Last updated 16:35, Wednesday, 19 March 2008

THE Beauty of Cleator Moor is the surprising title of a new Conrad Atkinson artwork.

Having a hand with changing art: Conrad Atkinson’s work on Norman Nicholson has ruffled a few feathers

Conrad has rewritten part of Norman Nicholson’s poem Cleator Moor for an exhibition at Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake.

He has created two paintings based on Norman Nicholson’s poem Cleator Moor for the exhibition about Nicholson, created by Charles Mitchell Dean of The University of Cumbria Department of Art.

Atkinson said when he was invited to make a work for the exhibition it was natural for him to pick the poem about his home town of Cleator Moor.

“I was very pleased by Charles’ initiative as I’d briefly met Nicholson in about 1956 when I was at Whitehaven Grammar School, I think, and was fairly speechless at meeting someone who was a poet. I’d never met someone who was an artist before with his name in the newspapers and who I’d heard on the radio. I didn’t really say much to him but I wanted to tell him I thought his poem about Cleator Moor was a great poem with three flawed lines in it. I was too shy to tell him though. Now this exhibition has given me the opportunity to change those three lines. I expect I’ll be accused of hubris in changing Nicholson’s poem but he got aspects of Cleator Moor wrong”.

The basic image of his work is of a Cleator Moor iron ore miner’s hand which contains the three altered lines from Nicholson’s poem:

“In Cleator Moor they dig for death” is changed to “In Cleator Moor they dig for Life”.

“A bullet in a soldier’s ear” becomes “a bullet in a Fascist’s ear” and the line “Feels the iron in his soul” becomes “feels the courage in his soul”.

Outside the Glass: Perspectives on Norman Nicholson runs at the Keswick theatre until April 5.

Is Cleator Moor beautiful? Send your photograph showing Cleator Moor at its best and we’ll publish the best in our supplement, Cleator Crack. Email jpegs to news@whitehaven-news.co.uk or post to Beautiful Cleator Moor, The Whitehaven News, 148 Queen Street, Whitehaven, CA28 7AZ.