Poem Workshop
21 November 2008 17:25
The following poems were inspired by objects in the River & Rowing Museum's collection and the Museum's unique riverside setting.
They were written at the Museum as part of the Henley Literary Festival last year. There was a Sonnet Workshop led by Jo Shapcott and the Wellspring! 2008 Writing Workshop led by Jane Draycott.
Both workshops are part of the River & Rowing Museum's lively creative writing programme, which includes a Saturday fortnightly course 'Picture This' led by novelist, poet and broadcaster David Grubb.
Here is a selection of the poems...
Watermarks
Allison McVety
And when he dreams, he has the river
at his neck, blocked out in shades
of petrol and sludge, blood and earth.
A silt constriction at its hems, shot
with the sparklers of thistles
and bulrushes, marginal ligatures
tangled with docks and cranes.
Often it has collared him, anchored,
moored and boarded him -
its ties, the years of helicoidal flow
from source to sea, the heave, the shift
of banks, its sinuosity. But always
it is a screen silk scarf, strangled
with knots, the tug of kellick hitch,
stevedore, reef - a river cloth wrung out,
but damp enough to leave a trace
of tideway on his skin, the slant of it,
to call him back and haul him in.
Inspired by 'The Landscape of Two Seasons'
John Piper
My Rivers
Wendy Klein
Well, I'm swapping waterways again -
not so far this time as the first - the sea
to my Connecticut at dusk - its inlets,
its mysteries, the implacable frame houses
perched on either bank, their eyes intent
on our last night together, my first canoe.
So much greener than the next -
my San Joaquin, the exact shade of valley
mud, the slap of water skis that summer
before uni, skinny dipping, the secret
glow of first sex.
Then the flight to the next one -
the Loire, Orleans, Chateaux Roux,
followed by the chill plunge across
borders to the Isar, the Frauen Kirche,
sombre the year round, its onion domes
reflected season after season - five years
not to fall in love with its prim banks,
its too-orderly flow.
And now here where the Thames laps
domestically against long boats, offers
its quiet surface to children, to dogs
encourages picnics despite the constant
threat of rain.
And the long and short of it -
that it's all the same, one river,
all rivers, the roads between
all roads - a certain synchronicity.
To the Other World
Elizabeth Bell
Stand upon a bank and hear a blackbird,
look into a stream and there see a fish,
to wait for a god does not seem absurd,
make an obeisance and then make a wish.
Slip from an edge until all is submerged,
Knots are unravelling, here is all there is,
Breath held at twilight tillnioght owls are heard,
Gaze at the water which sparkles like schist.
Dive from a rock and hair forms a helmet
Bronze in the pool where the golden fish swim,
Stars of the ancients hang in dark velvet,
Sounds in the alders, old whispered hymns.
Beckoning naiad voices call follow,
Hands make a path through branches of willow.