As a poet and a Londoner, I have long been fascinated by the River Thames and how being on, in or near water affects our moods and by extension our creativity. The Narrow Road to the Deep South:A Poetry Expedition was a writers’ workshop that took place in a number of locations on land and on water as part of the National Maritime Museum’s Travellers’ Tales project. This blog features my commentary as the tutor and some excerpts from the work produced by writers who took part: Robert Butler, Claire Collinson, Nurduran Duman, Holly Levent, Alison Marr, Andrea Robinson, Marie Robinson.
We also looked at Faraday’s Synaptic Gap: An Exhibition by Rick Myers a display exploring a series of failed scientific experiments on water and electro-magnetism from Waterloo Bridge.
Then we walked across Hungerford Bridge collecting sounds and writing haiku.
Magnetic currents
swim, cluster on the surface.
A bridge lends an ear.
The arms of the bridge are high pitched. They call aah, aah, one long strung out note rising over the river’s bass profundo, a low lapping as it strums the concrete piles, the tide lays down a base beat for the amplified skree, a klaxon shouting electronic seagull screams from a rusted barge.
The wind hews sculptures
out of the river’s surface:
mindless enjoyment.
Cross the bridge, over
the river’s drama; reflect
on our walk-on parts.
The tide is high, water slapping the caissons of Hungerford Bridge and the air is full of machines droning, grinding and digging. In sporadic rain I cross from Southbank and pause to record my senses: human bustle and tin pan music, traffic roar, burnt onions, sickly chestnuts, the railings cold, the wind catching my damp hair…
As I wait on the pier I imagine the river in olden times, high rigged ships to Galleon’s Reach, gaunt ghost ships in fog fret, dirty coasters, cranes and wharves, spices and stevedores – Vikings and Romans and druids at Tot Hill and off the Isle of Grain the prison ships and Pip shivering on the Kent marshes.
On the boat I asked the group to write about how being on the water made them feel, and to intersperse these notes with accurate, physical descriptions of the water and riverbank.
The river makes me feel at ease. There is comfort on the boat. The river beside and below, an extending road of supple possibility.
Sounds and shadows blur
Rain and the river converge
Fuse water with air
Water has a memory, you never know what goes into it but water doesn’t forget. I’m at home on this river, a meandering misfit stream scything serpentine crescents through the lives of Londoners.
The river is made of tears and branches torn from downwater trees and things thrown or flushed away – forgotten things lost in the murk, in the muddied waters. It is invaded by boats and barges – kicks back, lifts them up and throws them out, slaps hard and spits, sends up its warnings to the empty apartments – dead-eyed buildings, nobodies-homes – a flood could fix things. Consider this a threat.
the river widens
fat cloud casts putty shadows
I long for open sea
When we arrived at the National Maritime Museum, I introduced the first object, the figurehead of HMS Thames – the embodiment of the spirit of the river.
This hunky father figurehead
Spirit of the Thames
cousin of Poseidon
with a beard of waves, thick rivulets
that flow and meander.
Your forehead open like a map
your fish lip pout
tells tall tales.
Chest thrown back, nipples taut in the seaspray
and those opaque eyes possessed, all seeing.
I asked the group to write a dialogue in the voice of the Thames…
Hey Daddy Thames – you look like something
washed up by your own waters. At least
you had the sense to ram in your nose plugs
before making that lonely dive down to the silt.
Your eyes might be proud but your locks are
just pondweed and the tide has marked you.
Guess even river gods grow old and lose
their powers in the end.
Oh you have me wrong, Old Thames replies.
I may be roughcast and swollen from all my years
of racing out to sea, but I still stride in every rivulet
I still flow hard and fast; do not underestimate my strength.
I am the tide and I am always changing. I leave my mark
on everything that enters me. I wait for no one.
Truth is, you’re deaf as a post. You’d never have heard your frigate’s 46-gun salute or the cries of prisoners as you were hulked in Bermuda. Your pupil-less eyes are white cataracted with paint. Rather a bruiser in fact, with your gym-pumped deltoids, collar-boned like a bicycle handlebar, a barrel-chested navvy, arms cut off above the elbow, with corn-cobbed eyebrows and beard flowing like a waterfall from island cliffs. Eight Father Thames eh? Wot’s yer Christian name then, ‘Enry? The carpenter has carved you cunning, your heroic frowning forehead in true proportion only when seen from below, gazed at from an approaching longboat or admired once landfall is reached.
We then went up into the artist’s studio in the Re: Think Space, to share our writing before the group headed off to find objects on their own.
In a box shaped like the cap of the black hut smokehouses that wait by the sea for the boats to return, inside this box lies an artificial horizon. Look straight through the glass and everything is the same; boxed and framed but the view is unchanged. Look down, and the skies become an ocean, plumbing down to the mercury line.
Brass trigometer
emblazoned with fishheads
I map where I am.
PRINCE FREDERICK’S BARGE…
Scrolled sea dragons coil around curlicued clam shells that ornament the rail. A bottlenosed dolphin figurehead breasts the waves at the prow. There is seating for over a hundred on brocaded banquettes, a plush curtained canopy protects the royal personages from the elements. Imagine the stag nights, the hen parties you could have in this What a piece of bling ! Reminds me of Idi Amin’s gold stretch limousine, one hell of a way to impress a gal.
The Trinity lamps hang, symbols of light, guidance, faith, and learning. A fitting end and beckoning another journey.
You can join us on the return trip! Watch the National Maritime Museum website for news of when it takes place.