Profound and eloquent, epic and haunting, wild, dramatic and occasionally unhinged – that’s Ciderhouse Rebellion who kick off Bridport Literary Festival on Sunday 3 November at Sladers Yard, West Bay, at 12 noon.

Musicians Adam Summerhayes and Murray Grainger are joined by Adam’s daughter, the award-winning poet Jessie Summerhayes.

According to their website – theciderhouserebellion.com – a gift for a parent, changing landscapes and seascapes, skeletal Cetacean remains and a new journey in spoken word inspire the latest work from Cider With Jessie, aka The Ciderhouse Rebellion with Jessie Summerhayes.

Both Summerhayes and Grainger have been inspired by the landscapes of their surroundings in the past. Tales of Colonsay is their fourth collaboration with Summerhayes’ daughter Jessie – who is a poet and spoken-word artist – and the second in which a very specific landscape serves as the creative inspiration (the first being Ironstone Tales and the North York Moors).

The basis of this album is a collection of poetry Jessie wrote for her father’s birthday, inspired by one particular journey to and on the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay. Eleven tracks

drawn from the landscape itself, tracking her movements from Oban, across the sea and then along the pristine Atlantic shoreline on Colonsay, culminating in the searing, blow-away track that is Hangman’s Rock.

‘The words are the music and the music is the words and it’s an incredible inter-relationship of poetry to music that you don’t often come across,’ says Grainger.

These poems are many things, a loving gift, a celebration of the love for a place, an echo of childhood wonder, a terrified vision of the wormholes in reality that lead only to decay and death, a clear-eyed view of the horror that human emotion can bring – a promise of nature’s revolution against our crimes … but, above all, they are heartbreakingly beautiful.

 

For tickets and the option of lunch from the Sladers Yard kitchen, book online or contact Bridport Tourist Information Centre on 01308 424901.