Your Invitation – a poem

We asked Norwich poet Molly Naylor to create a poem about the Festival spirit she experiences. Here it is, your invitation.

If you did not get the invite, this is the invite

You are invited, please come. Come in your work clothes, wetsuit, your PJs, your walking boots. Come knackered, come dust-covered, suffering, cynical, uncertain. Come lanyard-wearing, brain-wobbly, half-arsed, half-cut, half gone.

Come bakers, matchmakers, come I might see you later, come hi-vis babies, come I dunno, maybe, come struck by lightning, come recently dumped, come on get down here, it’s on.

I say all this just in case you’d assumed you weren’t. For me that was church - all sacred smells and not-my-rituals and a certain type of love, the type that knows its way around Ikea and wants to sync up calendars. Come anxious, come awkward, come who can I walk in with come nothing to see here come this aint for me. It’s all for you and a finger up to those who’ve made you doubt that.

There’s wildness in your blood and glitter in your belly. Your heart’s an empty cup. Come on. Come fill it up.

Left: Wolf’s Child, 2015 © Steve Tanner