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river Dee

THEMES

THEMES: THE RIVER DEE, CHESTER

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read418 views

This is the second post in this category, one which brings together poems with a connecting theme.

The Dee, which rises in North Wales and enters Liverpool Bay and the Irish Sea through the vast Dee Estuary, flows through the city of Chester in North West England. There is a  stretch of the river – no longer perhaps than a third of a mile – that flows past a tree-lined embankment called The Groves. The titles and opening lines of all of the poems inspired by that stretch are listed in alphabetical order. Please click on the title to read the whole poem.

 

CORMORANTS

In the driest months when the tidal river

is low and the current almost lethargic,

when the waters flow gently over the weir

the Normans built to create a fish pool…

 

COURAGE

In the stretch from here to where the river bends

around the meadows, there have been drownings –

…A children’s cancer charity has fastened

awareness-raising memento mori

to the railings of a suspension footbridge…

 

SALMON LEAP

An aged busker in a Stetson sets up

on the river embankment near the café.

He talks at length about his life, then sings

Carole King’s ‘And it’s too late, baby now’…

 

THE BANDSTAND

Beside the city’s  river is a bandstand –

Victorian, octagonal in shape,

with eight delicate wrought iron columns –

redolent of summer Sunday afternoons,

and the poignant breathiness of brass bands…

 

THE CYBER DEAD

‘Knock-knock-knockin’ on Heaven’s door,’ a busker

began to sing near to the ice cream kiosk,

just after I had left the public toilet,

its adamantine urinals made

in Burnley…

 

THE EMBRACE OF NOTHING

Rome’s legionnaires quarried its sandstone cliffs

and Ptolemy put the Dee on the map.

William the Conqueror, in winter,

force-marched his army over the Pennines

to reach the river and waste the town…

 

THE GROVES

We are sitting on a bench in a peaceful

place popular even on a winter’s day

now lockdown has been eased. This tree-lined

terraced embankment beside the river…

 

THE RIVER

This river, deeper than most in metaphor,

abundantly fluent in simile,

is in spate…

 

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE BANDSTAND

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read447 views

Beside the city’s river is a bandstand –

Victorian, octagonal in shape,

with eight delicate wrought iron columns –

redolent of summer Sunday afternoons,

and the poignant breathiness of brass bands.

Since the pandemic it has been silent,

and empty except for an occasional

escaped toddler pattering across its floor,

their brief glee echoing from its roof.

 

Someone is sleeping rough in the bandstand

in a red sleeping bag. Though it is late

morning he or she still seems asleep.

Probably the last they heard of the night,

before they slept, was the river’s soft passing.

Perhaps the distant siren is not for them.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

AMONG WINTRY REEDS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read498 views

Among wintry reeds not far from the horizon –

where mountain rain water and ocean brine,

the Dee and the Irish Sea, become one –

is a large, white, upturned hull, storm-wrecked

from its moorings in Connah’s Quay, perhaps,

certainly abandoned for twelve month and more,

too costly, maybe, to salvage. Such

a motley of flotsam: rusting buoys;

splintered pieces of superstructure;

frayed strands of nautical rope scattered

like serpents through the wetlands’ runnels;

decomposing in the teeming marshland

this sunny, January afternoon.

 

The light has gone in the west over the hills.

The chattering in the hidden lagoons

among marshland reeds has almost ceased.

Returning from the stubble fields inland

thousands and thousands of pink-footed geese,

collegiate in flight, were black and calling

against the westering sun. Now – migrants,

wintering from the Arctic islands: Iceland,

Greenland, Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard –

they are roosting in silent communes.

 

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS SUMMER 2023: ANNE DOUGLAS, POET & ARTIST – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments3 min read1.3K views

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alyn, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction.

In this August 2023 edition, we feature works by the contemporary Wrexham-based poet and artist Anne Douglas. She is a member of Cross Border Poets, based at Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden in Flintshire.

Most of her poems are meditations on natural features. We start with her poem The Alyn, about one of the defining streams of the Between Rivers project. The accompanying illustration, Morning Glory, is a drawing by the poet of convolvulus, often found on the banks of the river.

The Alyn

Ambling down Rossett’s Manor Lane
Passing the River Alyn,
Part of which traverses our road
We pass trees, hedgerows and tall trees
At the side of the fence.
We hear the dulcet, lyrical sounds
Of the blackcap,
The goldfinches flitting down
Between seed head weeds.
Later, we pass woodland and pastures
On which friendly cattle graze,
Through a country garden the Alyn
flows.
We cannot follow the meandering Alyn to its end
because it disappears through
neighbouring fields,
But we meet with the Alyn later as it snakes through kingfisher country:
they fly low, skimming over water.
We stop here and listen to the sound
of the river
Eventually the river becomes one of the tributaries of the River Dee
Or the Holy Dee.

 

Part of the interest of Anne Douglas’ poems is that they often appear at first to be transparent and simple, but then give a sense of something else happening just out of view. In Rose Wall or The Close of the Day this is almost literally the case, as the world of the poem is divided by a wall. It is accompanied by the poet’s drawing Rose Hips.

Rose Wall or The Close of the Day

Near a shady wall
A rose once blossomed
Fair and tall she grew
And through a gap
Her tendril crept
To dream
Of what might lie
On the other side
She breathed out
Her fragrance more and more
It was no different
On the other side
Still she grew there
Near the shady wall
Just as she would
Scattering her fragrance
Forever and a day
Until her life ebbed away
The evening sun
At the close of  day

 

Although born in Cheshire and being a long-time resident of north-east Wales, Anne Douglas was brought up in the Far East and has travelled extensively. This is reflected in many of her poems, which are sometimes almost haunted by the memory of a distant land. Here is The Bees Must Have A Name For It.

 

The Bees Must Have A Name For It.

With the cries of the birds
Perhaps the honey-guide bird
I come across a flounce of red flowers
In a pearlescent dusk
The bees must have a name for it
Lazy-blowing fragrance
Of the carnation border
Or of the bean blossom
They must have a name for it too
In bee language
Honey flowers
Here and there
More and more
As the branch
Peeps over the garden wall
Until at length
With a final kiss from the sun
Tiny fragranced flowers close
And night has come

 

If you would like to read more of Anne Douglas’ poetry, you will find her poems in the Love Wrexham online magazine and on the Cross Border Poets site.

 

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS SPRING 2023: ‘CONNECTIONS’  BY SARAH LEWIS & DIANA SANDERS – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments5 min read2K views

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alyn, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to BETWEEN RIVERS here: https://davidselzer.com/2022/05/between-rivers-introduction/.

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For May 2023 we have an issue devoted to a contemporary project which combines poetry and music together with some visual art. This is Connections by Sarah Lewis and Diana Sanders, which links creative work relating to two rivers close to their respective homes, the Alun in Flintshire (the Welsh spelling is preferred to Alyn, which we use above) and the Alwen in Conwy. Connections was originally published in 2016 as a pamphlet and accompanying audio CD. Poems and artwork are by the two authors, while the music is by Diana Sanders, Pete Regan and A Handful Of Darkness. This feature presents some selected items and then, in the hope that you may like to read and listen further, we have with the authors’ permission embedded the whole pamphlet and links to other audio tracks at the end.

In the introduction, Sarah Lewis describes the village in the Alun valley where she lives.

Rhydymwyn lies in the Alun valley.  The river springs from the moors, high above Llangollen and winds its way down through the softer land, cutting through the limestone, and scooping out the valley on its way to join the Dee.  The limestone and the river shaped the industry that grew in the valley around Rhydymwyn and the remains of lead mines, mills and leetes can all be found by the sharp-eyed wanderer.  The presence of the river also influenced the sighting of a secret weapons factory during WW2.  The site, owned by DEFRA, is now a managed nature reserve and accessible to the public through membership of one of the local groups.   The camouflaged buildings, anti-spark paths, huge hangers and crumbling walls covered in old calculations and formulae, tell us of its history.  But gradually nature is reclaiming her space.  There are otters in the river, great-crested newts in the ponds, horseshoe bats in the tunnels, ravens in the woods, swallows in the hangers, grass snakes coiled under old rubble and a blissful peace that baffles and calms those who know of its turbulent past.

Diana Sanders describes her home too, and we can immediately see the contrast.

The second valley is that of the river Alwen and the village of Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr which was the inspiration behind William Wordsworth’s poem Vale of Meditation.  It lies 350 metres above sea level, on the edge of the Hiraethog Moors.  It is the home of otters, dippers, trout and salmon.  On the hilltops, overlooking the river, the landscape appears to be empty but that would not be the truth.  There are brown hares in the sheep fields.  Foxes use the single-track lanes as their own highways.  There are raptors and song birds and the occasional shy woodcock.  It is a landscape filled with streams, glacial lakes and reservoirs.  It is a land overflowing with history.  Old farmhouses lie in the bottom of reservoirs, drowned to provide water for the people of the Wirral.  Old roads can be seen disappearing into the water.  Medieval sheep enclosures make rectangular patterns in the grass and bronze age burial mounds crown hilltops.  The weather in Hiraethog can be wild, with winds that shake buildings and bring down trees.  Horizontal rain leaves sheep hunched and us miserable and yet there is something about this valley that gets under your skin and gives meaning to the word ‘Hiraeth’ – the Welsh for yearning for home.

Connections is in two parts, the first about the Alun and the second about the Alwen, with both authors contributing to each. One of the attractions for Between Rivers is that one thing the first section does is to memorialise the Valley Works, that strange and extensive site of the former weapons factory which Sarah Lewis has described in her introduction. The frontispiece for this section shows calculations written on a wall in one of the surviving buildings.

And here is a related poem by Sarah Lewis.

Silent Chemist

She’s mixing up sunlight
with carbon dioxide and water,
dispensing oxygen for us to breathe.

She lingers and goldfinches spark up
from teasels, willow-herb flames light
up the places where buildings once stood.

She’s stirring up enzymes in the born-again wood,
dissolving the limbs of willow and ash
to nourish anemones, bluebells and beetles.

Inside a bat-filled ruin, she’s covering
the walls of faded formulae,
silencing the ghosts of war-time chemists.

She’s taking back her valley.

Sarah Lewis also has a contrasting poem, Unstoppable, which gives voice to the Alun river itself. You can hear the poem, with musical accompaniment, here: Stream Unstoppable – a poem by Sarah Lewis. by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud.

The second section deals with the more untamed environment of the Hiraethog moors and the Alwen. Hares run through a number of these poems,  as if spirits of the moor. Another of the themes is the drowning of communities to create reservoirs. Here is Diana Sanders’ Llyn Brenig. (‘Llyn’ is the Welsh word for a lake.)

 

Llyn Brenig

Wind

creates shapes.

Waves curl and swarm

into a walk-on-water heron

which trembles into wood smoke

and a girl skimming stones across

the river.  River, hidden under the lake.

Full of memories and dreams and windows.

Bryn Hir, farmhouse, where wood is popping

in the hearth and flames warm chilled fingers.

Winter holds fast and the shepherd curls into his

sheep’s wool bed.   He dreams of waves

breaking in through thatch and door.

The land is sighing out an ache.

Hiraeth, home lost to flood,

Valley lane, moss soft.

Tarmac rippled.

Falling into

water.

The second section contains most of the audio tracks. Some feature the unaccompanied spoken word, others have elaborate musical accompaniment for the poems. An example of the latter is Diana Sanders’ Halloween. You can listen to it here: Stream Halloween by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud.

This is just a taster. Connections is an ambitious project of the kind that David and I hoped to discover when we started out with Between Rivers. There is much in it to see, read and listen to. Here is the complete publication:

Additional audio tracks can be found below:-

Stream Music by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Stream Like A Raven – A poem by Sarah Lewis. by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Stream You can take the river out of the moors – a poem by Sarah Lewis. Music by Diana Sanders by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Stream Origami by Sarah Lewis by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Stream Llyn Brenig by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

 All Souls by Diana Sanders by Diana Sanders (soundcloud.com)

Stream Sight And Birth by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud.

I should like to thank Diana Sanders and Sarah Lewis for allowing us to make the whole of Connections available on Between Rivers.

You can see more of Sarah Lewis’ work, and her driftwood sculptures, on her Facebook page: (2) ShoreLark | Facebook

And there is more of Diana Sanders’ poetry and audio work on her Facebook page: (2) Diana Sanders – Poet and Sound Artist | Facebook

 

©Alan Horne 2023

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS SUMMER 2022: ‘THE COOK’ & ‘THE LADY OF LLONG’ – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment3 min read1.7K views

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alyn, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire and Cheshire.

 

In this edition we feature a poem, Sarah Dolan’s ‘The Cook’ from 2015, and an archaeological piece from the Curious Clwyd website about the discovery of The Lady of Llong and her necklace.

 

‘THE COOK’

Sarah Dolan is an English poet and artist who lives now in Scotland,  but previously in Wales. She is a long-distance member of Crossborder Poets, who are based at Gladstone’s Library in Flintshire. ‘The Cook’ was written as part of a Crossborder Poets project at Erddig, a National Trust estate near Wrexham. The subject is one of a group of estate staff pictured in an old photograph, and the vivid images of the poem reach back to this long-dead person. You can see more of Sarah Dolan’s work at lemoninkproductions.home.blog and at www.facebook.com/SarahLouiseDolan

 

‘THE COOK’

from a knuckle of bone

time fashions a fist

one for the right and one for the left

 

a knot of carrot roots vein the surface

pumped with sap as sweet as honey

 

wrapped in a tissue paper skin

worn taut as the pastry lid on a pie

 

through fire and ice

her hands scar over

fine filaments of asbestos crow footing the skin

 

puffed pink with scrubbing

peeling and pounding

 

prepared with carbolic soap

the blood stained fingers

dust the table with freckles of flour

 

©Sarah Dolan 2015

 

 

‘THE LADY OF LLONG’

The Curious Clwyd website lives up to its name, with a wide selection of history, myth and other material about north-east Wales. It includes this article on the ‘Lady of Llong’ the remains of a woman found in a Bronze Age tumulus in Llong near Mold, together with a remarkable necklace which has now been re-strung. You can read the introduction below, with a link to the full article and photographs. Prehistoric remains are widespread in the Between Rivers areas, often in homely or industrialised settings. The spectacular grave goods are of course an important aspect of this account, but there is also a fine sense of the archaeological process, the area, and the life of its ancient inhabitants.

They were hoping for something astonishing and the omens were good. The accidental discovery of the Mold Gold Cape at Bryn yr Ellyllon in 1833, and the Caergwrle Bowl in 1823 suggested that the curious, somewhat unusual river valley tumuli along the Alyn were special, that within were treasures that would bring the peoples of the Early Bronze Age further into the light, that would confirm the power, prestige and wealth of this area of north-east Wales. Ellis Davies, writing some twenty years before the excavations noted the name of the field as, Dol yr Orsedd – Meadow of the Throne. Perhaps more interestingly, the tithe map of the area, notes the field as Dol roredd – possibly rendering into English as, Meadow of Abundance. Hopes were then high with the excavation of the burial mound at Llong, two miles to the south-west of Mold – and while no gold cape was found beneath the turves there, something rather impressive was unearthed, nevertheless.

The article includes a photograph of the grassy mound which is all that remains of the tumulus – and   a link to a Google map which takes you straight to the field where the remains are. You can see where the River Alyn runs through the field, which is bordered in part by a section of Alyn Lane. You can read the full, illustrated article here.

[Note: I became aware of ‘The Lady of Llong’ through Sam Hutchinson, who posted a response to the Spring 2022 edition of BETWEEN RIVERS].

 

©Alan Horne 2022

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