WATCH:
The Bog King’s Daughter –  swan maids, shield maidens and a rattling bog!
Pomme’s inventive re-telling of a little known Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale. Created for The Hans Christian Andersen Story Centre, New York.
The Little Mermaid – how a mermaid is liberated from tail, legs and tongue and set free!
Under the virtual Hans Christian Andersen Statue, Central Park, New York
Storytelling Synchronicity – storytellers Katy Cawkwell, Pomme Clayton, Hugh Lupton, Emily Hennessy, Rebecca Smart share stories about strange synchronous events that have happened when they have told stories. Hosted by Katy Cawkwell with Literature Works. Watch the flm and add your own story.

LISTEN:
Podcast with The Bloomsbury Festival about The Magician’s Apprentice.
Podcast with Storytelling Radio – Norway’s Fortellerhuset and Georgiana Keable about female archetypes, making The Frog Princess Punked and Socrates’s feisty wife!

READ:
Violet and the Sea Giant by Sally Pomme Clayton illustrated by Richy K Chandler  published by Autin Dance Theatre


EVENTS:

Telling Tales, Ealing Central Library with Apples and Snakes and Sally Pomme Clayton
Six Saturday Mornings 11.00-12.30
5th November, 12th November, 19th November, 26th November, 3rd December, 10 December 2022.
Come and play! Children aged 7-11 join me to imagine and create! Let’s write, tell, draw, make, explore stories and poems for six Saturday mornings! Tts free and if you complete the course you get a bronze #ArtsAward ! Register your place.

The White Bear King
Story – Sally Pomme Clayton / Songs – Helen Chadwick

Saturday 17 December 18.30
Exeter Custom House, Exeter, EX2 4AN
Hosted by Literature Works, Quay Words. Ticket link to come.
Storyteller and writer Sally Pomme Clayton and singer and composer Helen Chadwick weave together words and songs, images and sounds, to conjure the eternal quest for love.  They take you on a snowy journey through a dark, Scandinavian fairytale with a polar bear and a princess, and songs drawing on poetry from Rumi to Emily Dickinson. The fairytale is set in a world of ice and snow, frost and firesides, where a princess climbs a glass mountain to set a cursed bear free, but is she brave enough to undo the terrible Troll Hag’s spell? The story is intertwined with Helen’s illuminating songs, that can slow down time, bring images or emotions to life. Magical, humorous and tinged with darkness this performance is for adults and young people aged 12 and upwards. Tickets
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SELECTED PAST EVENTS:

The Bog King’s Daughter
~
Saturday 24 September 2022
Chelsea Physic Garden for Chelsea History Festival,
66 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HS
10am – 10.30 
11.15am – 11.45am
Sally Pomme Clayton tells her own magical version of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale. Meet: swan maidens; talking storks; shield maids, and the beastly King who lives at the bottom of a rattling bog! The story shifts across time, space and history, from Norse myth to ancient Egypt, from the marshes of the Nile to a vast bog in Denmark. It follows the migration of birds and the describes the meanings that bogs have had to humans over the centuries.  Discover why bogs hold the secret of human life on earth! Performance repeated twice. Free entry but tickets need to be booked

The Magician’s Apprentice

Thursday 20 October 7.00pm – 9.10pm (including an interval) 
The Bloomsbury Festival at The Museum of Comedy,
The Undercroft, St Georges Church,
Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2SR
In this perfect tiny theatre, with red velvet curtain explore the secret world of the magician with pioneering storyteller and writer Sally Pomme Clayton. This intimate, enchanting performance  mixes: fact with fiction; fragments of myth with antique jokes; dazzling fairytales and snippets of culture and science; forgotten folklore with mysterious images on tarot cards. Casting a shimmer of stories, with a song on her mandolin and a spotted handkerchief, a top hat from a junk shop and a mail-order wand, she shifts from humour to horror, romance to rumour, searching for real magic. Pomme explores foolish and rebellious apprentices and asks why apprentices are always depicted as female and magicians male? She turns magic on its head with stories of powerful female magicians. Meet arch magician Elena the Wise and her rival the King of Jinns. Hear the oldest version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, from Ancient Egypt. In this slight-of-hand world, objects talk, girls become doves, the magician goes mad, and you can enter another world! Join Pomme on her fairytale quest to discover what is real and what illusion, who is the apprentice and who the teacher. 2 x 50 mins with an interval. Tickets

The Magician’s Apprentice

Saturday 30 July 7.45
Omnibus Theatre Clapham
 Join Pomme on her fairytale quest to discover what is real and what illusion, who is the apprentice and who the teacher.
2 x 50 mins with an interval. Tickets

Crow Blood Snow

Friday 22 July 2022, 19.30
Contact marionleeper@gmail.com for tickets and address.
Cambridge 
Saturday 23 July 2022, 8pm
Stapleton Farm Barn, Aylsham, Norfolk NR11 6GR
Tickets £10, email hughlupton@gmail.com to book tickets
Black as crow, red as blood, white as snow are colours seared into many fairytales summoning creation, destruction and redemption. This performance takes place at dusk in a Cambridge garden and conjures contradictory Crow, from: sparkling creation to a bloody battle between the birds and the beasts; hints of Snow White to the terrifying Valkyries; crazed tricks to lust gone wrong; utter destruction to regeneration. This darkly humorous performance weaves poetic language with song, strange musical sounds with a toy crow! Crow was there at the beginning, creates the Universe, warns of dangers, plays the fool, makes love, urges war, flies over the battlefield, brings peace, keeps memories, counts time, waits for doom, is the matter of the land itself. Discover dangerous, devilish, divine Crow. Adults only.
2 x 50 mins with an interval.

The Mighty Goddess

Saturday 9 July
Rhythm Tree Festival, Sticelett Farm, Thorness Bay, Isle of Wight, PO31 8NE
Sally Pomme Clayton gives a sneak preview from her forthcoming book ‘The Mighty Goddess’ (2023) that collects together 50 goddess myths. The goddess has multiple forms that resonate across the world in one mighty being. She repeatedly appears as: creator; virgin; warrior; lover; mother; crone. This performance tells wild, feisty, tender, poetic and erotic global myths that follow the goddess from creator to crone. The myths are for adults only – these stories of the goddess have not been tamed! They are about lust and greed, pleasure and fear, rape and rage, death and destruction, jealousy and murder, transformation and rebirth. They are filled with darkness, flashes of lightening, beating drums and  naked skin. This performance is for ADULTS ONLY  – graphic content.  60ish mins. straight through.

The King with Dirty Feet and other Royal Tales! 

Fairytales for families to celebrate The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Wear or bring your best pair of shoes to show us at the end! Hosted across all of Bexley Libraries! The performance lasts an hour is suitable for everyone! Tickets are free, click on the links below for details of venue and tickets.
Saturday 28 May
11.00am Crayford Library
2.30 Thamesmead Library
Tuesday 31 May
11.00am Central Library, Bexleyheath
2.30 Erith Library
Saturday 4 June
11.00am Welling Library
2.30 pm Sidcup Library 

Telling Tales

Telling Tales is  a FREE online creative programme for children aged 7-11 to explore and discover the art of storytelling and creative writing.
The course is part of the Arts Award programme and will lead to a Discover Arts Award.
Saturdays 10- 11am.  26 February to 9 April.
Led by Croydon Libraries and Sally Pomme Clayton the course will encourage children to create, write and draw their own stories and poems and gain a Discover Arts Award. To register: This is a weekly course starting from 26 February 2022 and finishing 9 April 2022. Please sign up for each individual week on Eventbrite. 

Girls and Goddesses

Saturday 5 March 11am -12.00 & 14.00pm- 15.00pm
Ealing Central Library
103 Ealing Broadway Centre London W5 5JY 
Celebrate International Women’s day with storyteller Sally Pomme Clayton. Meet bold and gutsy heroines in stories from different parts of the world. These girls and goddesses face impossible tests, undo magic spells, and bring transformation. Some are clever, some are funny, some are foolish – all are brave!  Tickets free but you need to book for a specific session:
Tickets for 11am – 12
Tickets for 14pm- 15pm

The Magician’s Apprentice

Flowing Words – Outdoor riverside creative writing workshop.
Repeated live at two locations , and once online:
Sunday 26 September, 11.00am- 12.30pm Wapping
Waterside Gardens, 104-106 Wapping High St, London E1W 2PR
For adults and children aged 12 upwards (children must come with an adult.) With the Thames Festival Trust.A creative writing journey using: observation; walking; the senses; memories; histories; dreams; imagination, to give voice to the River Thames and its stories. The workshop is also about helping you get into a creative flow, which allows thoughts and images to arise, so you can make your own river of words. There will be a short time towards the end to share some of our words.

Once Upon A Time – How Fairytales Travel
Tuesday 18 May 2021, 11.00 – 12.00, Online
Hosted by Brent Library  – Reading Friends

A performance/talk/workshop all rolled into one hour! Discover why fairytales are living literature. Sally Pomme will tell you some stories, introduce you to the idea of the oral tradition and talk about how versions of similar stories can be found across the world, and how, and perhaps why, the human imagination creates and re-creates these ancient stories. The session will end with a small creative wriitng exercises where you can explore your own memories of fairytales and what they might mean to you. Free but booking needed.

Mythic Imagination – a creative writing journey

Dates and time: 5 sessions, Tuesdays 17.00 – 18.00 GMT via zoom
Cost: £6 per session plus booking fee. Tickets need to be bought for each session.
Session 1: Tuesday May 25,  The Mythical Landscape.
Session 2: Tuesday June 1,  Fairytales – the quest.
Session 3: Tuesday June 8,  Fairytales – the forbidden forest.
Session 4: Tuesday June 15,  Myths – gods and goddesses speak.
Session 5: Tuesday June 22,  Myths – beasts and transformation.
Mythic Imagination is a creative workshop with storyteller and writer Sally Pomme Clayton exploring myths and fairytales through guided creative writing, using writing as a form of meditation and discovery to explore our mythic imaginations, explore ways of accessing your imagination, connecting with your creativity, and discovering images you already have inside you. The sessions are based on fairytales and myths and draw on a variety of sources to inspire creativity: images in myths and dreams; our surroundings; fairytales; folklore; family stories; the senses; cultural and social history; memories. Mythic Imagination is a supportive, enabling, calming, and thoughtful writing space. During the sessions all mics will be muted as Pomme guides you through a creative writing journey. The sessions will not offer any critical analysis of your work or opportunities to share work. The focus instead is on creative ways to dive deep into the images inside us all and be renewed and restored by them – the imagination can be a place of hope and mystery. There will be a few moments at the end of each session to be unmuted and have a chat, ask questions and reflect.  The 5 sessions can be taken individually, or as a course. They always start with the same meditative writing exercise which will be repeated each time. Then Pomme will explore a different theme each week. She will suggest some creative work that you can do between sessions, so following the whole course means you are able to explore ideas more deeply. Find out more and book tickets.

TALES FROM THE STATUE – a radio programme I made with producer Arlene Gregorius.
BBC Radio 4 Extra March 9th 2021 2.30pm, 10th March 2.30 pm
You will also be able to listen on BBC Sounds afterwards.

Tales from the Statue was made in 2003 it is about the Hans Christian Anderson statue in New York’s Central Park. For over 40 years there has been storytelling beside this statue, started by US storyteller Diane Wolkstein. The programme interviews several tellers from the US who have performed at the statue, including Laura Simms, and discusses the value of listening and imagining with UK storyteller Ben Haggarty. Diane died suddenly, doing what she loved, collecting stories. You can read more about her here.  Diane has left behind a lasting legacy of stories she collected and translated. And the storytelling at the statue continues, and is now being programmed by the inspirational Laura Simms.

DEATH ANDTHEWARRIOR MAIDEN
A celebration of World Book Night for an adults-only audience with Brent Libraries

Friday 23 April 2021, 18:30-19:45
Hosted by Brent Libraries
Tickets free but need to be booked
What is the one thing that will stop death? And the only thing that will stop war? Sally-Pomme Clayton brings to life a rare gem, the Turkic Epic of ‘Dede Korkut’ is known throughout Central Asia. It was written down in 14th Century Ottoman Turkey, but is still travelling the Silk Road, it’s funny, it’s fresh and full of contemporary relevance. The performance weaves together the dark tale of Storyteller Dede Korkut, with one of the tales he supposedly told, the uplifting romance of the warrior maiden Princess Saljan – a story of crazed desire, wild beasts and a woman warrior who will fight to the death. This performance reveals the richness of Turkic culture and the deep value of storytelling itself. Free but booking needed.

PERSEPHONE AND THE RITES OF SPRING
3rd April 2021, 4 pm for families, via zoom
Hosted by The Swedenborg Society
FREE but booking needed.

Celebrate spring with mysterious myths and fragments of folklore. Paint an egg, make a flower crown, decorate an Easter bonnet and have it ready to show everyone at the end. Join writer and performer Sally Pomme Clayton for magical stories about spring. Follow Persephone on a dark and dangerous journey to the underworld. Find out why her mother, Goddess Demeter, curses Earth so nothing grows, how Persephone returns, and why the cycle of nature and seasons depend on Persephone’s journey. Welcome in the spring

Friday 12th February 2021, 7.30pm – 9pm Hosted by Unruly Tongues Storytelling Club
Story – Sally Pomme Clayton / Songs – Helen Chadwick

Storyteller and writer Sally Pomme Clayton and singer and composer Helen Chadwick weave together words and songs, images and sounds, to conjure the eternal quest for love.  They take you on a snowy journey through a dark, Scandinavian fairytale with a polar bear and a princess, and songs drawing on poetry from Rumi to Emily Dickinson. The fairytale is set in a world of ice and snow, frost and firesides, where a princess climbs a glass mountain to set a cursed bear free, but is she brave enough to undo the terrible Troll Hag’s spell? The story is intertwined with Helen’s illuminating songs, that can slow down time, bring images or emotions to life. Magical, humorous and tinged with darkness this performance is for adults and young people aged 12 and upwards. ​
Book Tickets: Unwaged £4;  Full Price £7; Donation to Artists £8;  Feeling Abundant £10.​

The Phoenix of Persia
Saturday 6th February 2021, 2pm – 3pm
Live storytelling performance with Sally Pome Clayton on zoom, for families with Southwark Libraries.

Join this fun, interactive performance about the magical phoenix and baby Prince Zal who is brought up in a bird’s nest! The story is about acceptance and forgiveness, and discovering that each one of us is unique. Learn how stories from ancient Persia have been told and illustrated for more than 1000 years! Sally-Pomme will also show you some images from Southwark Heritage’s Cuming Online Collection to explore elements of the story. And be inspired to create your own pictures and stories. After the performance Southwark Libraries would love you to draw a picture or write a story inspired by the performance. Send it to: southwark.libraries@southwark.gov.uk and they will display your picture or story in their online ‘Ancient Story Adventure Gallery’. Suitable for children aged 6 upwards. Tickets are free but booking is essential – follow this link to book tickets.

The King with Dirty Feet
Wed, October 28, 2020
2:00 PM – 2.40 PM GMT
Online zoom performance with Southwark Libraries

This interactive storytelling performance is perfect for over 4’s and their families. The King with Dirty Feet (Otter-Barry Books 2018) tells a funny, sweet and involving folktale about a very important invention. Advance preparation for audiences of ages: take off your shoes! And have your absolutely favourite pair of shoes to hand to show everyone at the end of the performance. Every shoe tells a story! Free – but you need to register in advance.

The Frog Princess Punked
Cambridge Junction Jan 30 2020
Exeter Phoenix Feb 1 2020
What happens when Ivan marries a frog? A wicked racket! Urban meets forest. Patriarchy meets feminism. Babayaga meets Koschy the Deathless!
The Frog Princess Punked is a feminist fairytale for adults told with  girl punk band, The Swamp Girls. A hybrid hullabaloo of spoken word, distorted guitars, scorching drums, riotous songs, all set within a shifting collage of surreal animations and films v-jayed live!

“You have reinvented storytelling with this feisty girl-punk, feminist fairytale.”  Audience Soho Theatre

“Fiery, thrilling, powerful storytelling, a truly immersive experience.” Audience at Bloomsbury Theatre

“The Slits with stories!” Audience The Cube, Bristol

The Phoenix of Persia
Edinburgh Book Festival
August 12 10.30 am

Stories of the Simorgh, including the story from Sally Pomme’s latest book ‘The Phoenix of Persia’, and a snippet of The Conference of the Birds. The illustrator Amin Hassanzadeh Sharif will be doing special live drawing during the performance!

Mother Danube
Ships in the Night | Mother River, Father River
June 7 2019, 19.30
Cutty Sark  Theatre, Ground Level, Lower Hold, Greenwich.

Sally Pomme Clayton and musician Emma Clare take a magical journey across Europe evoking the River Danube. A mythical meander along the Danube listening to stories, songs and music celebrating the vibrant, histories, cultures and heritage of the river. With Olivia Armstrong evoking tales of the River Thames and the history of the Cutty Sark itself, this evening celebrates Mother River, Father River.

The Phoenix of Persia – Book Launch with Tiny Owl
May 30 2019. 14.00
The British Library

Celebrate the launch of stunning new picture book The Phoenix of Persia with a spellbinding family storytelling event from author Sally Pomme Clayton. A legend from ancient Persia, the tale of Prince Zal and the Simorgh is a mythical exploration of forgiveness, family and what it means to be truly wise. This magical story is accompanied by an original musical performance, played on traditional Iranian instruments. Children can try out the instruments for themselves and experience their unique sounds. Followed by a book signing.

The Virgin Queen with Joglaresa
May 24 2019  19.30
St Mary’s Church , North Bar Within, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, HU17 8DL
Beverly Early Music festival
A wild romance about a powerful woman warrior, set to lush Medieval music played by all female band, Joglaresa. For this performance Joglaresa weave songs and music through the story, including their own interpretations of songs composed by medieval women, from 9th Century  Byzantine Abbess Kassia to 11th Century Arab-Andalusian songstress Wallada. The story has Central Asian and Turkic roots and conjours a mysterious Virgin Queen who lives in a garden protected by 365 magical guardians, but the King’s son needs a  fruit from her tree to save his father, will he even get into the garden and how will he get out again?

Dhaka Lit Fest
Nov 7 – 12 2018

Sally Pomme Clayton is honored to be performing at Dhaka Lit Fest.
She will perform ‘The King with Dirty Feet’ for children and ‘Amazing Maidens’ for adults, as well as working with local schools.

Mother Danube

Totally Thames 
24 – 29 September various locations along The Thames
Sally Pomme Clayton and musician Emma Clare take a magical journey across Europe evoking the River Danube for a week of free performance at various unique and riverside locations. The Danube flows from the Black Forest to the Black Sea through 10 European countries – more countries than any river on earth. The Danube passes modern cities, ancient fortresses, wild forests, industry, mountains, rural communities – a diverse mix of cultures, peoples, and geography has bestowed a huge resource of stories. Take a mythical meander with them along the banks of the Danube listening to stories, songs and music celebrating the vibrant, histories, cultures and heritage of the river.