What triggers my writing

The other day I wrote about what triggers my writing, and I mentioned three significant aspects,  inspiration, imagination and observation and I pondered on the order in which these happened. Something else which didn’t occur to me, but which has just demonstrated itself, is curiosity. Being curious, or interested, or puzzled and wanting to know more – the why, the who, the how of something, is a huge trigger.

I am now on Threads, the newish app from Instagram, and I’m finding some very interesting and engaging posts. There was one thread which caught my eye (and my imagination) a fairly straightforward series of images from Norfolk, of a small village called Beeston Regis. Born and brought up in Cambridge, our summer trips and holidays were along the Norfolk coast which my dad knew well from when he was a child. We would go on day trips when I was a child, and did visit Sheringham which is the nearest town to the small village, but we would have gone on a coach so would not have been able to explore the locale.

So Beeston Regis – there are the ruins of a priory, a maze, and “was the location for one of the network of Signals Intelligence collection sites: Y-stations. These stations collected material to be passed to the War Office’s Government Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park.” It is also a place where the mythical black shuck struck terror” which I have written about before. However, I’m not thinking about Beeston Regis because having seen an interesting series of images on Threads, of Beeston Regis Priory, and Beeston Bump.

Beeston Bump, (also called Beeston Hill), is located to the east of Sheringham. It is a mound of sand, boulders and gravel, standing 63 metres (207 feet) above sea level. The Bump (or Bumps as originally there were two hills) were formed 10,000-15,000 years ago by the last ice age.

The caption mentions the priory which was visited by a poet I had never heard of,  Francis Webb, an Australian who had over many years suffered from acute psychiatric troubles. He had been receiving treatment in the David Rice Psychiatric Hospital in the 1950’s, not far away, and had visited the Bump.

This sent me in search of more information about Francis. Francis was an extraordinary and gifted poet

Francis Charles Webb-Wagg (8 February 1925 – 23 November 1973) was an Australian poet who published under the name Francis Webb. Diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia in the 1950’s, he spent most of his adult life in and out of psychiatric hospitals. His output was prolific and his work has often been published in anthologies… Webb died on 23 November 1973 in Sydney’s Rydalmere Psychiatric Hospital of a coronary occlusion. He is buried at Macquarie Park Cemetery in northern Sydney, with ‘Sunset Hails a Rising’ from his poem ‘The Stations’ upon his headstone.

His life was blighted by mental illness and he died aged only forty-eight. I have been able to read some of his poems on-line, and am going to get a copy of his work. This interest – and inspiration, from such a gifted poet was triggered by the photos I saw shared on Threads:

https://www.threads.net/@camjself/post/C2_1K3MoJj3