About the project
 This project was dreamed up by Mel Bennett of the Arts Development Unit, Poole, where she works as Arts Programmer for Adult Social Services.
The idea was to involve many of the town's day centres in creating some banners on the theme of the elements to display in an exhibition at Poole's United Reformed Church.
I was asked to help with some text, which I was glad to offer. I created the poetry using the words of everyone who came along on the walk.
Adrian Newton recorded some sounds from the sea and the wind, and the voices of everyone talking on the walk and while creating the banners.
Fourways created some gorgeous calligraphy work for the text and everything was launched in May 2005 at the United Reformed Church to a packed church with a speech by our local councillor. I very much enjoyed the project and here are some of the poems and images from the walk. Banners walk web page Quick Links...
| | Hi Everyone! As I have this new diary newsletter feature, I thought it might be a good place to send you images and poems from the Elements Banners poetry walk in May 2005.
| | Jurassic Walk | | Is that not terrific? Look at that! Sedimentary sandstone
landscape, timeless and fossilised. Fissures, crumbling rock
clinging to windblown roots, threatening to tumble trees.
What can you imagine? Can you imagine living dinosaurs;
people in bearskins chasing woolly wild mammoth; hunting,
battling the elements, sheltering in animal-painted caves
and spearing monstrous, ugly fish from the rivers and sea. Do they imagine us, aeons hence, walking on the seabed in
jeans, stopping for a picnic lunch in tropical gardens, where
the river once ran high above? Now, way below, an ornamental
stream is sparkling, reflecting clingfilm-wrapped sandwiches. |
| Treeprints | | Leaning over the wall, we see
footprints, pawprints,
prints from a tree.
|
| Elementary | | What's playing in our hair?
What's crashing on the beach?
What's under our feet?
What are we walking on?
What's the last one?
Where's the fire? |
| Elementary Verses | | i
Six seagulls in the sky, swooshed
high on thermal energy. A kitesurfer
leaps the waves, airborne with gulls.
Spinnakers rattle and vibrate, our cheeks
slapped red and hair playfully thrown around.
Sound boom high, electronic ears open,
entraps the distant roar of a dinosaur.
ii
River channel through soft sand
sculpting the beach as the land
was sculpted millennia ago, hard
to imagine we would have been
underwater but for a timewarp.
The sea continues to munch the
rocks, evolution before our eyes.
We sip our drinks, silently.
iii
Sedimentary sandstone, eroded,
battered by the elements, trees
cling heroically, roots blown free
to dangle helplessly. Houses slither
ever closer edgewards, inhabited
by those who like to live dangerously.
iv
Fire in our soles on hot sand,
fired earth strata red streaks,
firesky sonata plays to dusk,
fire windslapped on cheeks.
|
| Patriotic | | Rosy cheeks and rosy noses
sandstone fades to russet heights.
Rusty, unprotected padlocks
Sunset and the sky ignites. White, dry sand in white-hot sunlight,
thermals throw high gulls and clouds,
seashore frothy washed in surfsuds
ice cream, you scream, white, bright loud! Beach-hut blues to shelter windgusts
sky a million colours blue
azure sea whipped wild with wind
speeds kitesurf stuntman into view. |
| Walk and Talk | | Is it time for lunch?
What made those footprints?
A tree! A river in the sand.
Are we going home?
It's a vulture! Dinosaurs!
Can you imagine cavemen?
A low roar on the sound boom.
Is it time for lunch?
Earth, air, fire and water
are the elements.
Sandstone, sediments,
erosion, evolution.
Rosy cheeks and rosy noses.
A ship on the horizon,
longshore drift, landslip,
chines, red white blue,
picnic in the gardens,
safe for swimmers.
Is it time for lunch?
20p a chip! Cuttlefish
and seaweed, that will smell!
Old Harry lost his wife,
173 beach huts at £40 a week.
Is it time for lunch?
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