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Category: Greg Freeman

Greg Freeman’s new poetry collection ‘The Fall of Singapore’

Publishers Dempsey & Windle will be launching WWC member Greg Freeman’s new poetry collection ‘The Fall of Singapore’ online on Wednesday 30 March. It has been published to mark last month’s 80th anniversary of the biggest surrender in British military history.

Greg said: “My father was one of many thousands of Allied soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese at Singapore, and as a POW forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam ‘Death Railway’, which cost many, many lives. The collection contains a sequence of poems about that time, but there are also other war-related poems in the book which have acquired a grim new relevance in recent weeks.

‘The Carriage in the Forest’, for instance, is about the resentment and revenge of Hitler who believed Germany had been cheated of land and prestige at the end of the first world war. ‘Tallinn’ refers to the suffering of the people of Estonia at the hands of the Russians over the last century and beyond. ‘Cherry Blossom’ is partly a poem about Japan, and ends with the cataclysm of Hiroshima.”

The collection also contains a poem, ‘A Foreign Wood’, about the former burial ground for Muslim soldiers from both world wars outside Woking. It has now become an Islamic peace garden.

Greg with his father in the 1970s

You can join the launch event for ‘The Fall of Singapore’ via Eventbrite. Copies of the book can be obtained from Dempsey & Windle, by emailing Greg at gregfreem62@gmail.com, or from the Lionsheart bookshop in Woking. And you can read WWC member Carla Scarano D’Antonio’s review of The Fall of Singapore in the online arts magazine London Grip here

18/03/2022
WWC member’s ‘homework’ poem in war poetry journal

A poem written as a response to a Woking Writers Circle ‘homework’ theme more than two years ago has been published in a war poetry journal. ‘Cherry Blossom’ by Greg Freeman was written after fellow member Carla Scarano D’Antonio named it as the theme following a recent visit to Japan. It has just been published in the latest edition of the Wilfred Owen Association Journal, and referred to by editor Meg Crane thus: “We conclude with another fine poem from Greg Freeman – reminding us of the poetic world arising from the experience of Japan’s part in the Second World War.”

Greg said: “It’s always an honour and a privilege to be published in the Wilfred Owen Association Journal. I’m grateful to Carla for setting the homework in the first place! It sparked a number of excellent poems by WWC members. And I’m excited to say that I hope to include my Cherry Blossom poem in a new pamphlet to be published next year, to mark the 80th anniversary of the fall of Singapore.”

02/11/2021
‘Marples Must Go!’ is WWC member Greg Freeman’s first full poetry collection

Woking Writers Circle member Greg Freeman has brought out his first full poetry collection. Marples Must Go! is already available from Guildford publisher Dempsey & Windle, under their Vole Books imprint, although the official publication date is 1 September. Greg said: “I always hoped to have published a full poetry collection by the time I turned 70. I am very pleased and relieved to have managed it with just over a year to spare!” But what is the collection about – and what on earth does the title mean?

A mysterious slogan on a bridge across the M1 that remained there for decades denounced a 1960s transport minister who had a finger in the pie of motorway building, and also oversaw Beeching’s vandalism of Britain’s railways. His name was Ernest Marples. Greg’s wry and bemused poems meander around this and other subjects such as free school milk, Juke Box Jury, Space Patrol, and the curious appeal of Andy Williams, as well as the first proper sentence of a two-year-old child: ‘Jack see Mrs Thatcher.’ As the years go by, he finds himself remembering the cartoon comic heroes of Beano and Dandy, picturing what might have happened to them in later life, and wondering plaintively: ‘Why can’t life still be hilarious?’ The collection also includes a sequence of poems about the Sean Henry sculptures in Woking titled ‘All The Lonely People’.

Greg’s poems have attracted praise from poets such as Brian Bilston, the hugely popular ‘poet laureate’ of Twitter, who said: “In Marples Must Go! Greg Freeman pulls off the difficult trick of writing poetry that is both funny and thoughtful, poignant and personal. With topics stretching from the Beatles to Brexit, from childhood comics to Covid jabs, this collection constitutes a wonderful poetic romp through the history of modern Britain.”

Greg will be launching his collection at Write Out Loud Woking on Zoom next month, and at a special online publisher’s launch with Dempsey & Windle in October.

23/08/2021
‘Putting some joy back!’ Phoenix closer to permanent Fiery Bird live music and community arts venue

Above, the arts cafe area envisaged at Albion House, and, top, the live music stage PICTURES: CONCEPT VISUALS

by Greg Freeman

A community group has had a dream for more than a decade of establishing a permanent live music and community arts centre in Woking … and now they are so close they can almost touch it.

Woking council has said that the Phoenix Cultural Centre can have a former club and bar at Albion House, just outside Woking rail station, as the permanent venue for its Fiery Bird live music centre, subject to lease negotiations. That’s good news … but, amid the uncertainties of the continuing pandemic, there are still a number of issues to be sorted.

Phoenix Cultural Centre will need to win further grants to refit the new building’s shell with toilets, disabled lifts, and many other things to make it accessible to the public. The vision is exciting – an arts/acoustic/spoken word cafe on the upper floor, open all day for people of all ages to meet, create, relax and share ideas, and stage the smaller gigs that used to take place in the Phoenix’s first premises in Goldsworth Road. And on the lower floor a 300-capacity live music venue for all genres and all ages, bringing in touring ‘about to break’ bands with local emerging artists. Such a space could also be used for dance, record fairs, or daytime recitals.

The Phoenix Cultural Centre have applied to Your Fund – the Surrey county council community fund where proposals are made and the community vote if they want them to happen. It hopes to secure a share of the £100 million county council fund for community capital projects. Meanwhile the Fiery Bird has to move out of its current temporary venue in the former, nearby Quake night club because it is due to be demolished.

The group wants to work with other social businesses/charities and community groups to help strengthen their work for good, and says it is a non-affiliated, equalities-based organisation that is committed to social progress, owned and operated by the people of Woking for the community of Woking and beyond, and aimed at giving everyone equal access to the arts and self-expression.

As a local poet and writer, I have been interested in the progress of the Phoenix Cultural Centre from the outset. Back in 2013 I went down to their Goldsworth Road premises with Woking Writers Circle chairman Peter Morley to talk to Elaine McGinty and her partner Joe Buckley, the two leading lights behind the project. Thanks to their encouragement, soon some of us were turning up at the open mic nights to add some poetry to the music mix. Woking Stanza poetry group began holding regular poetry workshop meetings at Goldsworth Road. I’ve also looked in on the open mics when they moved to the Quake. Elaine even tipped Woking Writers Circle the wink about the possibility of doing regular reviews of Woking’s New Victoria Theatre productions – and had a word on our behalf with the theatre, too.

Of course, it’s not just about Elaine and Joe. Scores of volunteers have been part of the Phoenix Cultural Centre project from the outset, including the major effort to adapt and make the former Quake nightclub useable as the Fiery’s Bird’s ‘temporary’ live music venue.

Phoenix Chroi performing at a Fiery Bird open-mic night, with Elaine McGinty on vocals, and Joe Buckley, far right, on bass guitar

However, Elaine and Joe have been influential and extremely hard-working figures on the Woking music scene for many years. They started working together in music in 2010 and in early 2011 set up Phoenix Cultural Centre as a community group. Elaine had been putting on gigs around the area for Oxjam from 2008 onwards and she and Joe were both in a band. In 2008 Elaine put the idea to the council of an annual town gathering in the park celebrating everything that brought people in Woking together. The idea was adopted as the flagship event for celebrate Woking 2012 – Party in the Park.

Elaine said: “We ran the main stage and our band played alongside other mainly local original bands, This became an annual fixture run by the council and we went on to run a smaller event in the park called Phoenix Rising that focused on emerging local original music, poetry and smallholders. We continue to be involved with Party in the Park and place buskers there now and at the last one programmed a stage in the early evening. We also held the Bandstand marathon that year in the Town Centre celebrating the Paralympics. We also put music in the Town at the weekends in partnership with WBC and Woking Shopping in a project called Streetlive to give musicians a chance to share their own music as well as busker standards.”

Elaine admits that it has taken them longer than they had expected to achieve their goal of a permanent venue, but that they have learned many important and useful things along the way. She has always believed strongly that Woking needs a community, grassroots music and arts venue – is crying out for it, in fact. She said: “When we started the town was being rebuilt. It seemed to be incorporating chains and corporate life. We wanted to have something that reflected Woking’s identity, its mixture of people. People were seeking grassroots culture, especially music.

“I still believe we can do more. People run to the dance floor when they hear Town Called Malice and proudly claim it as Woking’s song, ‘’this is about my town’ and it ends with the line ‘I’d sooner put some joy back in this town …’ I think that is what we are trying to do. Community activism (so many hate that word but all it means is to act, anyway) is not a benevolent patronage to willing victims. It requires the community to be active in how things grow and are made positive. The project will reflect the community it is in, it can only operate with consent and support. We prefer to think of it as a catalyst of action, ideas and optimism. There is a hope that the regrowth from Covid can bring with it is the realisation that high streets need more than shops and restaurants. Locally-based, community arts and wellbeing can be the anchor to recovery of our social confidence and connected communities.”

In the middle of all this intense work to make things happen in Woking, you wouldn’t think that Elaine McGinty had any time left for her own creative work. But you’d be wrong. For many years she headed as vocalist the band Phoenix Chroi – “post-punk with a Celtic heart” – with Joe on bass guitar. “Joe and I founded that band together after our previous band, the IPO mob, had finished. He has been in music for over 40 years and had a great deal of experience of working at all levels whilst for me it is something I restarted later on in life. I have always written poetry all my life though and we’d incorporate them into songs. Then the venue got so busy and with four of you it is harder to pin down gigs and rehearsals.

“I had so many poems, I collated some of them under the working title Humanity Lands, it was the final poem that was made into a Phoenix Chroi song and title of our last album together. Humanity Lands was/is designed to be an art collective, based on two volumes of work. The first focus is on someone surviving an abusive relationship and alienation whilst trying to make sense of a tyrannical world. The second volume covers the poems of social justice from that world. We wanted to go out with the poetry and music and work with other artists to widen it, do workshops so others could write poetry, or art, or music around their experiences and perhaps perform. We initially worked with an illustrator Vera Howard who illustrated the two volumes and Graeme Reeves who had been in Phoenix Chroi, who produced the song versions, or put soundscapes over the words.

“Now, there are so many more poems that whilst Humanity Lands still exists as a project and post-pandemic we want to pick it up again, the new stuff is just going out from both of us as our own names and for the first time that will be at Weyfest this year. I have no other name to hide behind, which is a bit scary.” She added: “I also write poetry for She Leads Change’s Lead More programme. Each month they hold masterclasses globally for (mainly) women on topics like ‘Resilience’ ‘Communication’ etc with expert speakers. I write a poem for each and choose a playlist of music, to encourage, and support and hopefully bring people joy as they study for the masterclass. Last year I was asked to write four poems for a young couple describing their journey of love. One was trying to communicate with the other, they’d become estranged through miscommunication. A few months later they sent me their wedding photos. That was a big highlight of poetry for me. Those poems will never be published and that is even better for it.”

Returning to the current live music venue and community arts project, Ellaine once more emphasised the importance of the Fiery Bird’s prized band of volunteers, and added: “Although we stopped the band one of the things we felt important is that the place is always run by gigging musicians/arts practitioners who know what a good, supportive performance space feels like and make sure that we offer that. It keeps us on our toes!”

If you’d like to support the Phoenix Cultural Centre’s bid for a share of Surrey County Council’s community funding, put a ‘like’ and agree with their project as it is pinned on the county map – here’s the link – next to Costa and opposite the station.

Audience at the Phoenix Cultural Centre’s first premises in Goldsworth Road

10/04/2021
Meet the new Sean Henry sculptures arriving in Woking

by Greg Freeman

Sculptor Sean Henry has revealed the identities of his three new figures that are coming to Woking town centre. ‘Walking Woman’, above, clad in black, will stride down Commercial Way, while ‘Standing Figure (Man)’ and ‘Standing Figure (Woman)’, top, will stare at each other within an atrium at the new Victoria Square development.

The news came during a hugely interesting tour around Sean’s studio during a Zoom session organised by The Lightbox art gallery in Woking. Talking about ‘Walking Woman’ he said: “There’s an air of positivity about her. She has this inner confidence; I hope that comes through.”

‘Standing Figure (Man)’ and ‘Standing Figure (Woman)’ will be seven feet tall, and will look at each other in the main atrium space of Victoria Square when it is completed. Sean said: “I’m excited by this … it will be a meeting place … I’m hoping that this will bring a lot of people into Woking.”

A further piece, ‘Catafalque’, is returning to Woking after first appearing in Jubilee Square in 2017 during a town-wide exhibition of Sean Henry’s work organised by the Lightbox, and also spending some time outside Salisbury cathedral: “He’s very, very non-confrontational, because he’s looking at the sky.”

Sean Henry is always claimed as a Woking boy, although he actually grew up in Pirbright, and now lives in Hampshire. He started making little clay figures at school at the age of 14, and sold some from a stall in Guildford High Street. He received a D in Art A-level, but secured a foundation degree place at Farnham School of Art, before taking a BA in ceramics at Bristol Polytechnic from 1984 to 1987.

He is remarkably open and accessible, and during his Lightbox talk he expanded on his beliefs, saying that for him “colour and light is what sculpture is about. I’m trying to reference life, and colour is an integral part of that”. He wanted his sculptures to relate to “the lived experience”.

Sean, whose works are displayed all over the world, spoke about a couple of his other sculptures in striking situations in England – the 10-foot ‘Seated Figure’ on the North York Moors (“it takes on a life of its own, depending on the weather”) and ‘Couple’, on the shore and out at sea at Newbiggin in Northumberland, “ a really unusual project” concerned with coastal erosion and a new £10m breakwater on which the Arts Council wanted a sculpture placed.

Painted sculptures outdoors that have to endure all weathers present a certain challenge. Sean has been using a marine paint usually employed for protecting boats and buoys. “The challenge is keeping the paint very thin, because you want the sculpture to look as it did when it was just clay.” He aimed to dress his figures in “neutral” clothes, and dispensed with any accoutrements, such as handbags, trying to whittle things down “to the core of someone’s being”.

His main influence is the 20th century Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. He also spoke of Ron Mueck’s famous work ‘Dead Dad’, of which he said “its altered scale is the key to its success, and to engaging our empathy”.

Sean Henry concluded his talk by saying how much he was looking forward to the completion of Woking’s Victoria Square development: “I can’t wait for it to be open and functioning.” He pointed out that Woking has the biggest Sean Henry collection in the world, “or will have by the end of this year”.

Truly something to be proud of, to be mentioned in the same breath as the Martians and The Jam!

27/02/2021
Here’s hoping … two poems about receiving Covid vaccinations in Woking

The theme of February’s meeting of Woking Writers Circle was Hope. And two of our writers came up with poems about their recent Covid vaccinations in Woking:

HOPE IN THE TIME OF COVID

by Heather Cook

I’ve followed signs to ‘Vaccs this way’

on an unkind day in February,

here in Woking where a mutant virus roams.

I have gained entry to the hallowed hall,

joined the chosen ones, muffled, masked and steaming.

I’m number 93.

We sit on distanced, disinfected chairs,

progressing from the holding pen

to shuffle closer to the action.

Here slender creatures swoop and gesture,

kindly shepherds of a stooped, grey flock.

Young and purposeful they lope amongst us,

almost patronising, but not quite.

92 has made it to the desk.

And then it’s me. Another disinfected chair,

to face a masked but twinkly inquisition.

I’m doing well and earning nods; date of birth,

medication, first line of address,

but then I have my moment in the sun.

Allergies? I’m off – nickel, wool –

a teenage doctor reassures,

encourages me towards the inner sanctum

where Stage One immortality will be granted.

Take that, you mutant, cringing in dark alleys!

Spring and second jabs are just 12 weeks away.

THE JAB

by Greg Freeman

Signs tied to lampposts point

the way from the free car park,

past ambulance waiting discreetly,

help you to find the place easily.

Legions of people in hi-vis jackets

with nice, kind smiles bustle

about, wipe tables and chairs,

give you a number, tell you

where to sit. You discover

you’re getting the ‘right’ one,

much to your relief. And at some

moment when you’re not expecting

it, just sitting there, watching

the busying volunteers

you well up, you can’t help it,

tears spring to your eyes,

it takes you by surprise, thinking

about all that’s happened,

the long months that have come

to this. People working together

for the greater good. Our NHS.

This side-effect is common, I believe.

Image from the big screen in Woking’s Jubilee Square

19/02/2021
Greg Freeman’s poem published in The New European newspaper

Woking Writers Circle member Greg Freeman has had a poem published in the April 23 edition of The New European newspaper. Titled ‘The Morning After’, Greg began writing it the day after the 2019 general election, which found him and his wife Gillian visiting their family in Marbella. Greg said: “We had listened to the election results the night before on the radio in Spain – but not for long. I wrote the poem over the few days that we were out there.

“I sent it to The New European almost as soon as I got home, heard nothing until mid-February, and now it has been published, when events have moved on somewhat, and Brexit doesn’t seem quite so important any more. The good news is that Kate, Alba and Fran will be allowed out of doors from Sunday, after a six-week lockdown in their flat. The swings and slides may still be out of bounds, but it’s a start.”

Greg added that one or two poetry friends had complimented him on a particular phrase in the poem – “the big dark” – which he said he “stole” from his granddaughter. “I may be in line for a £25 publication fee from The New European – which is rare in itself in poetry – so maybe Alba can expect a little something as a result of that in the future!”

The New European runs a weekly poetry column edited by Briony Bax, who also edits Ambit, a quarterly literary and art magazine. Greg said: “It’s a wonderful newspaper, written in a very even-handed way, if you support their point of view, or even if you don’t. It’s been a great discovery for me while waiting for my poem to be published. I’m now a regular subscriber.”

25/04/2020
Peter Pan Goes Wrong

The sold-out audience was roaring with laughter right from the start of the first night of Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the New Victoria theatre in Woking on Tuesday night. To be strictly accurate, mirth was abundant even before the start, as the ‘stage crew’ fumbled with hammers, faulty electrics and cabling, and cast members got among us with balloons and birthday tricks.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong, written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, and directed by Adam Meggido, is now part of a recent success story of a genre of shows that they have created, in which a collision of calamities beset an am-dram outfit – the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society – that really should never have been allowed near a stage. There is even a TV sit-com version, The Goes Wrong Show, although that is an amusing but pale imitation of the theatrical real thing.

With collapsing props and injuries aplenty, never has the term ‘Safety Curtain’ been more accurately applied. There was full audience enthusiasm and participation, perhaps assisted at times by a few ‘plants’, but often not, I suspect.

It would be wrong of me to spoil the fun by listing some of the things that do go wrong. Not only that, you never know with this kind of show whether every incident or accident is actually in the script or not. How often are the cast members really nursing injuries? On Tuesday night there were some significant cast changes – Christian James deputised as Jonathan, who plays Peter Pan; Tom Babbage stepped up from Michael Darling and the Crocodile to play Mr Darling and Captain Hook; Fred Gray filled his shoes as the hapless but loveable Max (Michael Darling); and understudy Ava Pickett made her debut as a stage crew member who is forced to deputise for Peter Pan during the show and finds herself dangling upside down. Confused? You should be. The fake cast biogs in the programme only add to the fun.

All performed with aplomb, including Katy Daghorn, playing Sandra playing Wendy, pouting and prancing around the stage, and providing the sex appeal. Oliver Senton as Robert (the ‘assistant’ director, Nana the dog, Peter’s shadow, and the incomprehensible pirate Starkey) attempted to gloss over the mishaps; Romayne Andrews was Dennis, faithfully relaying prompts, stage directions and insults on his radio mic in his various roles of John Darling, a mermaid, and pirate Smee. Phoebe Ellabani (Annie) performed miracles in her rapid changes between Mrs Darling and housemaid Lisa, as well as Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily; Patrick Warner as Francis took a succession of tumbles as the Narrator, and also played the Latin pirate Cecco. Lucy Bradley playing the limping, long-suffering Lucy playing Tootles certainly deserves a mention, too. Her character suffers from paralysing stagefright – and it turns out that she has every reason to.

To succeed in this kind of enterprise the timing has to be crucial, and it almost always was. The climax of the performance involves a madcap succession of revolving stage sets, and if momentum was lost at any point, it might have been here. A bit. However, my wife, a veteran am-dram performer of 20 years, was laughing throughout. (We first saw the show a few years ago in the West End).

So if you want a rollicking good evening’s entertainment, you simply can’t, er … go wrong. With this show, it is never all right on the night.

[Greg Freeman January 2020]

Peter Pan Goes Wrong continues at the New Victoria theatre in Woking from Wednesday 15 January to Saturday 18 January, with matinees on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday

15/01/2020
The Entertainer

The figure of Mrs Thatcher looms larger than the Queen in this timely revival of John Osborne’s critically-acclaimed play The Entertainer, in which the backdrop is updated from the 1950s Suez crisis to Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands. The first act opens with the voice of the prime minister announcing the invasion in the Commons, and the second act begins with Shane Richie as failed music hall man Archie Rice, dressed in powder-blue outfit and wig as Mrs T, delivering a number that I found hilarious.

Remarkably this is the first national tour for Osborne’s play, his follow-up to Look Back in Anger, the play that made his name. Richie, who is perhaps best known for playing Alfie Moon in the soap opera EastEnders, is following in the footsteps of the likes of Laurence Olivier in the lead role. The production is directed by Sean O’Connor, and began life at the Curve in Leicester.

In this update, some things have changed, and some remain the same. The drab interior of the rented digs in which almost all the action is staged, apart from when Archie appears in front of the curtains, seems more 50s than 80s, with its picture of the young Queen on the wall. Archie’s almost religious devotion to Double Diamond beer perhaps belongs to that period, too. On the other hand, the Dad’s Army theme – itself post-50s – has been adapted to ‘Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Argentina?’ and jingoistic Sun headlines abound. The casual racism of the early dialogue brought a few uneasy titters from the audience. The “blacks” soon become “the Poles” upstairs, banging on the ceiling for quiet as the Rice family periodically erupts into recriminations and uproar.

Archie Rice is an entertainer playing a summer season, trying and failing to emulate his more successful father in the family business. As his soldier son sails with the Task Force to liberate the Falklands, his daughter Jean (Diana Vickers) returns from campaigning against the war, and breaking off her engagement because of her fiance’s support for it. We are poignantly reminded of the easy, affectionate relationship between Jean and her grandfather Billy Rice, played with bemused dignity by Pip Donaghy, at the death of Billy in the second act.

I thought Sara Crowe as Archie’s put-upon wife Phoebe almost stole the show, as she looks up from the ironing – I seem to remember a lot of ironing begin done in Look Back in Anger as well – to protest wearily at Archie’s bullying, and his late-night activities downstairs with women he has brought back from the pub while she is trying to get to sleep above. The family’s patriotism is understood rather than bawled out loud, except for a drunken rendition of Land of Hope and Glory that is overtaken by massed choirs. Jean is the only dissenter, railing against the population’s enduring worship of a gloved arm “waving from a golden coach”. Christopher Bonwell, in the minor role of Frank Rice, tries to stay neutral during the family arguments, which carry on after the funeral of his brother, who has been killed after being captured in the Falklands. .

This current production has been billed as a “state of the nation” play, and it is that. But it is also an affectionate look at the music halls, and a performer that is dying with them, as his life collapses around him. Archie Rice’s self-pitying catchphrase is “I Have A Go!”, often delivered with a nervous twitch, but he is lost, as late in the second act, he tells the audience: “Look at my eyes. I’m dead … just like you shoddy lot out there.” One of the most moving moments in the affecting second act is when Shane Richie sings the old Mary Hopkin hit ‘Those Were The Days’ with awareness and pathos. With the good old days in mind, I was slightly dismayed to see the cast wearing discernible mics, although I understand that it is now common practice. I don’t know what Archie’s dad Billy would have said, though.

The difference between Suez and the Falklands was that the former represented an ignominious military defeat for Britain that brought home to this country its diminished status after the second world war. The Falklands, on the other hand, was a surprise victory that made many feel that Britain was still Great. That The Entertainer is being revived at another time of national crisis is no coincidence.

Osborne’s play was originally in three acts, and when I saw the Old Vic production with Robert Lindsay a decade or so ago, I remember it as being rather wordy. It’s now been stripped down to two acts. I don’t know whether it’s my advanced age, but I found this production much more moving than the Old Vic one, even if one or two of Shane Richie’s jokes were a bit bluer.

A number of unoccupied seats at the New Victoria theatre in Woking on Monday night may have provided an apt reminder of a declining theatrical tradition – but I do hope theatregoers come out and support this production in greater numbers this week. It certainly deserves it. Plays like The Entertainer don’t come to Woking that often. Take the chance to see it!

[Greg Freeman September 2019]

The Entertainer is at Woking’s New Victoria theatre from Monday 23 September to Saturday 28 September

Pip Donaghy (Billy Rice) and Shane Richie as his son Archie

24/09/2019
Greg Freeman’s poems about Sean Henry statues get thumbs-up from sculptor

Sean Henry at work PHOTOGRAPH: BELLA HENRY

A sequence of poems by WWC member Greg Freeman about four statues in Woking town centre by Woking-born Sean Henry has received a nod of approval from the sculptor.

After completing his 64-line sequence about the statues, Greg sent it to Sean, and received this message back: “That is amazing – thank you so much. There is really nothing better than a creative response to art and I feel very honoured when anyone takes the sculptures as a starting point for a new creative endeavour. You have also accurately captured some of the thoughts that went into the works, as well as bringing in ideas of your own which feel somehow ‘right’.”

Greg said: “I was bowled over to receive this very generous message from Sean. I have been an admirer of his work ever since the statues appeared in the town, and really believe they add something to Woking.”

He added: “My poems represent a series of back-stories for the figures, as I see them. Of course, everyone will view them differently. I’ve also added a new title since I sent them to Sean. ‘All The Lonely People’ comes from the Beatles song Eleanor Rigby. I hope he doesn’t mind too much!”

The four Sean Henry statues in Woking are Woman (Being Looked At) at the entrance to the Peacocks shopping centre; Standing Man in Jubilee Square; The Wanderer outside Woking rail station; and Seated Man, inside the station, on a seat on platform one.

Originally five painted bronze sculptures by Sean Henry were installed in Woking town centre to coincide with his exhibition at the Lightbox art gallery in 2017 . The final cast of Catafalque (2003) will rejoin the Woking collection when the Victoria Square development is completed. You can watch a video of Sean Henry talking about his Lightbox exhibition here

Sean Henry’s work includes private and public installations in many locations across Europe and the US. He studied at Farnham School of Art (now University for the Creative Arts) before taking a BA in ceramics at Bristol University. He has had more than 30 solo shows during his career. His work is regularly exhibited by galleries in London, New York, Stockholm, and Brussels, and his sculptures can be found in public collections in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, US and elsewhere. His works include Walking Man in London’s Holland Park (1998) and Man with Potential Selves in the centre of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (2001). He completed the UK’s first permanent offshore sculpture, Couple, in 2007, a 13m high sculpture located 300 metres off the coast of Northumberland at Newbiggin. Other works include Standing Man in Stockholm (2010), and Lying Man at the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Michigan, US (2011). More recently Seated Figure, originally located within the North York Moors National Park (2017), has now been moved to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield.

Sean Henry has described the theme of his work as “the tension between the making and staging of figures that seem to belong to the real world, and the degree to which they echo our experiences and sympathies”.

Greg’s ‘All The Lonely People’ is an example of ekphrastic poetry, a verbal description of a visual work of art. You can read the full poem here

Greg Freeman co-runs a monthly poetry open-mic night at the Lightbox art gallery in Woking. His poetry pamphlet collection Trainspotters was published by Indigo Dreams in 2015.

Greg Freeman and and Standing Man at Jubilee Square PHOTOGRAPH: GILLIAN FREEMAN

21/09/2019