Angela Wensley

• And there is gold
• A poem for the first Somerset and Exmoor Coast Festival
• Beyond the Shale
• Blue Monday
• Crop Circles
• For James
• Fragility Naivety
• Gardener’s World
• Human Strata
• Immersivity
• Inbetween
• Just a Tree
• Let Autumn Approach
• Mother Earth
• Mrs Williams and I
• Purposefully Wandering
• Quantoxication
• Refuge #nationalpoetryday
• Revolver
• Robin Hood’s Dell
• Skeletal Solstice
• The Idiot Girl
• The Lighthouse Keeper
• The Lone Artist
• The Nemophilist’s Rap
• The View From Walford’s Gibbet
• The Purple Valley
• Time to Talk – A Mindful Journey
• Turner’s Tate/Future’s Fate
• 21st Century Gentry – A Ballad of East Quantoxhead
• Voices in the Chantry
• Walking a/way
• Walls

My Creative Journey – Angela Wensley

I am inspired by the Quantock landscapes and communities within which I have lived my whole life, particularly the East Quantoxhead area. My photography and poetry, like that of the Romantic Poets who have inspired this project, aims to give voice to the ‘common man’ and elevate the importance of mindful appreciation for the natural environment.  Experiencing awe, through nature’s delicate details, changes and abundance, is key, I believe, to enhancing our wellbeing, our connection to our environment and that of the generations who will walk these paths long after we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

The Quantock Poetry Trail is my second collaborative mixed-media series of poetic works, my first being Project Haiflu – where I contributed haiku and photography to a series of crowd-sourced lockdown haiku films created through the ‘Covid Years’ by Liv Torc – Poet. https://www.livtorc.co.uk/haiflu/

During this time I was also a regular open mic slot poet at Liv Torc’s ‘Rainbow Fish Speakeasy’: https://www.livtorc.co.uk/The-Rainbow-Fish-Speakeasy/ and was encouraged to progress my dream to become a ‘real-life poet’, as up until then I had only written for myself and my family.

In 2022/3, I participated in a series of ‘change the doom narrative’ Climate Change poetry workshops led by Hot Poets Liv Torc and Chris Redmond, culminating in our 44-strong poet collaborative book ‘Hot Poets – Sparks’ available here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1359564646/hot-poets-sparks 

The Hot Poets have achieved international acclaim over the last 3 years, most recently taking their unique brand of performance poetry and film making in the form of Haiku Futures to COP28 to inspire world leaders and their changemakers to take the steps needed in this climate crisis. I am proud to have had some of my photography selected for their crowd-sourced films for the Resilience Frontiers Pavilion: The COP28 Futures Poems – Hot Poets

Coming together to create these trails, weaving our works through Ralph’s ear for innovative sound immersion and interactivity, has truly broadened my horizons both in terms of friendships formed and the possibilities to be created and experienced on the poetry scene.  The shared experience between us as a collective of poets has, like Robert Frost described, ‘diverged in these woods’ and through planting our creative seeds together, into our shared local surrounds, we have woven ourselves into each other’s timelines and grown all the more stronger for the experience. 

Working with my fellow Quantock Poetry Trail poets during ‘22-‘23 (and into ‘24) has been the most inspiring time of walking, creating and socialising and I hope that everyone who walks through these soundscapes finds something within them to inspire them too; be it to simply walk more, create more or to take a breath and be mindful.

As the Group Admin for ’The Quantock Poetry Trail’ Facebook group page I look forward to hearing your feedback on your experiences – please join us on our journey.

To follow my poetry on Facebook please search ‘Words of Compassion, words of Peace, Poetry by A Wensley’.