Books / Poetry
Holly Corfield Carr announced as Tyntesfield poet-in-residence
The Victorian estate of Tyntesfield has announced award winning, Bristol-based poet, Holly Corfield Carr, as its poet-in residence.
Corfield Carr’s residency is part of a project inspired by eighteenth-century Bristol poet, Hannah More.
During her residency Holly will be hosting a series of woodland writing workshops in Tyntesfield’s woodland, and she has produced a sequence of new poems in response to Hannah More’s poetry and the landscape that inspired More.
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‘It’s wonderful to think that the natural beauty of the woodland was a crucial source of inspiration for one of Bristol’s greatest writers’, says Tyntesfield curator, Sue Hayward, ‘and we’re delighted to welcome Holly, a Bristol based writer herself, to rediscover the poetry of the landscape and explore Hannah’s legacy.’
‘More’s feminist legacy is complicated, and the opportunity to work with her poetry was both thrilling and troubling,’ says Corfield Carr, ‘while she set up schools for girls across Bristol and campaigned for improvements and access to women’s education throughout her life, she celebrated women’s power as a limited and very local thing.’
Throughout her residency, Holly will look at what it meant to be a ‘woman writing in the woodland’ in More’s time and what that means for female writers today.
Responding to More’s idea that a woman might see the world from ‘a little elevation in her own garden’, Corfield Carr’s work at Tyntesfield will, also, examine More’s dedication to the local landscape and consider what this means for feminists, environmentalists and poets.
Corfield Carr explains, ‘My work will look at More’s ‘little elevation’ as the ideal position, a place in which we prioritise expertise, cooperation and care, and as part of this I have produced a book of poems, Indifferent Cresses, which takes its name from Hannah More’s complaint that women’s writing is sometimes as celebrated as a salad.’
Alongside Indifferent Cresses, Holly will be leading writing workshops across the summer with guest writers – critic, Srishti Krishnamoorthy-Cavell; poet, Elizabeth Jane-Burnett and novelist, Abi Andrews – to examine how we can read and write outdoors and engage with our most local landscapes.
Copies of Indifferent Cresses will be given to participants of the workshops and are also being distributed to schools across Bristol in the spirit of Hannah More’s commitment to education for women and girls in the city.
Holly’s residency will end with a special Little Elevations event on National Poetry Day, October 4, at Spike Island.
For more information on Holly Corfield Carr’s residency and Tyntesfield’s Hannah More project, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/tyntesfield/lists/little-elevations-writing-workshops
Read more: Hannah More poetry walk opens at Tyntesfield
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