Poems for those we love, lose, long for...

New public writing commission now up on the farthest edge of the South Downs..

Last year I was commissioned by Towner Gallery, Eastbourne to write texts to be carved into new oak benches being made by brilliant artist Will Spankie. They were to sit around Warren Hill dewpond, near Beachy Head, up from Eastbourne on the South Downs Way, East Sussex, UK. This week they were finally launched…!

Photo: Launch day, 1.5.2025 photo courtesy Joe Hill, Director of Towner Eastbourne.

A joyous celebration on the first day of May, heat rising around us and such clear views across the panorama of sea, Downs and town in which the dewpond sits, it was a thrill to see the words I had scribbled as notes on site and then moved around on a page for so long, now take form as The Four Directions, four poems exquisitely carved lettering in ancient oak.

And to know that for a couple of decades or more, people will come to sit, read, reflect and commune here. That this may very well outlive me….a real legacy work. Such an honour.

Being able to perform my poems this week on site and hear them come to life in a different way, as people from a whole spectrum of communities listened, in the company of the birds, water and air – was one of those dream moments as an artist/ writer I will always return to. And as a parade of 100 children and young people arrived with their own creative responses – in poem and song, reclaiming it as their own – they brought a multi-generational dimension to the morning (led by Antonia Lucas of the Eastbourne Downland Group). Colour, light, smiles, silk flags, and also moments of deep reflection, as the land here is also very charged with loss and remembrance. A single, original memorial bench remains alongside ours to the Gurka Robin W.F Wilson 1936-2010, (the rest had been vandalised and removed), reminding us of the many layers of human history here and which I tried to evoke in my poems below.

The specific brief was a delicate one, requiring sensitivity, given the proximity of the site:

‘Close to Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters the site is uniquely and safely placed to serve as a site of reflection, remembrance and communal gathering for those who have lost loved ones to suicide at the nearby cliffs. The benches form part of an initiative by those involved in suicide prevention to reframe the area with more positive associations, providing an alternative site for reflection away from the cliffs themselves’

(from The Four Directions - full project page on the Towner site here)

Each poetry bench sits on a compass point, and acts a form of invocation, drawing on associations from indigenous Native American and many other cultures with the four elements – as well many other local and global references I was given as I spent time with the more-than-human world there, listening into the place and what it evoked, sung and whispered to me.

Four years previously as Writer-in-Residence across this same coast had given me a good grounding for this project. Also, I had spent time there as research for a parallel writing commission for Towner – Up From Paradise, a short speculative fiction story. It imagines a day out through the eyes of a young girl at Black Robin Farm, a site not far up from the dewpond, which will become a new arts and ecology venue for Towner in the next couple of years. As part of this imagined day, in a section of the story that I did not include back then, the girl and her mother stop off at the dewpond for a moment of remembrance and reflection. It was this imagining that gave me access to the initial draft of the poems. You can read this piece of prose The Four Directions - Setting the Scene here, on the Towner blog.

Photo: Me with Sara Cooper, curator and Towner Head of Collections who I worked with closely on the commission.

There is much more to say on the process of writing for public commission and site-specifically in the landscape, as well as writing about sudden loss and bereavement, one of my main subjects alongside my nature writing.

But for now here is a recording of me below, reading the full poem and the poem itself. Also all available via Towner Eastbourne here and of course at the dewpond itself (directions at the bottom of the page).

If you get there, please leave me a comment or photo below, I love getting feedback on my work!

THE FOUR DIRECTIONS

To the North.

To air.

To cloud drift, skylark, breezing wind.

To our lungs, where grief gathers, then releases.

To finding voice, courage.

From cream blush of hawthorn flower to ice blue of melting glacier in Arctic Circle.

To the guiding embrace of the Seven Sisters, above and below.

To that light and dust we all become.   

To the East.

To water.

To our skin, freshly bathed in sea and spring, reborn.

From Holywell, to foaming lips of sea, across Europe, onto Pacific ocean.

From island to shifting island.

To ebb and flow of all those on the move – human, bird, seed.

To welcome, rooting of self, renature of coast.

To our sublime, wild, formless ocean mother.

To our gaze reflected in mist, cloud, dewpond.

To the South.

To fire.

To crimson warmth of birth, of sun.

To rising heat of seas transforming this coast, chalk dissolving into tidal sweep.

From Falling Sands to Gulf of Guinea, to Accra.

From smouldering imprints of Empire to ashes cast into sea, homing.

To those we love, lose, long for, in moments of stillness on far horizons.

To the West.

To earth and chalk.

To wayfinding across this realm of forking paths.

To deep time, our ancestors and descendants, extinct and returning species.

To those lost in conflict, named and unnamed.

To the young rising, re-imagining, shaping changes to come, forming new worlds.

To all our rememberings, regrets, hopes, joys and dreaming.

To this present moment.

This project was commissioned by Towner Eastbourne, funded by South Downs National Park Authority and Public Health East Sussex, and supported by Eastbourne Downland Group. This commission was part of the Towner’s 100th anniversary celebrations.

To locate Warren Hill dewpond; it is situated on the South Downs Way, East Sussex UK and can be found on an OS map. Walk up from Paradise Drive, Eastbourne. Or walk for 5 minutes from Warren Hill Car Park (///finger.worry.status on what3words or drop into google). Then take the left hand path that faces the sea and you will see the raised mound of the dewpond ahead, and the white trig point beyond that. There is also a coastal bus that stops not far from the dewpond. Put BN20 7TZ into google and hit bus/train. Or look up the Eastbourne Sightseeing Coaster (then 4 mins walk) or 12A Coaster Bus (then 13 mins walk).

The Four Directions sit at one end of my former creative ‘patch’ as Writer-in-Residence across the Seven Sisters/ Sussex Heritage Coast 2020-24. It is not far from one end of We Hear You Now, an audio walk series of new poetry and story on Listening Posts which was one of the main fruits of my residency. It is set across 6km of the same coast stretching back over the Seven Sisters, towards Seaford. The Listening Posts are in place until 2029. Map/ guides can be picked up at Seven Sisters Country Park Visitor Centre or online here.