Hengrove Wassail
Sun 30 April 2017, 3PM
Performance at Spike Island for Spike Open 2017. Photo: Ellen Wilkinson
Holly Corfield Carr: Hengrove Wassail
Either a song, drink or dance, the orchard ‘wassail’ was once both widespread and specific to each of the cider-producing regions across England. Just as wassailing chants grew from the same landscape as their orchards, writer Holly Corfield Carr’s new wassail song, written for the Orchard Engagement Programme, is rooted in The Orchard and activated by the voices of those living nearby.
The Wassail was available in print and performed live as part of Grafted Chorus. The music was composed by Tina Hitchens.
The Hengrove Wassail was first performed at Spike Island Open Studios on 30 April 2017 by Leila Gamaz, Phil Owen, Ellen Southern and Rosena Wenonoah.
Download the pdf of Holly's print here.
Listen to the recordings below.
About the writer
Holly Corfield Carr is a poet based in Bristol and Cambridge where she is completing a PhD on site-specific writing, caves and talking mountains, following a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute (2016-17). Her writing is published and performed nationally and internationally, with recent work appearing in Poetry (Chicago) and at the Royal Albert Hall, BBC Radio 3 and 4 and the Southbank Centre.
Commissions and collaborations with artists include Kettle’s Yard & The Heong Gallery, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Jaybird Live Literature, SPACE and the British Ceramics Biennial. With her work often responding to place, her residencies include the Wordsworth Trust, the Bristol Poetry Institute, Spike Island and the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland. She received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012 and the Frieze Writer’s Prize in 2015. For more information visit her website: www.hollycorfieldcarr.wordpress.com