CANALCHEMY
Canalchemy Microanthology
25 miles of poetry by 18 poets and artists in a handmade 10x10cm coptic stitched book.
Includes poetry and images from the Canalchemy poetry walks along the route of the Glamorganshire canal 2017-18.
The Lager Kilns
Steven Hitchins
The Lager Kilns gathers together texts and images created by Steven Hitchins for The Canalchemy Project, a collaborative enterprise which involved walking sections of the Merthyr to Cardiff canal, with a varying group of poets and artists, performing actions and readings along the way.
‘When I was a kid I used to love maps. And if a place looked particularly inviting I’d put my finger on it and say when I grow up I’ll go there. The Valleys was one of those places. True, by then it wasn’t really a place anymore. It had become one of the blank spaces of the earth, a white patch on the map. But it had a canal in it, a mighty big canal that you could still make out on GoogleEarth, winding down through the deleted communities like an immense snake.
‘The canal was constructed in 1790 and closed in 1944. Most of it has now been filled in, much of it during the construction of the A470 dual carriageway from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff in the 1970s. Yet the contours can still be traced. They are visible in the curves of roadways, the terraces of streets. Its corridor remains a chreod of commerce and transit: the A470 superimposed over the erased canal, it traffics its vessels back and forth between the capital and the valleys each day.’
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The Materials
Lyndon Davies
The Materials gathers together poems and images created by Lyndon Davies for The Canalchemy Project.
‘The canal is many things, made of many voices, an infinite ribbon of infinitely divisible experiences, trampled over, blotted out, overlaid and then recalled, not as itself, canal, but as a series of partially organised remnants, whether natural or man-made. The damage remains, the poison remains, but everything has changed because of the damage. What the damage left us when it became history: something to look at through a pane of glass; somewhere to take a quiet stroll at evening.’
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