival, to Simta Ali for filming it, and to Kate Dyson, Rebekah Wilkinson, Jared Stoughton, Patrick Keiley and Umi Sinha for their pitch-perfect performances. A big thank you also to Cherry Potts for keeping a steady hand on the tiller of this extraordinary Festival, and to all the crowd-funders and The Arts Council for financing it.
You can see the entire Hastings at: Time & Tide Hastings
To buy a copy of the Anthology (Time & Tide), or to discover more about any of the Solstice Shorts Festivals, or the many other activities at Arachne Press, please visit: Arachne Press
Folkestone is fast becoming a hotbed of artistic innovation to rival Hastings and Brighton. But the seeds were already sown in 1983 when Andre Evans and Jeremy Page launched The Frogmore Press from the town’s Frogmore tea-rooms.
Copies of issue 89 are available for sale at £5, or you can take out a one year subscription (£10) or two year subscription (£15). The Frogmore Papers now operates submissions windows in April and October. For more details on how to submit or take out a subscription, please visit: 
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