Since September 2021 we have been involved with this Leeds Beckett University research project, where our role was to engage people on the ferry crossings with the ideas of the project and get them doing something creative in response. We’ve played word games, made cut up poems, and developed a semaphore performance, as well as engaging in quite a lot of sea swimming (though not from the ferry!). We also contributed to a project exhibition at University of Leeds in December 2023, featuring Alison’s impressive jellyfish sting, along with poems, words and sea-soaked cardboard semaphore flags.
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The project is a two-year AHRC-funded network exploring some writings of Wirral-born Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) in relation to increased care for our oceans through a series of podcasts recorded during sailings between Liverpool and Isle of Man.
The research emerges from work on Lowry co-ordinated by Bluecoat, including The Lighthouse Invites The Storm, and the title comes from Lowry's collection of short stories written from 1941 onwards, published in 1961 and named after a Manx hymn, Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place.
Already in this period, Lowry is observing the impact of industrialisation on our seas and as he describes in one of the collection's short stories, The Forest Path to the Spring,
"civilization, creator of deathscapes, like a dull-witted fire of ugliness and ferocious stupidity had spread all down the opposite bank, blown over the water and crept up upon us from the south along it, murdering the trees and taking down the shacks as it went."
You can read more about the project and listen to the podcast episodes on the Hear Us Oh Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place website.
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