The Pill Hobblers from HYDROCITIZENSHIP on Vimeo.

When filming the Spring Tide at Clevedon we met Peter Gibbs a local resident who often walks along the shore and composes poems about his local landscape. Inevitably the tides and seascapes the often feature in this work. See Peter’s website here.

Here are two poems Peter has kindly given permission to reproduce two poems here.

Harvest Moon 

Moon across the Channel
Competing with the dawn
Golden lantern in the sky
As the new day’s born
Reflecting in the waters
Round painted bobbing boats
Pink tinged the east horizon
As o’er the sea she floats
All too soon she vanishes
This mistress of the tides
Gone to seek the evening
As up the brash sun glides.

(2017)

Rainbow Over Clevedon Pill

Steadily the tide comes in
To meet the shore again
Crossing ‘neath a shining arch
Where sunshine paints the rain
The mud that lines the hidden creek
Is soon to disappear
As water fills the channels
And anchored boats swing clear
Across Black Rock the curlews sound
Their haunting clarion cry
As egrets pace and herons watch
And gulls take to the sky.

(2017)

See here

Here are some fliers and booklets from the shop on Clevedon Pier. It is a wonderful structure and a brilliant place to see the tides of the Severn Estuary

See here

WordPress says this Tidal Cultures blog is getting a lot of traffic – thanks to all for looking – more creative tide art (music) coming soon

Programme here (only available for a while)

About the programme from the BBC website

Luke Jerram is that rare bird, a genuinely popular yet acclaimed contemporary artist. And he’s obsessed with the moon. So he’s made one: seven metres wide featuring 120dpi detailed NASA imagery, and he’s taking it around the world. This is his story, as well as the moon’s..

Every day Luke Jerram cycles to his studio across the river in Bristol and watches its dramatic changes. It has the second highest tidal range in the world and it’s the moon that makes this happen. Luke’s become fascinated with finding out everything he can about the cultural, artistic and poetic significance of the moon, and the latest scientific developments around it. It both reflects our culture and inspires it.

Being colourblind he’s interested in all forms of light, and moonlight is fascinating and has very particular properties. The fact we see ‘the man in the moon’ is a perceptual and optical illusion. But again, different cultures see different imagery – in China they see the Hare in the Moon.

Luke presents his own story of making these works and hearing people’s responses to them, woven in with the new soundtrack he’s commissioned from composer Dan Jones. We talk to fellow contemporary moon obsessives James Attlee and Jay Griffiths, but it’s all filtered through the very particular consciousness of one artist and his imagination, and the hard slog of his creative process.

See event pdf flyer here

event flyer for walk both sides of the Severn

This is exploratory work by  Luci Gorell Barnes at Purton ; Mid-Severn Estuary – high tide; 23 09 2017

“We walk along the narrow path edged with blackthorn down to the water’s edge. The tide is coming in fast and I quickly chose a place to site my 3 houses. I like working with the stuff of childhood and am reminded of playing by the pond when I was little, but this water has a current that sweeps in with enormous force. The smallest house is picked up and carried to the end of its anchor line. The two taller houses capsize, and I make notes for moderations and useful things to bring next time – like a spare memory card for my camera and a long stick.

I think about flooding, about Bangladesh and how we may all end up being sucked into the rising tides. I remember the cut paper dolls in the bottom of my basket and drift them into the water, which is already starting to recede. My houses come to rest back on the mud and I pick them up by their anchor lines and carry them up to the car. We go to the pub for cider and crisps, and sit looking out across the estuary where water and land shift so fast they seem interchangeable.”