Conversation between Cliff Atkinson, Simon Poulter Anna Best, Nina Pope, & Karen Guthrie, following Simon's letter to Cliff.

Far Sawrey, Cumbria

Cliff: I took your letter...which you give me a text...and so, the first thing I did was to rhyme it...you'll remember what you put in your text?
Simon: Yeh...yeh...
Cliff: This was the text...so straight away I rhymned it to put it into my mind ...Very simply...

Some very young ladies and a very young man
To a residency in Grizedale that was the plan...
Anna was an artist who worked between cracks
Could this be crazy paving with a spade or an axe...?
Nina and Karen DMA This great team of two - digital media artists
But what do they do?
And Simon - Media Artist and Media Fair
With a title like this...this lad must be rare...
Grizedale Forest this place just wood full of trees
With sculptures so odd, my mind they will tease
Mr Sutherland, Director, in a short space of time
Had commissioned some sculptures like a poem without rhyme
He took the group on a visit to old Lawson Park
Said what do you think, could you make your mark?
The remoteness of this location looked a bit sad...
It won't worry media artists...they're already mad!
The pub was no problem, they commissioned a still
A coil and copper kettle they just sit on the hill...
The residence to be different from all sorts of art
The paintings you might say, were something apart...
But art that they seek is not really there...
Just verbal sounds...utterings that float in the air
But you know in the mountains, the valleys and dales
There's many a lie with very good tales

...So...that was to translate...
Nina: That was great!
Cliff: That was to translate that...into that...so I could sort of keep looking at that, and change it again into something I could put it out as again ...so I just call it the vision, and put in it...my spelling...it's helped very much having a spellcheck...but it's not very clever at knowing where to put full stops, commas and things like that...so there's probably only me could read it and understand it but anyway...that went onto here...

Four wise people had a vision - a vision that was past their understanding -
like the three wise men that followed a star to find a king,
they decided to follow a vision to wherever it took them.
They were very tired when they arrived at the great water,
soon they bartered with a man with a strange craft who ferried them across the water.
Then they set off up a long winding hill like the gateway to heaven.
Through hills and dales past waters, they arrived at a place called the Valley of the Boars.
Grizedale, Then onto their humble dwelling, Hill of the Sun
(you'll know where these places are, of course)

Nina: Hmm
Cliff:

Strange as it may seem, these names were carved on wooden posts, as is the fashion in these strange lands.
The forest was massive, and the trees were grown purposefully for a material to fit media news,
misleading though it might be, some of the material was so thin,
it was a blessing for in the wintertime leaves and grass were so brittle that this material could be used for primitive sanitary purposes
The wood also held many strange objects, primitive sculpture, dating back to the 1960's an age of plenty ..

(so even I'm creeping in with a little bit of politics!)