Walking with The Waste Land
Journeys with the Waste Land was Turner Contemporary's first major co-curation project, centred around TS Eliot's seminal 20th Century poem The Waste Land .
I first read the poem The Waste Land at the Nayland Rock Shelter, where all the community volunteers responding to a call out from Turner Contemporary read sections of the poem out loud.
I thought reading the poem outside with others changed how you related to it. This led to a coffee with Trish Scott, who works at the instersection of curating, experimental education and research.
At the time Trish was research curator for Journeys with The Waste Land, an exhibition planned for Turner Contemporary in 2018.
I began to walk with the Waste Land. I am exceedingly grateful for the support of the other members of the research group in doing this.
I began by exploring place, which led to some meandering on the beach, a walk around the town exploring blue plaques and a walk where we discovered the old tram lines mentioned in one of our meetings.
I also started to meet some great people like Keith Grossmith ( margate poet ) and Claire at the Garden Gate.
I started to make connections with the poem through inviting people to take part in walks where we read extracts of the poem linked to the site, using the format we had been introduced to at the Nayland Rock Shelter.
Some of the highlights for me in these walks were the people I met ( and still continue to meet) who added their insights to my understanding of the poem:
Keith Grossmith who is a Margate based poet and grew up here. Connecting with the Garden Gate community and taking part in their Falling leaves festival where I became friends with Sonia Overall and connected with her group Women who walk.
Attached below are two examples of Walking with The Waste Land
We walked introducing members of the Mead Gallery from Coventry to Margate. They walked with me in what became titled A Walk for Armistice day in November. The timing of this walk gave our poetry readings at the chosen sites, a different perspective.
At the beginning Trish had asked me how I was going to document the walks and I started to make hand made ropes and asked fellow walkers to knot these in response to the experiences they encountered on the walks.I have attached these knotted ropes to a pole and each stick now has the knotted ropes from a particular walk attached to it. They have become a record of each of the walks .
I created a walk for POW Thanet , when I suggested Let’s Talk about Vivienne. This became very much about considering the role of women in TS Eliot’s writing.
I met Richard Turney, an academic, writer, and copyeditor who lives in East Kent. He brought the duchess of Malfi into this walk and I enjoyed a couple of coffees and meetings with him at the Good shed in Canterbury talking about John Berger’s ways of seeing.
A few images and quipu knots on a walk
