WITHDRAWN: An exhibition by Luke Jerram, Leigh Woods, 18th April – 6th September

‘Informed by conversations’ with seafarers, scientists and marine specialists, ‘Luke Jerram has created a new engaging installation for Leigh Woods’, so as to provoke questions about climate change.

‘Visitors will discover a flotilla of fishing boats which have mysteriously arrived in a woodland setting high above Avon Gorge … The scene immediately prompts questions – how did the boats arrive here and what previous voyages have they been on?’

See www.nationaltrust.org.uk/leigh-woods

www.trustnewartbristol.org

www.forestry.gov.uk

I am especially looking forward to seeing The Tempest there, staged by the Butterfly Theatre, July 11^th – 17^th.

Walking through Leigh Woods, on a blossom bluebell Sunday,

Along a primrose path from Paradise Bottom to Davy Jones’s locker,

We discovered five beached boats within the coppiced forest:

Gloria Jean, Joanne Marie, Martha, Seahorse and Grey Gull,

All marooned on the bone dry, tinderbox, cracked earth of a covert

(Like so many Anthropocene marine fossils),

Vessels that once rode the foam flecked tides of time,

Far beyond the confines of the Avon Gorge,

Wheel and rudder high above Bronze Age sunken forests,

Writing a wake for each Great Flood’s chronicle,

With a spring tide song of the sea, a siren song in the leaves,

A maritime threnody, recounting long lost worlds:

A shingle-shape of submerged churches, merchants’ houses,

Quays, wharves, inns, alehouses, pilgrims’ paths, abbeys,

Cowled ghosts, cursing sailors and bleached bones,

A tidal daily meal for ravenous crabs and eels.

And over there, amongst the hearts of oak, flies Ariel:

“Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes

Nothing of him that doth fade,


But doth suffer a sea-change


Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:


Ding-dong.


Hark! Now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.”

And there, amongst the forget-me-nots, stands Prospero:

“The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve  


And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff


As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”