Sea Fever Variations

Making Memories, Gallery Oldham

A question we keep running into is how to make writing or art exercises that are accessible to many folks, without being hopelessly dumbed down. 

The answer comes in the unlikely guise of William S Burroughs, the notorious inventor of the 'cut-up'. We have often brought cut ups to our workshops. They used to be among the artiest avant-garde writing strategies, but are now very commonplace. The beauty of cut-ups is that they allow unusual, tangential logics into the making of a piece of writing. 

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There are many variations on cut-uppery in our workshops; usually somebody will write down people's reminiscences about a particular subject and then cut them up into individual lines. The participant then arranges those lines in whatever order they like. Once the order has been decided, however wild and random (ah, Saint William, delinquent angel!) the lines are sellotaped down onto paper.

For the group poem below, we took notes about people's reminiscences of holiday travel on the trams, omnibuses and seaside donkeys of yesteryear. We also read out the poem Sea Fever by John Masefield, which was a set text in British schools, decades ago. The reminiscences were cut up into individual lines and intermixed with John Masefield's famous verses. The results were sometimes funny and sometimes eerily lovely. They started pleasure and recognition in the makers and I hope they managed to put a little of their worldview onto a piece of paper. 


Sea Fever (Variations)

I must go to the canal again

the lonely canal and the sky

and a grey mist on the river's face

and the white sails go "bye bye"

and a grey sky breaking

and the wheel's kick 

all over the Isles

a boat in the canal, a dog in the boat

Norfolk Broads and the wind's 

song shaking

(Eunice & Walter Mabey)

Benidorm, Tenerife

I've done my travelling

the vagrant gypsy life

on coach and charabang

Oldham Wakes, back when summer was proper

Blackpool every year

into the sea and stay til night

I must go again to the seas of 1973

£5 a passport 

to the gull's way and the whale's way

(Alice)

to the holiday resorts 

it is a military operation, look for

the coach numbers

all the coaches in the Northwest converge

wheels and the wind song and white sails on the M62

where the wind's

like a whetted knife

follow the metal on the lines

the clattering tram

they've knocked that bridge down

(Stephen Cullum)

out into the gloom 

it swings and batters 

you never saw it you see, the sea 

sundering waves lost and gone

with the "owd trams" 

from Oldham Brewery

by boat, get a coach

go to Germany first, then Austria

then Poland

and the stars and storms

(Molly)

illuminations 

I think "very nice"

and all I ask is a windy day, clouds flying

a trip to the lightshow, very nice 

and the flung spray and blown spume

and the sea-gulls

a shaking movement

and quiet sleep 

and a sweet dream 

when the long trick's over

Anne

Jan 2014

Oldham

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