The RIVERLINES project involved visiting and writing about the Island’s rivers in conjunction with photographer Dick Davis – and produced a wonderful set of photographs incorporating our texts.

We tracked Smallbrook to its source in Bloodstone Copse and followed it through woods in Ryde; we wandered along the maze of waterways by the Eastern Yar; we slithered along the muddy path on the east bank of the Medina; we mused on past glories by the old Ryde Queen; we were dazzled by sun and sky reflected in the Western Yar and we watched a marmalade cat leap across Lukely Brook.   

THE NAMING OF SMALLBROOK

Down Ashey Down
Bloodstone Copse
secret source
red algae
squirrels dark as chestnuts
vague terrain
drought victim
dampened sod
pebble pusher
slithers to flatlands
side winder

changeling brook
Monkton Mead
pond feeder
galingale withy
silt sink
dappled glints
willow wader
knotweed armies
hemp agrimony gone to seed
scum scoured
dumpling ground
trolley graveyard
urban ambiguity

Green Room poets

Smallbrook - copyright Dick Davis

The river spoke in volumes
Voices in a crowded room

Michelle Busk

THE MEDINA TROLL

Under the bridge he skulks at home
wearily treading the muddied loam
Black eyes, brown hair to the waist
gloved fingers muddy weeds embraced
Noiselessly he wades knee-deep
along the valley while others sleep
With an audible sigh like the wind in the trees
he swings his bulk as he's brought to his knees
Down the path of his journey he glides
swinging gently from side to side
As he sweeps along dragging mud and stones
trees roots exposed while the river moans
When river meets sea there's a roaring sound
as if the river troll had gone to ground

Michelle Busk

ESTUARY: NEWPORT TO COWES

slatted bridges over rush-speared inlets
oak trees leading dangerous lives so close to salt
tarzan ropes and children's camps, no place
to swim - sewage works a mile downstream
up shit creek recovered now filled with fish
bright as a cook's steel knives, spears in sunlight
high tide low tide restless - few cargoes
weeded muddy skeletons of keels on saltings
yacht moorings where the tide mills worked
an inn for wherry men, lost railway sidings turned
now to prairie then the huddled seaport streets
brackishness meets unbridled salt
swoons into sea itself an estuary once itself
till waves breached hills, now part of ocean
then on to: ships, whales mountains chasms
tides currents undertows shoals and sandbanks
child-stream in the big swim now freed
to lose itself in every shore and ocean

Robin Ford

BOAT REQUIRES KIND OWNER

I look back with pride
trusty, gleaming
hundreds of people inside
powerful, steaming
starting their holiday, on me they ride
Then sadder days
knackered, past it
I'm in a dry dock and have to gaze
scampi, chicken, vomit in a basket
drunken drug-fuelled orgies, it's all a haze
Neglected, forgotten now
rust and rot
but still proud I've not forgotten how
danger, keep off
some dignity, won't someone allow
Am I just left to decay
holes appear
tide laps up to me each day
teasing, taunting
as if to say 'Come away, come away'

Keith Wolton

The Western Yar, Yarmouth - copyright Dick Davis