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driftCliff Forshaw David Kennedy

Simon Kerr Christopher Reid

David Wheatley


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A Humber Mouth Special Commission 2008. First published in 2008 by

Humber Mouth Hull City Arts, Central Library, Albion Street, Hull and the

University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull. This edition copyright Humber

Mouth 2008 and the University of Hull. Copyright of individual poems and

stories resides with the authors. Copyright of individual photographs resides

with the photographers. Humber Mouth 2008 acknowledges the financial

assistance of Hull City Council and Arts Council England, Yorkshire.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent from the

publisher or contributors who hold the copyright. Requests to publish work

from this book must be sent to the copyright holders.

ISBN: 095456864-8

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Contents

4 At the Embarkation Point........................... David Kennedy

6 In Search of the Tenderer Thorns............... David Wheatley7 Low............................................................. Cliff Forshaw

8 A Fret.......................................................... David Wheatley

10 The Truelove............................................... Cliff Forshaw

12 Crossing the Equator, 1892......................... David Kennedy

13 Sperm Tooth................................................ Christopher Reid

14 Authentic Victorian Mermaid..................... Cliff Forshaw

15 A Kilnsea Chorale....................................... Christopher Reid

16 Reads Island............................................... David Wheatley

18 Avocet......................................................... David Wheatley

20 Charms of Lost Villages............................. Christopher Reid

21 Sea Views.................................................... Simon Kerr

30 from Out of Reach...................................... David Wheatley

33 Field Trip with Voices................................. Cliff Forshaw

37 At Filey Brigg............................................. David Wheatley

39 Futures........................................................ David Kennedy

42 The Lord Paramount Looks Seawards........ Cliff Forshaw

45 Flotsam....................................................... David Wheatley

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At the Embarkation Point

What happens here?River falls into river and river falls into sea.

Is there more?

There is surface and there is depth.

Is that the story?

It is one story and a way of beginning it.

Are there others?

Bows cut the waters open

and the waters close.What else can you tell me?

Voyages vanish into voyages

like water into water.

Yes, I know there are voyages.

Dreams that cancel themselves;

lines that change in the writing.

Can you say more?

Nerves that run from Hessle Road

and Syke Street, from Blue Bell Entry.

Are all voyages the same?

No, many do not return.

Who are you?

I am the keeper of the names.

How do you remember them?

I stand here on the lowest step

where the water laps.

Would I know any?St. Romanus, Kingston Peridot,

Ross Cleveland.

Are there others?

6,000 lost fishermen and counting.

What can I do here?

Remember what the sea does.

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Which is?The sea sifts and the sea sifts,

washing its vast ossuaries.

What does the sea remember?

Itself.

What else can I do here?

Find a way to write it.

afterLe Livre des Questions by Edmond Jabs

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In Search of the Tenderer Thorns

Wait for the change in the tide where the Ouse meets the Trent andthe Humber is born. Sound your foghorn once and slip down the

jetty, where a tethered goat flicks its ears in the breeze and skitters

a volley of piss in your general direction. These parishes, their

runnelled fields all alluvial warping and tillage, secrete their tidal

glue round your feet, and the scabby-legged cockerels in the bend of

the road have spied you, Phrygian caps a red shock of sedition.

Follow them twice round the mulberry bush and into the churchyard:

follow the late poet squire of Yokefleets cigarette tip in the distancelike a will o the wisp across the fructuant marsh, and stumble into

the arms of a barman out beating the bushes on pressgang duty for

the Tuesday night darts team. Stand everyone at the Hope & Anchor

a drink, and that grass, that mistcircled grass on the dyke, cock an

ear for its whisper under the jukebox and the farm dog barking half

a mile down the road. Have you come about the interview for church

warden, someone will ask. Are you that pigfeed salesman, someone

will ask. No pigs around here, or hadnt you noticed. Plenty of moles

though. Match on tonight then? That island out in the estuary, what

is its name, the island out where the freighters pass and the avocet

dips and wades: its a trick of perspective, youre on the island,

youre in the nature reserve, youre already drifting out to sea with

the estuary mud; there is no island and never was, the goat has

progressed to chewing its tail, you slip back on board, sound the

foghorn again and disappear into the chaos beyond the last high tide.

And a couple of pound coins in the change, love, for the condom

machine in the jakes, and a packet of crisps. Where the Ouse meetsthe Trent and the Humber is born, that swaying grass, that

mistcircled grass.

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Low

Muddy tongues staked with timber,dark gantry, the guillotine of the Tidal Barrier,

the resonant iron of walkway, handrail,

and then it all crouches down to stone,

where even the giant fish peep-show of The Deep

is much less like sharks fin than sinking ship

and the whole low land seems to be going down.

Up the estuary, steel harps on its theme:only connect. Here an iron will

determines to let no water sunder us,

bolts low land to low land;

tenses chords against the sky.

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A Fret

The coal merchant shoulders a nimbus of smutsdown a street that insists youve been here before

and recognise the urchin, you, that sits

and stares at his shoes in an open front door.

Dont buy it. The air is thick with the sloughed

skin of dead selves: they fall and settle,

a load too imperceptible to shift,

but sickly and adhesive, mute and subtle.

Let them not expect grief. You dodge and move

through liquid fixities of past and present,

steer by a river whose mud banks leave

you tidal, shifty, bogged down and imprisoned.

The sonic boom of the afternoon roar

from the stadium tracks your footsteps, blows

a dull wound in the boulevards thin air,

and your pulse thuds to its drumbeat, win or lose.

On the up this year then? Play-off places,

blip, slump, plummet, dead in the water:

the mustard cuts like fog. Cut your losses,

a can kicked into the nearest gutter.

Here the last of empire has meanderedpast the fag-end of the North Sea fleet

to a scrap yard sculpture park whose remaindered

Edward VII accepts a vain salute

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from a yawning Ford Fiestas bonnet.The December sun is a lazy eye.

No vistas you can raise will open it

and you thirst for the liquid dark to bleed it dry,

and so comes evening and beer in a backstreet pub

by the bridge, where you bank the coal fire down

and a dog sips a pint, and onto your tab

goes a Schlenkerla, the hobbling man;

and fog on the way home, fog all round

so I cant see you who are a shadow away,

and there are no shadows and there is no ground

underfoot for me to feel give way,

and what kind of weather is this when all I want,

all that I imagine, touch and see

finds not loses itself in all I cannotgrasp, in a fog drifted in from the sea?

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The Truelove

In 1847, a young married couple Memiadluk and Uckaluk arrivedin Hull aboard a local whaler, the Truelove. The following year they

set sail for their home on Baffin Island. Uckaluk died following an

outbreak of measles on board. There are casts of their heads in Hull

Maritime Museum and on the Humber near the spot where they

landed.

Among the dreams of hulks,Inuit voices still

ring in the ships bell:

Memiadluk and Uckaluk,

this couple off the Truelove,

strange honeymooners stuck in Hull.

After the outbreak on board,

alone, on a trawlers whaleback, he rode

the cold whale-roads back home.

Whats left could be death masks:

the eyes in their heads are closed,

cast in plaster like dirty Newfie snow.

Now, down by the Humber,

another pair of heads fetch up,in battle-ship grey

beheaded on a bollard

that might as well say

Greenland or bust.

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Theyre a long, long way from home,that Esquimaux lad and his lassie,

blind to glass case or estuary,

pondering, since 1847,

Jonah, whalebone corsetry,

what the preachers tell of Heaven,

this place called Hull,

what they warn of Hell.

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Crossing the Equator, 1892

We left Barry on July 21st and crossed the equator on August 18th,which was just a month after. On the night two men got dressed up,

1 as Father Neptune the other as his wife Trident. Oakum wig and

whiskers with a tin, cut into a crown, they also had the barbers with

them.

They pretended to come over the side and shouted out Ship

ahoy! and they rigged a platform and a large tub of water and had

lighted lanterns all round. Us 3 apprentices, the sailmaker and 2

ordinary seamen were to be shaved as we had never crossed the line.We shook hands with Father Neptune and his wife then set on the

edge of the tub and was then lathered with grease, Stockholm tar

and pig-shit and scraped off with a big wooden knife and daubed on

our heads. We were then put clean into the tub with all our clothes

on and wet through with buckets of water but we was all right again

next morning except being a little greasy and a extra washing day.

The next Tuesday was my birthday. I got a sausage roll from the

cook also a bread pudding and another roll from the first mate, but

my next birthday I hope will be in England as the voyage will only

last 12 months

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Sperm Tooth

Becalmed, we had little to dobut watch ice grow.

It crept and clenched to form, horizon-wide,

a lid beneath which whales, our old

companionable foe, wantonly hid.

That white spell would have gripped

and crushed our vessel

like a walnut shell, had not the captain sent down menwith saws to hew a dock, a jagged trench or puddle,

where we must wait and pray.

No wind to bear it away,

the stench of blubber thickened,

coating throats and sickening stomachs. Stiff with grease,

my beard refused the razor.

Under that curse of peace,

I took up a sperm tooth and a sail needle,

enthused to try some scrimshaw work Britannia, say,

or Amphitrite side-saddle on a seahorse, or just my wife

in her new crinolines.

Nothing appeared.

The tooth lay, greasy too,

athwart my hand. I pondered it like an obstinate problemin geometry: a warped cone, flattened here and bulging there,

defying me with a beauty of its own; epitome of laws

I was not yet fit to understand.

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Authentic Victorian Mermaid

They fetch up here, scuttled to ledges, beachedon pediments, among scrimshaw, harpoons,

a whalers bow, a carved baleen seat.

Bony Leviathans ghost hugely through

tall ships, sails; this gallerys a tail-flick,

the nexts speared by a narwhales horn.

Your thoughts turn krill: the floors a humpback,the stairwell spirals up inside a blowholes spout;

youre Jonah in the belly of the beast.

Then boked back up to shore. Strange creatures.

You cant hear -- no sirens sweetly singing -- but see

the black nightmare-maids screech.

(Check spatulate fishtail, witchy fingers, stitched sealskin.)

Youre face to face with a scary Victorian freak

snarked on that gob of tiny fish-hooky teeth.

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A Kilnsea Chorale

The Kapellmeister of Kilnseaconfronts his mutinous choir.

He has a new cantata that he wants them to sing,

but they have a composition of their own

that theyre in the middle of now,

and theyre not about to interrupt it:

a chorale of absolute din, a multitude-part

white-noise polyphony, almost unhearable

upwhelming basso-profundities

supporting a shoving and tumbling

scrum of unresolved counterpoint

with, at the top, a foamy descant, all ecstatic shatters.

They wont stop. But the Kapellmeister

is patient. His cantata can wait.

It may even be improved, if he listens with care

and can catch and steal whatever it is

that gives the racket its seeming power and purpose,

and can slip it into the neat score on his desk at home.

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Reads Island

Henry Kirke White,Christian soldier, onward went

from south to north bank

in the Winteringham Packet,

wrote from this spot

surrounded by a drove

of 14 pigs, who raise

the most hideous roar

every time the boat rolls,stood his ground

on the perilous flux

in search of an unborn island.

Old Warp Lane:

the tugs approaching

these days switch

now this way, now that

in a left-right left-right

two-step of indecision

before its shifting sands.

In the pub between

cement works and Humber

there is much talk

of the manufacture, distribution

and correct use of cement.But here nothing

is set in, never

mind stone, in water.

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The man from the RSPBis inspecting a sluice pipe.

Monitoring of vegetation

and invertebrates.

The avocets heckle

excitedly. At low tide

the distant cattle

dip a tentative hoof

in the water. The lost grass

no heifer will find.

When its uncemented

moorings come loose

the island lurches

a yard downstream.

One of its forty-three deer,

noticing, takes a step

in the opposite directionand is for that moment

the one unmoving

thing in the river.

The island sinks.

Bubbles in wallpaper.

A previously unrecorded

shade of brown.A pair of antlers

poking through

a sandbank in the Tyne,

the Clyde, the Severn.

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Avocet

Dip dip dip, fussy-insistent,an avocets beak. Enough

is never enough: why cant you

savour your food?

This man in the hide has been here

ten hours among avocets,

oystercatchers and redshanks:

he knows why.

Thumbnail-sized black frogs

sprinting, which is to say inching

along the path dont know

but still come

tumbling into the rushes

where the rabbits come too.

Safe at last! Which is to say

ready to die

at an avocets beak, the frogs

that is, who understand

nothing. Hawks come

for the rabbits,

and they too understand nothing,the rabbits, dying, devoured.

The hawks on the telegraph pole

understand

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when a train of thought has gone onlong enough. Dinner is served,

the white rumps by the ditch

announce

and the vegetarian hawk

can go without. More

than that they can take or leave.

Understand?

You theyre not bothered with.

Strictly speaking your sandwich

isnt part of the food chain.

In fact youre not here.

Beak goes down, tail up,

beak tip up too. Superb.

Solder this basin of twilight,

freeze-frame

each lucky-dip splash.

Except ten hours is enough.

The wellingtoned twitchers have flown.

(I know a good pub.)

But its never enough. Firsttheres a marsh to be drained. Splash.

Dip dip dip. Slurp.

Ill drink to that.

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Charms of Lost Villages

Thanks to a prank of Godthe fine folk of Ravenser Odd

no longer sleep under the sod

but mingle with herring and cod.

Frismersk and Saltaugh dead

turned rudely out of bed

must sleepwalk till Doomsday led

by ferry lights overhead.

Ladies of Orwithfleet

who used to be so discreet

troll down the village street

in a seaweed winding-sheet.

From Turmarr to Sand le Mere

what the fishermen fear

is that corpses will swim too near

and theyll net a nose or an ear.

Wherever the tide misbehaves

opening and plundering graves

the only way anyone saves

himself is by hiding his bones in the waves.

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Sea Views

I

Contempt clattered over the roof-tiles, gravel thrown up from the

beach. Spray splattered like spit across the window pane. The man

stood, glaring out of their sons old bedroom window, at the

monstrous waves breaking over the cliff and his house.

Emptier Nest Syndrome: Cliffs abandoned bedroom had

been stripped bare, carpet and under-felt ripped and rolled up,

furniture heaved to the front of the house.

Extreme weather warning: Winds gusting to Storm Force10. His wife was downstairs, taking refuge in what had been her

posh dining room, watching TV. She did not want to watch the sea

anymore, had said she was tired, needed a distraction from the

storm. There was bravery to be found in facing their fate alone. He

didnt want to hear any more about her dreams of seal suicide

bombers blowing the house to kingdom come, or her ridiculous fairy

tales about the tiny crab and that stupid conch shell. Better that she

watched TV, though how she could hear what the EastEnders were

saying over the shrieking of the wind and the pounding of the waves

was beyond him. The volume of the TV was as nothing to the

roaring North Sea and the whipping North-East wind. 100-mile-an-

hour gusts. Potential structural damage.

Row upon row upon row of waves: a roiling froth of fitful

nightmares, a stampede of giant white horses charging the shore.

The mans arms were folded tight to his chest so he could

feel the thud-thud-thud-thud of panic beat in the bones of his wrist,

under his watch. He had sandbagged the backdoor and the vents,spread towels on the windowsills. There was nothing more to do but

watch, and wait, and will the sea back with all his might, like King

Canute.

It was a dirty war they had to fight. He knew what dirty

wars looked like: hed fought for his country. Coldstream Guards.

Done three tours in the Northern Ireland. They were fighting a

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Low Intensity Conflict with the sea, losing battle after battle with the

waves. Perfidious Albion: this England under their feet betrayed

them, this useless boulder clay that fell away day after day after day

in the same way his countrys will to fight for him fell away. Twohundred and eleven feet of their land eroded away in fifteen years.

East Riding Council would not defend them. Sea Views their

holiday home business wrecked having to demolish the chalets

one by one, sell off the caravans at knock-down rates. The

government would not defend them. Their neighbours could not

help. Coverage of their case on TV didn't stop the cliffs collapsing.

The East Riding of Yorkshire has the fastest eroding coastline in

Europe. The underlying problem dated back to the last Ice Age. The

coastline was formed 100,000 years ago from the moraine the ice

sheets scored up from further up north and smeared down over the

chalk to form a ridge known as The Binks. From Flamborough

Head to Spurn Point the coastal cliffs werent made of rock, but of

a layer of glacial sludge twenty to fifty metres deep in places.

Their home was doomed. To lose hope, to fear you will lose

everything, to succumb to that fear, was against his nature. But it

had happened. The sea was cruel. The sea was merciless. Attacking

like an ancient god, like Neptune enraged, determined to destroy allmortal heroes.

They needed protecting. Other people had erected defences,

privately, illegally. Wooden groynes. Rock groynes. Concrete

groynes. Concrete sea walls. Rock armouring. Revetments. If only

the Coastal Protection Authority had let him build his own tyre reef.

That had been his plan. A rubber reef, to deflect the waves from this

small stretch. It was low-cost. Environmentally friendly, well sort of.

The Americans had tried it and it had worked for them! It was hisright to defend their home. If an Englishmans home is his castle

then a Yorkshiremans home must be his chapel! Is nothing sacred?

Surely a soldier has a right to defend his own home! Hed argued

that at the planning meeting till he was red white and blue in the

face and red white and blue in his language, but they wouldnt give

him planning permission. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight

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the seas and the oceans. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight

in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall

never surrender. What happened to the Blitz spirit? The British

electorate binned it when they betrayed Old Churchill thats what:every man for himself!

A journalist had covered the story: the headline in the local

rag read: Rubber Rock scheme hits the Rubber Rocks. Some people

had no sympathy! If theyd just allowed him to do something,

anything, to defend himself. Instead the Environment Agency

threatened him with legal action; instead DEFRA wrote landmark

strategies entitled, Making Space For Water; instead the council

spent coastal protection funding on typing two-hundred-page-long

reports full of hollow-tipped bullet-points stating the bloody

obvious.

o The majority of the coastline in the East Riding open

countryside, scattered hamlets, farmsteads, tourist

holiday parks is to be left unprotected, and as a

consequence, twenty permanent dwellings will be lost to

coastal erosion in the next fifteen years.

II

Over the stormy sea and the TV, you hear the crab in the Queen

Conch shell: Tonight is the night, my deary.

The TV is on maximum volume so you can answer out loud

without him upstairs hearing: You never give me any credit.

Debit where credit is due, Deary. Do you want to save yourhusband and your son?

You know I do.

Then make an offering of yourself.

You nod. The crab sounds like your late father, with a bit of

Jim thrown in. You first heard the crab talking to you seven days

ago but silly you thought it was the conch talking. The crab called

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out your name from inside the Queen Conch shell: Helen. Helen.

Helen.

Youd warily approached the conch shell, picked it up and

held it to your ear. Conch is pronounced Konks Jim tells you, notconch. (Dumbo. When I see an elephant fly: Jim had bought you

it in Florida when youd taken your little Fluffy-Whiffy-Cliffy to

Disneyland.) Youd expected to hear the hiss of the sea on sand, the

folding of waves on land that you get from shells. Instead, youd

heard your name. Youd dropped the shell. Weirdly, it had bounced

off the carpet like it was made of rubber, like the rubber sex toy you

found in Jims home office and said nothing about. Ever.

Clumsy bitch, the crab says.

So, you pick up the conch, stare into the dark slit between

the pink lips. The Queen Conch is also known as the Pink Conch,

Jim had told you once upon a time... You see a small crab snapping

pincers in the darkness and recoil. You shake the shell to get the

horrible little monster out.

Stop it, you silly cow! This is my home. Stop it now! You

can hear my voice because the shell makes it bigger.

You stop shaking the conch and apologise.

Make yourself a cup of tea and sit down, my deary. I havesomething to tell you.

You obey.

My name is Carcinus Maenas, the crab says. I am an

emissary of his Lordship, the Sea, sent to tell you to leave your

house.

What? You are, the phrase is, all at sea.

You must leave your house. The Sea wants to redevelop the

seafront. In exactly one weeks time, under the cover of a massivestorm, He will send in a demolition crew of navy elephant seals from

the Pacific to reclaim this area.

Seals?

Yes, Deary. The fate of your house is sealed. When the navy

bull seals attack the house with their demolishing trunks, you will be

forced out into the last caravan you possess, living in your own

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driveway like refugees until that tarmac strip is consumed by His

might. Do you want to live like me a crab that has lost its shell?

No.

Understandably, at first you will not believe the crab. Yougo to the doctor, get some pills to stop the voices. He is very

sympathetic. Very understandable in your situation, Mrs Foreshaw,

Dr Jones says. Youre under a lot of stress. These will help.

Minimal side-effects. But his pills do not help, and the crab is very

insistent, has such an insidious call, talks about how your husband

is wrong that King Cnut, Cnut not Cunt or Canute, walked out into

the waves not to hold back the sea in a show of power, but to abase

himself before the power of the sea. You cannot ignore the way it

clicks its pincers, the conch amplifies the click-click-clicking. Then

cometh the morning of the seal suicide bomber: a bull elephant seal

leapt in through the kitchen door, trunk swinging wildly, barking:

Die, human scum! It tries to detonate its back-pack, but it fails to go

boom. Mother of Satan! the seal aar-aars, and flops out of the house.

Dinner time, you break down, and tell Jim about the

suicide-bomber seal, confessing about the crab in the conch and the

warning; dinner time, an admission of madness. Christ-and-a-night,

woman, as if I dont have enough on my plate!Jim goes and shakesthe shit out of the conch shell, but finds no frigging crab. He drives

to his local, The Neptune, to get pissed. You cry for hours.

The crab takes pity on you. Deary, stop this drowning in

grief, it says. There may be a way to stop the Sea.

You stop your weeping. Im listening.

If you throw yourself in the waves, make yourself a

sacrifice to Him, that might appease His wrath.

You mean kill myself?I mean, give your life freely as a gift to quell the Sea, Deary.

It worked in the past for the Greeks with Poseidon.

I dont want to die.

Why die a thousand deaths? Why erode away? Think of it

as Nature taking its course. You are an old woman with no one to

mother. Your son has left home, yes?

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Cliff has flown the nest, yes.

Your life has no meaning. But your deathyou are insured?

Jim insured me.

Then your death has more meaning then your life, Deary.Your husband, and your son Cliff, can cash your life insurance, live

the good life afterwards.

I dont want to die.

I know you dont want to, but you need to, this very night.

III

All Jim Foreshaw could do was watch as a thirty-foot swell, a tidal

wave, blew in from the North Sea, rolled into a breaker in the

shallows, thumped into the cliffs, hurdled up over the top, engulfing

the house in pure force. Cliffs old bedroom window imploded with

the weight of water; daggers of glass flew at him and hit him in the

face.

Staggering back, all he could see was red. He fell to his

knees, screaming, thrashing in the freezing cold water. The sharp,

burning pain in the cold, cold water was too much to bear and he

passed outWhen he came to, there was a light, a tunnel of shivering

light, shining into the bedroom from above and the whump-whump-

whump of helicopter blades gyring. His fingers numbly went to the

dull throb in his face. There was a huge hole where his nose had been.

The sea had cut off his nose despite his face. He scrabbled around the

floor, frantic to find it, and thanks to the search-light, grasped up the

bloody pulp that had been his nose. He went to the window, waved to

his rescuers. Im all right.The search-light was a Night Sun on a Coastguard Sea King.

It flicked from him to illuminate more saviours than he ever dreamed

of.

The Royal Engineers had come to the rescue! Go on lads!

There was a whole corps of sappers pile-driving steel rods into their

last section of back garden; a green crane was dropping reinforced

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concrete armour over the cliff to shore it up, childs play to keep the

sea at bay; camouflaged concrete trucks poured out tonnes of quick-

dry cement.

And there was help out to sea as well. The Sea King NightSun flashed out to reveal hulking great shadows out there to be

frigates, destroyers, an aircraft carrier. Her Majestys Royal Navy

was patrolling the shore, using the steel bulk of the ships to disrupt

the huge waves and shelter the army from the worst of the storm.

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Faster than the speed of sound, the third of the forces to the

rescue: three RAF Typhoons, the new Euro-fighters, roared in over

the waves to deliver their payloads of laser-guided concrete groynes.

He was crying tears, blood, and snot, but his house hadbeen saved, this little piece of England had been ably and bravely

defended. Thank you, lads!

IV

Crab and Queen Conch in her cardigan pocket, she found Jim

bobbing face-up in three feet of black water, unconscious. Her hand

went to the hole in his face. Blood bubbling in the hole chest rising

and falling he was still breathing! She tried dragging him out of the

bedroom, but the seawater would not help her, rushed away, a cold,

cold stream, out the door, down the stairs.

Do you hear that bellowing? the crab asked. The seals aar-

aar coming!

I have to save him.

Then you know what to do, Deary. You know what to do.

Another huge wave hit the house, deluging the bedroom,

drenching her. The house lurched like a ship foundering on therocks. The power went out, delivering her into darkness.

I will save him, she told the crab, shivering, and let go of

her husband. I will save him. She fumbled her way to the slippery

stairs and holding on to the banister, squish-splashed her way down

in the dark. I will save him for the memory of a young soldier who

fell for me when I was beautiful. She went out the front door, round

the side of the house, into the teeth of the howling storm. I will save

us all from the sea because true love is sacrificing yourself forothers. Crouching low, buffeted back by salt-spray, she marched to

the cliff top.

Do it.

She hurled the conch shell into the waves crashing halfway

up the cliff, and then leapt to join it, down into the seething white

surf below.

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The sea was freezing, ice jellyfish stinging her all over her

body, as she plunged down beneath the waves, an offering, freely

given for Jim, and her little Cliffy.

The cold, cold darkness stung her eyes to blindness so sheclosed them. She curled into a small ball. The sea gathered her like

an infant, pitched her up, over the cliff face, and dashed her to pieces

on the walls of her own house.

The storm did not abate.

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from Out of Reach

[Two students are living in the disused lighthouse on Spurn Point,one researching local birdlife, the other writing a thesis on the

poetry of Philip Larkin.]

MCDONALD

[Enters reading from a notebook.]

Sparrowhawk 2, Stock Dove 1, Skylark 9, Meadow Pipit 21, Rock

Pipit 2, Blackbird 4, Starling 50, Chaffinch 3, Goldfinch 2, Lesser

Redpoll 20... [Yawns theatrically.]

MCALLISTER

Whereve you been? The Land of Nod?

MCDONALD

Ravenser.

MCALLISTER

Odd.

MCDONALD

[Spells it out.] Ravenser Odd.

MCALLISTER

Whats that all about?

MCDONALDSome days on the shore I can just make out

what you might think was a buoy or the snout

of a whale but its, youll never guess what

MCALLISTER

Where?

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MCDONALDBeyond the end of the spit.

MCALLISTER

What?

MCDONALD

A village under the tide.

MCALLISTER

Where Danish pirates lie in wait.

MCDONALD

That inch by inch slid down the long slide

MCALLISTER

Where coffins floated down the main street.

MCDONALD

Its all still there. Ive seen it.

MCALLISTER

You bet.

[Pause.]

MCDONALD

No sign of Perdue?

MCALLISTER

Divil the bit.

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MCDONALDOdd. Very odd.

MCALLISTER

Thats what I said.

Any sightings?

MCDONALD

There was a whinchat.

MCALLISTER

A bird of passage.

MCDONALD

Also a whitethroat.

MCALLISTER

Her long white throat. I saw that.

MCDONALD

Of course you did. In the Land of Nod.

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Field Trip With Voices

Filey Brigg

1. Under the Cliffs

A tiny stunned green star: freshwater newt

washed out of the cliffs by rain.

Saltwater shock needs to rehydrate.

Drop him in a bottle of store-bought still;

watch as that outstretched skydiver floatsthe leg-long half-mile to our feet.

Later, we put back a tiny jade trinket

or a god, dead-still, in a rain-wet niche.

2. Soul Music

Catch wind-snatched boom-box;

spray flicks break across some

crossover flava-divas groove;

keep your booty in neutral,

feet unsure to tap on the tumbled rocks

of what some says a Roman quay.

Dogs shake themselves free of sea;

children taste the fishy fingers of the spray;the elders stare out where waters cut by light,

wait a beat, then one scatters ashes

as wind turns, bears off that tracks

slick power-build to its middle eight.

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3. Brigg

End of the spit,

dogs, kids, rags of wet tissue:outfall, shit.

End of chat.

4. Guillemot

What stops the chat

is someone spots that dead bird on a rock.

Then the beach is littered with Guillemots,

razorbills, and thats a little auk.

Twenty, thirty, forty plump twists

of black and white along that stretch.

The naturalist squats to check:

No broken necks what youd expect

if theyd been caught at sea,ripped free by fishermen from their nets.

He thumbs feathers back to skin for wounds,

below for shot. Nothing: its a mystery.

Photographs one or two in situ,

is on his mobile to the RSPB.

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5. Roman Signal Station

Digging down, they found some bones,

but no larger animal skulls or feet,

which they take to mean the meat

was slaughtered elsewhere, carted here

to a garrison of single men.

Nothing else came to light,

except much later tiny bones of mice,

shrews, voles, compacted into pellets,

which must mean that while land and sea

swapped places and the Roman pier just sank,

there was nothing here but that tower

crumbling on the edge of the spit,and, staring down from its walls through whole dark ages,

only (swoop, shadow, flit) owls, owls, owls.

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6. Rain

Whats new and wets all still seeping in: drips,

drips, down to beach the oolithic shore.Pipefish, gutweed, velvet swimming crabs.

We have guys who know it all on hand:

the geologist talks sediment, striations, rock;

the naturalist gives us weed, nerve, feather;

the archaeologist mentions Romans, bones.

We point at stuff, get the low-down, get its names.

Id like to know about the earth, the sea;

the names of things and how they live;

why the land I live ins rumpled just so;

where and why the past keeps poking through.

That was the first day of the rains.

Next day, and the next, it kept it up,

worrying gutters, soffits, roof,

insinuating dark patches in ceiling, walls.

Monday morning, woke to floods.

Went out to work, got soaked.

Flooded basements, backed up sewers,

offices sealed off, the server down.

Id meant to find out just why

those birds had fallen from the sky.Never did, but, looking up, was struck

by just how dark the heavens had become.

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At Filey Brigg

Here melted the ice-age assassinsweapon leaving only

its glaciers dross to point

the promontorys finger of gritstone.

Here sea and shore grew impacted

like a sideways-on tooth,

the very rocks capricious, erratic.

I have lost all perspective.

Only the green seas heave could turn

these crosshatched cliffs to a plumb-line.

There is no telling how far down

the screaming gannets will dive.

The Roman signal station on the point

has seen the hordes coming.

Its fires are out. There is no

time for escape. Its rodent bones

are owl pellets, barbarian mice

gnawing at the ablative absolute.

Razorbills and guillemots in their dozens

have fallen dead out of the sky,

propped eyeless in rockpools.

I trace the clotheshorse foldsof their wings, hung out to dry.

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Their breasts and wings are untouched.Only their cause of death takes flight,

and the sewage outflows sunken capstan

gushing through scarves of loo-roll

steers our ship of fools

safely onto the rocks.

A group fans out on a shelf.

They are scattering ashes.Sheen for sheen the brightness

missing from a dead auks eye

but all around me catches the waves

green surge, is thrown upwards

with them, breaks on nothing

at all and scatters like ashes.

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Futures

I

Bull weather

and bear currents

turn all hands out

to shorten sail,

send lads aloft

to loose the mizzen royaland take it in;

as much as squalls

at 1 a.m. December 1st;

determine how

the stars will look

far from home.

II

Catched a shark

when we was at the equator

and I have got

some of its teeth.

Also got an empty ostrich egg

to fetch homewhich was given me

by a Cape Town baker.

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The cadenceof a voyage

through blunt water,

sea-spat, wind-flung.

In ballast to Iquique,

78 days,

all sorts of weather.

Seven weeks working

the cargo and nothing to see,

only sand and rocks,

but 90 ships laid up

and 6 lads from Hull.

Dear Father and Mother...

I havent had a day

of sickness since I leftthe Land of Puddings.

III

Tonnages pushed

and pulled

across the expanses.

The globe bound tight

with knots of credit.

Futures decided

by horoscopes cast

for cinders and cement,

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how the profit looks2013S 7010W.

The globe wound tight

with young lives aft

under the break of the poop

riding out blank pages

of frail calm

or, at night, marvelling

at the walls of heaven,

studded and sparkling

like a shell grotto,

coming down to the sea.

From Humber out,

120 days or more,

100 years and more,the voices are moored.

Spasms of weather.

Fog boils in the seas grate.

Listen: the voices come

towards us treading water.

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The Lord Paramount Looks Seawards

The Lord Paramount of the Seigniory of Holderness may claim any

cetacean washed up on the coast from Spurn Bight to Flamborough Head.In 1825, a beached sperm whale was taken to Burton Constable Hall, where

its skeleton was displayed, inspiring passages in Thomas Beales The

Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839) and Herman Melvilles Moby

Dick(1851). In 2007, the reassembled skeleton was exhibited in the Great

Hall of Burton Constable.

in Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford

Constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale SirCliffords whale has been articulated throughout; so that like a great chest

of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities...

Moby Dick.

1. A Cabinet of Curiosities

Rhino horn, coco-de-mer, shark jaws,

tailfins, swordfish swords, sawfish saws,

quadrants, astrolabes, a huge book camera,

manuscripts, microscopes, a Concave Mirror

all of Twenty-Four Inches in Diameter,

antiquities, dried reptiles, thermometers,

fossils, rocks, minerals, shells, the Claw

of a Great Lobster, a Tooth-brush from Mecca,

the Leg of an Elk two Foot two Inches long,

a large Sea-Tortoise from the Isle ofAscension,fowling pieces, a carbine with an extending butt,

perfectly balanced forty-bore hair

-triggered duelling pistols with silver escutcheon

and the motto Ubi Libertas Ibi Patria.

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2. Sir Cliffords Whale

The Lord Paramount of the Seigniory

of Holderness looks down and overseesthese bones brought in by downstairs and scullery

staff from their long exile in lean-tos, sheds,

from their chilly diasporas in glasshouse and stable,

the outhouse earth into which theyd sunk. The head,

big as a Ford Transit, has been garaged under

tarpaulin for decades. But his Lordships vision

is more than just this fleshless resurrection

the sun shines through; it is the huge skeleton key

to reunite drifting land with inconstant sea.

His mind ponders how blubber has bubbled off:

how bones are bars detaining nowt; how flesh,

long on the run, winks through, fugitive as light.

3. Carnival

Whats suffered a sea-change heres the coast itself;turned inside out, all that is solid melts into air.

Even this thing now hugely spine and jaw

is an idea in thrall to the carnival

whose tides hold the whole of Holderness in its maw.

Forget the chance encounters of sewing-machines

and umbrellas on dissecting-tables, once more

Surrealisms at the service of Revolution

and the elephant in this room, though not yet white,is moving there from black. Trace its evolution

as the articulated folly of its bones

glides from sea through cetology, from a surgeons

prose to a Mermans Leviathanic museum.

Misrule: now you see it, now its gone.

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4. Pelagian

A rabblement of bones has breached the Hall;

something huge and hugely hurt has crawledin from winter -- its great wounded bawl

must have foghorned in another world -- and died.

Left here, all we haves this x-rayed sprawl.

Across the floorboards of this ancient pile,

a pile of pitted uncommon bones are spilled;

up there on pilastered walls, narwhal tusks

masquerade as unicorn horns, meanwhile

the portraits (Elizabethan, Jacobean,

in jousting armour, classically robed,

or a wild Victorian filly riding to hounds)

look down on a wrecked ossuary, smile

slyly at the carcass of this pelagic meal.

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Flotsam

An arc of the bay from the pier-head,out where the factory lights flicker:

only there do our sightlines cross.

All parallel lines meet in time.

Only stopped does the trains centipede

finds its legs, find and lose them,

its commuters shed and dispersed.

What coast is this, should I askmy eyes or my memory? What catch

has trickled to an empty creel

for the last trawler afloat? The cracks

in the pavement are full of eyes.

Something is moving over my skin

and will vanish the instant I move.

Too ready at anchor, too temptingly

the freighter under the window awaits

my stowaways manifest to sail.

My flotsam will require no such

preliminaries. Cast on the waters

its flux of wanderlust returns

on itself, doubled back, delivered.

A cormorant drying its wings

steps down refreshed from its cross.The sliver of moon is an ill-fitting

lid on the jar of our night

and the darkened lighthouse

has long been in league with the rocks.

A laughably happy small dog

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fetching a stick no one has thrownredoubles my prints in the sand,

kicks through and erases them.

I will not sail. Cover all

my traces as effortlessly

and I will stay for the last train,

the last boat to sail and beyond.

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Acknowledgements

Crossing the Equator and Futures use material from the letters home of

Michael Kick Murphy (1876-1896), 3rd Mate on the Castlebank, lost with allhands in the Pacific Ocean. Used with permission of Robb Robinson and the

Maritime History Institute, University of Hull.

Thanks to Arthur Credland at Hull Maritime Museum and Gerardine Mulcahy

at Burton Constable Hall for their time and permission to film or use

photographsof their exhibits. The image on page 12 and the photographs on

pages 41 and 44 appear by permission of the Burton Constable Foundation.

Thanks to Roddie Harris for the cover photographs and those on pages 1, 2

and 9. All other photographs are by Cliff Forshaw. The accompanying DVD

was filmed and edited by Cliff Forshaw.

Cover design by Graham Scott at Human Design, Hull.

Printed by V. Richardson & Sons Ltd, Hull.


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drift, n. The fact or condition of being driven, as by a current. The deviation of a

ship from its course as a consequence of currents. Natural or unconscious course,

progress or process. Meaning or scope of speech or writing.

Hulls location on the Humber estuary means that its continuing history is

intimately connected with the sea, the weather and the shifting relationships of

land and water. Five writers from the University of Hulls creative writing team

(Cliff Forshaw, David Kennedy, Simon Kerr, Christopher Reid and David Wheatley)

explore these relationships through poetry and imaginative prose. Drift is aspecial commission for the Humber Mouth Festival 2008 and is accompanied by

a short film on DVD.

drift book low res

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