Welcome to Hotwells!

By Ben and Tim Jowett.

People sometimes comment on the unconventional mode through which locals address Hotwells,
the home of our festival of words and music. We don’t use holiday brochure terminology, we use
words like ‘scruffy’, ‘tatty’, ‘congested’, ‘encumbered’.

And these are not criticisms, but the fruits of our homely love language. It’s a neighbourhood of
confluences: road, river, harbour, writer; it is the start and the end of the city, the start and the end
of its possibilities.

Beautiful in its ugliness, grim in its splendor.

Here is a short lyric by Hotwells poet and HotFest 23 guru Tim Jowett. In this ironic aria to Hotwells’s
uniquely quirky spirit of place – ‘staggered’ and ‘amputated’ by its topography – he draws on the
power of the scruffy, the tatty, the congested, the encumbered, and the creative power of those
within.

Enjoy…

A Tourist Guide to Hotwells

Riding in the back seat to its future.

If you’re looking for a village, you won’t find one. You won’t find a post office or a decent shop.

You will find yet another bunch of inner-city amputees left standing on one leg wondering how to
wipe their metaphorical backsides.

You’ll find this stubborn bunch of castaways surrounded by three lanes of goods and commuter
traffic…

Which we don’t mind at all. You see we all know the dear old traffic keeps the faithless away.

What could we possibly be protecting?  Here are some clues:

A staggering amount of mud, which we call the river. The docks basin, which holds a staggering
amount of water, taken from the river.

The Atlantic Ocean, which rushes up the gorge twice a day with staggering speed covering up the
mud, making it look like a river.

Two pubs worth speaking of, an Army Navy store and a curry house.

In this street map of possibilities, we have the queerest set of circumstances that bring about the
most inexplicable effect on the greater part of the population.

We feel a bit Cornish, but with Halloumi wraps instead of pasties.

So when our saviors, the politicians, start cutting their teeth on our last remaining good leg, with
their latest noble,

concrete it all over and build a bunch of overpriced penthouses, nine-tenths of the people they say
they represent won’t be able to afford,

Whilst pocketing another offshore directorship you might naturally expect the local community to go
hopping mad.

No! Do you know what this bunch of underdogs are doing?

Writing poems about these erstwhile saviours. They’ve written so many poems they don’t know what
to do with them. Songs as well and

to top it all, the girl in number twenty-seven has gone and written a play. It’s called The Beginning of
the End.

ALL COPYWRITE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE!