1 poem
Loxley Agden Damflask
River Loxley
all these years
springing from moor
waterfalls
dikes that feed brooks
rushy
flinthill
hobson moss
emlin
agden
rocher end
faltering up here hear shoulder to it
welter welter up
to fall lowering under and through
learning mazy we are winding tight through
windy
banks and woods
finding their river bashing on white noise their riverine sanded soils
becoming becoming
for flood for saturating mud making mud-making-raking
meander
fluent mazy but
expecting nothing forming
nothing but carp & trout flexing to vex
currents
muscle moving
pike’s
false starts mallards and dippers pushing
tonguing shoving lick their webbed motor on bellied up and
up through water and up resting
on stone the river closing
always closing (one whole note we are breve) around all
lending surface to branch lean in\out
and bend down/out sycamore oak willow leaf
oh sing that again again
fall to catch copper from green kingfisher
streak catch catch expecting nothing formal
Agden
impressive reservoir structures
belong to the kestrel
every start a false start in language
online, on the line, in the wet
car park been coming here 50 years
stumbling into it
quickly, quietly
along edges
impressive reservoir structures or some such
victorian sureties dreaming of the gothic
water storage popular, circular out of the city
also search for how long does it take how deep
can you swim
nothing but earache
it was a wet day but not blurry looking up into
the sound of beech leaves batting back rain still green leaves
floating vivacity against invisible black
a circuit of trees owned by mushrooms
mudbronze of windblown on land
on water drift into spandrels between branches
bright spaces happen while you’re making something else
not for stamping on not really there
mandarins echo leaves holding still shelter sides then whistle-grunting
against shock of their size sailing mingle-meeting
bathtime toys waterlogging colour the reservoir
on the ramp cormorants careful gothic impressive structures
and egret almost regret impounding
how ancient is ancient to lap false shore
is consonants scuffle
CONFINED SPACE tiny figures
SAFETY AND RESCUE dayglo workers
UNIT on the dam wall
Sick Brook Diversion
Smallfield Ridge kestrel belonging
shining out ling, least expected
low conifer enclosures up to fruitful tops handstain of
blackberries palm of bilberries intricate on the tongue
scabbed crab apple enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge
can an apple tree turn wild – once planted, how long
must it live alone?
off the white-lined road Agden Side they made it smooth
for the peloton
going becomes rough stumbling over
and a tumble in grace pulled back
stones, brambles, roots, inner tubes
pint glass sludged
becoming immersed immeasured unmeasured unlined,
becoming clambering unclumbering, unsigned
there’s no sitting on a barbed wire fence you have to decide and level
low fields, lands
this mild drifting wind on which, come Spring
long quivering curlew calls
lapwings piercing fall wide turning wing turning fall
spiral tumble
pairing warmth gathering in growing
scabbled mud ridged and click of cloven hooves click and clatter
scobble and grabble for words the mind’s ear tunes and sounds
blackbird song up from the bowl of the bog, protected held brook
emergent
as march’s sudden stillness sudden winds
image of orange behind converging webbed limbs
kick under dark water pooled eyes unblink long for air move
spawn into birth pond half-drowning
female grown & felled amplexus
ample plex us
her gaze perplexes us & her
nuthatch high in old wood calls clatter up roll the drome of the valley air so much
air & laced calling cows and calves over to feed shouts dog
to bring sheep to the pen circled flock refrains echo counterpoint to bleat
to bleat check over, let go in lambing field ewe and ewe
and ewes lost to flock to flow white on
walled green
lark fields, high fields crag
slabbed edged single-track path line, bird line, tree line to
moorland tit for finch to curlew lark trace different air
sun scents pine bark leans up the way
it is underneath coppiced emergent
Church Farm
West Nab
their line
and line
there’s no sitting on a barbed wire fence you have to decide and level
drain
unstone allstone
field the mess
ruled out ploughed & bled
gateways yanked wide scream diggers panzer in
unruly stretchered out clubbed to baize
and glyphosate
axis of loss
is down
down no counter thwart
all warp no weft
warp and warp
there’s no sitting on a barbed wire fence you have to decide and level
farmhouse a ruin and gappy moss heart and bones hostage to
machinery died in harness by the privy nailed to another way of housing lost
shards
in the old barn an owl box
of another way of closer every winter to the bank behind
pasture above gone over, back to heath
young birches push up through heather light invisible
bark invisible
race you to the sky
take back take
back
you can see where he got tired, the old boy
from the state of the fields at the edge of the land,
right up to the
farmhouse
concentricity of being
is reach
scope
the widest ring the furthest
pastures
unknown then for years
decades
shrink back as growing back confirms the first line
inwards
& roughening
weather paces ungrazing its traces
for the kernel ungazing away
in
away
in
glazing scoped over and out
while older feet nudging the deepest the tightest turn fainter
spirals to this at-last-of-being
&
vanishing
point
at Lower Bradfield
water knot tangle all down all change meetwaters
greetwaters to arc out arc out compass in to Damflask
& Damflask
pike in the arms of men spill over
forearms sure as scratchy pullovers
scales catch his catch snap this catch
all those colours retreat
in the gallery of blurred pride the
gills’ catch at/snatch at
SOS in a cold dead eye
colours tinting themselves back
like underwater rising no joke
eddies of it aqua green blue force of it
at his shoulder
pike unsinewed swims endlessly into out of into
the fade of murk
/who is/
back/forth
swing of light finds
drowned lintels of light
where someone is always
who ducks slowly of light
back/forth
slips swift slow ramp of shore along to/come to test
true of the dam
into Loxley
wagtail flights & notes wheels, weirs
and crossings opening
wide-opening and walling wailing stone scored scarred scared
and damming flow silting edge and
stilling stealing fish stop shallow
to steep steep to the road
levered shallow spillway
down stream to meet
Rivelin at Malin the Don
the city
Harriet Tarlo is a poet and academic. Her single author poetry publications are with Shearsman, Etruscan and Guillemot Presses and her artists’ books with Judith Tucker with Wild Pansy Press. She is editor of The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry(Shearsman) and special features on ecopoetics for How2 and Plumwood Mountain. She is Professor of Ecopoetry and Poetics at Sheffield Hallam University. This collaborative text is part of a project initiated by our involvement in the interdisciplinary research network, ‘HydroSpheres’ (AHRC grant AH/T006056/1), exploring the potential roles for collaborative arts practices in new modes of landscape decision-making based in the River Don catchment around Sheffield, UK.
Kym Martindale: Until recently, I taught English and Creative Writing at Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK. I have given papers on Alice Oswald’s poetry, two of which, on Dart and ‘Not yet not yet’ from Woods. Etc., were later published in Process, Landscape and Text, eds. Catherine Brace and Adeline Johns-Putra, Rodopi (2010) and Identity and Form in Contemporary Literature, ed. Ana Maria Sanchez, Routledge (2013) respectively. I returned to my native Yorkshire, in the north of England, two years ago and have been busy rediscovering reservoirs through Hydrospheres, a tremendously moving and exciting journey. Much like rediscovering poetry.