Circling the Anthropocene
Writer in residence Jacqui Stearn on walking her way into writing and the power of getting lost.
Lake 32 from above. Image credit: Dan James
With hindsight I realise that my circumnavigations of Lake 32 have been walking my way into writing, encircling the possibility of poetry arising. With each week’s passing I have been getting closer to that one lake among many, slowly developing a relationship with it through appreciating it within its wider landscape setting – a bit like watching someone you fancy engaging with a wider group of friends, before making a direct connection. It’s only as this month closes that Water, a poem directly inspired by the lake, is forming.
I committed to writing poetry with the Anthropocene in mind – our new geological age when human impact on earth is more manifest than Earth’s itself. This was quite a challenge to set myself. As the weeks have gone by, and the walking miles have clocked up, it’s become clear that the three months of my residency, April, August, and December, will have a distinct focus within that overarching theme; past; present; and post the COP 26 in November, the future.
The circumnavigations have revealed unknown connections; William Cobbett rode through clouds of goldfinch in the lanes of Somerford Keynes. Likewise, the crafting of a poem can yield new insights as ideas become connected. I got lost amongst the lakes south of Lake 32. Getting lost is a frequent experience when writing, lost for the right word, or losing the thread and having to retrace my steps back and forth as I did that Sunday. And then the rights of way shown on my map weren’t visible in the walking of the land, deviating because of new groundworks, just as a path through a poem can deviate to make way for new workings.
I could push the analogy further by mentioning stripping the overburden to reveal what’s beneath, but instead I offer you a sonnet, Gravel.
Jacqui Stearn is the Dialect x Waterland writer in residence throughout April, August and December 2021.
You can find her on Twitter @StearnJacqui
Gravel
by Jacqui Stearn
My gravel is ubiquitous to you
everywhere taken for granted its use
to build, to level, to fill, to drain; your view
it’s for the taking, story forsaken, is abuse.
Aeons past my creatures lived, died, sank,
Bodies massed in vast, warm seas. A shift,
and continental birth twisted rock flanks,
ice sheets grew, bedrock shattered, came adrift.
Isis wove across her plain, bearing the stones.
which fell in drifts. Hand dug from pits, gravel
was jumbled with fossilised beasts’ bones.
Grown greedy, you stripped meadows and their marvels;
orchids, fritillaries, gone. Now your kind
move more than my erosion processes combined.
