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| T S Eliot's View - Margate |
On Margate Sands
I can connect
Nothing with nothing
III Fire Sermon – The Waste Land
On one of the hottest days of the
year I took several members of “A Journey with The Waste Land Research Forum”
for a walk in the City of London, introducing them to the ‘psycho-geography’ that
influenced T S Eliot when writing The Wasteland (pub. 1923 Hogarth Press).
The group came all the way from
Margate and were having a grand day out organised by the Curator and Research Curator of the Turner Contemporary for the project, which will see the Margate
community create an exhibition influenced by Eliot’s great poem, due to open 2018.
In turn I was invited to join the
“Fallen Leaves Festival” on the 8th October in Margate to ‘talk my walk’ T S Eliot in the City, as a walking
book. The outing included site readings of “Burnt Norton” we set out from the
Turner Contemporary to The Garden Gate, more of this later. The walk was to
make connections with rhythm, rhyme, memory and walking.
We met in the foyer of the Turner
Contemporary, I will be writing about the gallery in more detail in a separate
blog, introductions were made and each walking book introduced themselves and
their subject, and we were:
‘A Journey with The Waste
Land’
Trish Scott
Trish Scott is the Research Curator at Turner
Contemporary, and is working with 30 volunteers to co-curate the gallery's
first major exhibition of 2018, A Journey with The Waste Land, which explores
the connections between T.S Eliot's poem The Waste Land, partly written in Margate,
and the visual arts.
‘Shoulder to Shoulder – tales of the Broadstairs Town Shed’
Claire Shelton
I have been involved with the Shed
project since 2014. I’m project manager, fund raiser, community liaison, and
day to day co-ordinator. http://www.broadstairstownshed.org.uk/
‘Experiential Research, Materials and Spaces’
Catherine Richardson
With an art college background,
followed by studies in literature and medieval and early modern culture and
society, I work on the history of material culture – how the physical world
shaped and was shaped by people’s actions, interests and beliefs. There is more
about all of this here: www.kent.ac.uk/english/sta ff/richardson.html
‘Here, There, Now and Then: Seeking the Self Through Space, Place, Time
and Tides’
Louisa Love
Louisa Love is a Kent-based
contemporary artist operating across sculpture, film, writing, research,
walking, organisation and social/collaborative activity. She is interested in
the nature and pluralities of artistic production, exploring the complex
relationships between things, thoughts, knowledges and different modes of doing
as a consideration of identity and the negotiation of self within the
contemporary world. Experimental processes of drift and psycho-geography often
inform her work. www.louisa-love.com www.dadonline.eu
‘The Art of Walking’
Sonia Overall
Sonia Overall writes fiction and
poetry. She has a strong interest in psycho-geography and site-specific
writing, form, intertextuality and performance-based approaches to text. Sonia
has written and abridged work for street theatre and has published two novels,
A Likeness and The Realm of Shells (HarperPerennial) and a chapbook of poetry,
The Art of Walking (Shearsman).
www.women-who-walk.org
#soniaoverall #womenwhowalknet
Plus All The Leaves Are Brown/Cliftonville Dreamin'
Julia Riddiough - Margate based artist with an active interest in exploring and investigating the archive, looking at the space between fact and the fiction. www.abrooksart.com and juliariddiough.com
The organiser Elspeth Penfold,
designated the first people to join a walking book, thereafter seek your walking book.I was able to talk to at least eight people in the group,
by changing my companion after one or more stops. We were also presented with a
‘spiral of rope’ an ancient Inca ritual of unknown origin, whereby you would
knot it enroute as your mood took you. I
used mine as a badge on my sleeve and put in one knot to acknowledge the whole
experience.
As we set off the heavens opened,
umbrellas were at the ready, and remember these folk live on the Isle of Thanet
and know about the changing weather on the coast, so dressed appropriately! We set of in a westward direction, which was
great for me as I had explored most of the beach in front of the town. We headed for Fulsam Rock by the Fort Lower
Promenade our destination Northdown Park.
I do not think anyone really noticed
the rain and eventually it eased off. I enjoyed the readings and especially the
talks with my walking audience, several of which had not yet read the The Waste Land, which was an interesting
situation to overcome. I focussed initially on some of the City landmarks, London
Bridge, St Magnus the Martyr and St Mary Woolnoth. Why he might have been drawn
to them. The churches particularly were in the news at the time of his
composing the poem, due to be demolished, he wrote of their enhancing the
cityscape. Also London Bridge the conduit between home and work, life and death,
hope and despair, and Eliot often mentions the ‘Sweet Thames’, not only in
terms of ancient lore but this also connects him with the great river he grew
up close to in his home town of St Louis.
‘Depressing and hopeless’ were words
oft used to describe the poem. I asked my
companions to perhaps look at the poem in another way, for instance to reflect
more on the construction of the poem, its staccato lines, followed by episodic,
illustrative stanzas, as well as the dialogue and monologues, rather than hang
on every word. Or view it in all its modernity, it was way ahead of its time,
enjoy its complex fabrication, a collage made of words. Also there is no need
to understand every word of it, that is not what Eliot would have wanted.
Function over form, ‘feel’ the poetry rather than try to comprehend it. Let it
feed your own imagination and emotions.
It has been a long time since I had
no idea where I was going or the end stop, so it was a refreshing and relaxing
few hours just following the group, along the beach, up stairways, through
cliffs, along roads until we reached a library.
The grand finale was a delightful poem first conceived by the poet Keith
Grossman when he was nine, and somewhat troubled. You can read it in full here :
We then met with the Garden Manager,
Paul Boyce of The Garden Gate, who we followed to a ‘secret’ garden created by
the community to enjoy gardening at their own pace, Monday to Friday. At the weekends the site is open to events
and fundraisers. A beautiful place which includes a welcome cup of coffee and
on this occasion delicious pizza fresh from the outdoor oven. Highly recommend
a visit.
So ended an eventful afternoon, made
new friends and experienced new places, after a short bus ride we ended where
we started at the Turner Contemporary. By chance met up with more of the
Forum who had been to a talk in one of the galleries. They kindly invited me to
join them for a coffee and creative chat.
So I came full circle …
In my beginning is my end, in my end
is my beginning.
The
Waste Land, T S Eliot
