As part Amy Sharrock’s extraordinary Museum of Water at Somerset House, Penned in the Margins curates a packed programme of water-themed poetry and performance. Join us in the spoken word room from midday for nautical field recordings, durational water performances, and poems inspired by rivers, estuaries, sewers and the sea. A detailed schedule will be announced soon.
JR Carpenter re-sounds the islands, flying jellyfish drones and nautical field recordings of her underwater digital project Etheric Ocean in a live poly-vocal performance with poet Alison Gibb.
Faber New Poet Jack Underwood and sound poet Holly Pester collaborate on a one-off durational performance: a poem for two voices about the water we share and the water between us
Award-winning writer Ruth Padel reads estuarine poetry from her collections The Mara Crossing, The Soho Leopard and Fusewire
Claire Trevien composes poems live in response to the exhibition and reads from her book The Shipwrecked House, inspired by the sea and her Breton maritime heritage
Canal Laureate and narrow-boat dweller Jo Bell reads poetry informed by living on water
SJ Fowler rails against the Water Cannon with an original poem in between self-drowning sctivities
Siddhartha Bose reads poetry inspired by the holy rivers of the Thames and the Ganges
Justin Hopper explores sea disasters in the Thames estuary and follows hidden currents of Pittsburgh in his poem-projects Public Record and Fourth River: Ley Line
Tom Chivers reads from Flood Drain – his psychogeographical poem about the river Hull – and shares his experiences of leading ‘urban pilgrimages’ along London’s lost rivers
Early medieval scholars and postgraduates from King’s College London and elsewhere read poems drawn from the Old Water Hoard of Anglo-Saxon poems about water
Schedule
12:30 Claire Trevien
13:00 Jo Bell
13:30 Siddhartha Bose
14:00 Old English Sound Hoard
14:30 Justin Hopper
15:00 Jack Underwood & Holly Pester
15:30 Tom Chivers
16:00 SJ Fowler
16:15 Ruth Padel
16:45 Etheric Ocean by JR Carpenter
17:15 Claire Trevien
13:00 Jo Bell
13:30 Siddhartha Bose
14:00 Old English Sound Hoard
14:30 Justin Hopper
15:00 Jack Underwood & Holly Pester
15:30 Tom Chivers
16:00 SJ Fowler
16:15 Ruth Padel
16:45 Etheric Ocean by JR Carpenter
17:15 Claire Trevien