WATERLINE

Carol Laidler and Pat Jamieson

Voice 1: We set off from the railway station at the once port of Starcross next to the still standing pumping station and walk along the side of the railway lines, stopping to flypost a sequence of simple words relating to flooding and defence. We cross the tracks at intervals to stare at Shaggles Sand, wary of the speeding trains. Here for one whole year Brunel experimented with his atmospheric railway, the pumping stations on the route pulling the train along by power of vacuum until unable to prevent the loss of air in the vacuum, the scheme was abandoned.

Voice 2: WATERLINE is a ten mile long paper trail, a ‘poem’ to be discovered along a walk. It is an exploration of how content and context might impact upon each other to produce meaning, a metonymic practice, which involves examining the connection between things.

Voice 1: Along the road hugging the railway line to Powderham church guided by the map across the well graded new bridge, 4 meter tarmac, along the 1 meter stone path on 2 meter high bank to Turf lock. Looking across the wide stretch of river from new redstone into Permian deserts, washed coarse sands and angular debris, rocks overlain by river and sea deposit. Mudflats revealed by the low tide, fishermen scrabbling for lugworms and soft peeler crabs, to use as bait.

Voice 1: Each time we placed a word, we were surprised that the sequence we had chosen coincided with the structure of the river, almost as if it had been waiting for our word to come along to complete it. Does this narrative emerge because we seek meanings that resonate with our own experience?