the sea – Sarah Hymas

November 25, 2024December 22, 2024

Lessons from the Lighthouse

The theme for the 2024 Being Human Festival – Landmarks –got Madzine researcher, Jill Anderson, thinking of how the landmark of a lighthouse might be a restorative object. From this point, she came upon my cabinet project, and thoughts on Lancaster’s local Plover Scar lighthouse being hit (in 2016) and having to be restored . She approached me and fellow collaborator, visual artist and printer, Charlotte Done, to see if we’d like to cook up a project idea for the 2024 festival.

Cue many emails and conversations and expanding then whittling of ideas and we came up with Lessons from the Lighthouse, a series of linked events funded by PACT at UCLAN, the Madzines Project to form part of the nationwide Being Human festival. Our focus was on the ways it means to be human, how we might explain and share those ways to a non human (the lighthouse), as well as other humans. We also decided to push the notion of humanity a bit further and explore what the lighthouse might have learnt from the experience. For this we needed a mobile version of the lighthouse, and commissioned Revamp Raccoon.

Our conversations revolved around the idea that lighthouses offered both comfort to the homeward bound sailor and warned of dangers in the vicinity. We were curious as to how the two sides of the metaphor would play out for in the conversations through the project.

As we discussed the plans, we realised Light up Lancaster coincided with the Being Human Festival. It seemed too good a coincidence to ignore. And added a second, drop-in workshop to the events, to solicit more ideas on what it means to be human – from the perspective of younger people. And so we had a five-staged project:

1. A walk to meet Plover Scar, the lighthouse at the mouth of the River Lune, in Morecambe Bay, to consider the elemental home of the lighthouse. How it felt being out on the limb, out of a human comfort zone.

In July we led a small group of hardy walkers out to Plover Scar, eight miles towards the bay from Lancaster. Incidentally this was towards the end of my 14 years of living in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. I didn’t go out to the light very often, not wanting to disturb the birds who fed and roosted there. It was a big deal. A saying goodbye to the light who I’ seen every day for the past fourteen years. To celebrate the occasion, I dressed as Beatrice Parkinson, the last keeper of the light, to channel her spirit to guide us out there

Low water was at 1015, which so happened to be between great squalls of rain. It was a springs low, which gave us plenty of time to get there, be there with no fear of being under threat. We made a slow walk out across the pebbled mud and muscle beds, befitting the pilgrimage it felt. Some silence some chat.

2. A zine-making workshop to process that experience, exploring the difference between being a lighthouse and being human.

That afternoon’s zine-making workshop, complete with seaweed bread, at the Good Things Collective in Morecambe, captured some of discoveries made during the morning.

3. A drop-in creative workshop, sharing what it means to be human with the lighthouse.

The next workshop had over 150 people dropping in as part of the Light Up Lancaster Explore Week. Wendy’s mobile version of Plover Scar drew plenty of people into the workshop.

Here we asked people to share their thoughts on what made them human rather than a light, writing them on pre-made illuminations to give to the lighthouse (who was now in town in readiness for their nighttime wanderings during the Light Up Festival). We were totally unprepared for the enthusiasm people brought to the task.

A short video of the event and more illuminations is here on Charlotte Done’s IG

Virtually everyone donated their wisdom to the lighthouse’s education rather than take their illuminations away with them. The giving of these illuminations to the lighthouse was definitely one of the highlights of the workshop.

4. Plover Scar distributed these illuminations from people with other people, discussing what they provoked in others

A week later during one night at the Light Up Festival, Plover Scar not only attracted much curiosity, but also conversations with a lighthouse keeper, a port authority manager and someone whose research was in metaphor. People delighted in receiving the messages from unknown others, taking them as either a comfort or a warning, depending on their perspective. It was reminiscent of the pleasure in penpals from childhood. This might also have been stirred in the obviously craftiness and nonplastic nature of the light, compared to much of what else was being handed out on the festival streets. The homespun, tactility, the evidence that it came from somone else’s hand into another added to the spirit of the evening.

5. Conversations with Plover Scar on what they’d learnt from the whole experience, alongside more zine making.

To round the series off, we conducted conversations between one of the team and the lighthouse, talking through the whole experience, discussing with the workshop attendees what they made of lighthouses.

The project exceed our expectations for connection with others and for the unpacking of what people felt it was to be human, for people to open up with their dreams, challenges and joys to the lighthouse . The lighthouse as a beacon to make those connections was palpable – on the streets and in the drop-in workshops. It reminded me of the power of puppets, of how in animating things we connect to their and our life force, the force that brings us all to life togther.

It was a project that evolved and developed as we went through, from July to November. We took a leap of faith in how our ideas could connect and inspire others as they unfolded. The hybrid nature of the project – eco-phenomenological participation, madzine research, creative community workshopping, spontaneous interactions – was risky and at times nerve-wracking. Ultimately a wonderful collaboration that held, for me, many of the wonders of collaboration: uncertainty, connectivity, spontaneity, collective participation, trust, fun, joy and generosity.

Reviews

Writing

[on Lune]: “It quietly pushes the reader to imagine the sea under the cover of night, which in turn brings the lines about the sun or light forward into a startling glow. It’s interesting to mention that the darkness of the poem doesn’t come from the night sky, but emerges into it from a jet black sea. This is one of the overarching motifs that help to drive home the ideas of the work. The narrator of the poem looks out to the sea for answers, but the sea exists as an unknown, and repeatedly what the sea casts back is a command to look inside oneself. This dichotomy between the mysterious expanse of the sea and the tiny intimacy of the self is something that Hymas has managed to capture perfectly without being saccharine. If anything, the closeness that she conjures is one of melancholy.” Nick Murray Annexe Magazine

[on Lune]: “Lune is a rich addition to this contemporary pastoral tradition: part narrative, part evocation of land- and sea-scape, part metaphysical meditation on what the world is and what it is to be in that world. The title in the first instance derives from the river, but the other definitions of lune that I referred to in the opening paragraph of this review all seemed to me to come to bear on the poem as I read it. The sea is a leash, limiting the walker’s range of movement, the pull of the moon is what creates that intertidal space, the bay’s crescent is formed by sea and land intersecting, and these are all things the poem brings to our mental vision.The poem is driven by a need to see, in every sense of the word. And it recognises, or Hymas recognises, the difficulty of this project.” Billy Mills, Sabotage

[on Bedrock] “The poetry is earthy and takes a no-nonsense approach to setting out their journey from community-based god-fearing and pious, through to the complexity, toughness and verging on faithlessness, of modernity. These vignettes suggest a narrative that could make a substantial novel or play” Anne Stewart in Artemis

[on Host]
” I recommend the collection, especially for readers looking for a fresh slant on the domestic lyric, or just a very enjoyable verse narrative. Host is well worth their while, and bodes well for Hymas’ future.” Mark Burnhope on Ink Sweat & Tears

“… excellent at capturing social and religious codes of behaviour, with the acuity of Austen or Alice Munro … Host is a tactile and muscular collection, rooted in the complexities and textures of the physical world. Hymas has created fresh and exuberant work that, at its best, captures the awe of being alive.” Sarah Westcott reviews Host on Eyewear, here

” … These poems do not just host or reside; they make a connection, a highway of energy between the physical, the limits of the body and the indefinable other. The thing I like most about this collection is the so-much-more-than landscape they offer: more, they are a being-in-ness, being-of-ness, that I very much enjoy.”Anna McKerrow

“I read Host four times through and, by the last reading, it felt like a pair of hands about my face shushing my over-caffeinated brain.” Peter Wild, Bookmunch

“Her language is bold, lively and richly textured and her characters’ voices are powerfully brought to life so that their passions, ambitions and disappointments are vividly heard and imagined.” Bernardine Evaristo

“These tersely written poems are rich in well-observed characters and phraseology, witty in the serious sense.They are a feast of defamiliarisation and significant foregrounding, a nourishing image of lives and landscapes.” Herbert Lomas

“Sarah Hymas’ confident language and vivid imagery gives an unusual vitality to this collection. In Bedrock four generations speak of their lives in a sequence that pays homage to the institution of the family. A clear eye for period detail and an ear for the inner voice bring the characters to life, their particular fears and pleasures, conflicts and tensions.
Elsewhere in the book, in poems of travel, people, sailing and self-reflection, she shows the same robust awareness of life’s underlying currents and quests together with a will to embrace its fun and poignancy. It’s good to be in such wholehearted company.” Mike Barlow

Performance

“Sarah’s short imagistic verse is harder to judge in reading than on the page, unlike much comic verse. Where she succeeds is with her lissom presence, literally dancing her poems. Sea imagery predominates but the sustained metaphor of The Midland Hotel as a glamorous, sexy movie starlet was effective.” The Lunecy Review

“I thought your performance of your exquisite and elevated poems was masterly, magnificent.”

“Listening to you and your poems is like listening to music.”

“I just wanted to thank you for a brilliant afternoon yesterday. It created a real buzz with those that attended, they were still talking about it when I saw them in the evening! I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.” Ansdell Library

Poems

Recovery

However much your body disturbs you
it needs to be loved

like this beach
you mine for bottles

filled with sour congealment,
screwed grit and fish scales.

Where fork prongs and splintered cups
strewn across grass and shells

are called confetti
which you collect and bin

because in the deep
nothing breaks down to nothing.

from melt

The Census of Seamounts

Everything is falling
silent
in a deep history
where plains are noduled with shipwrecks,
upended submarines
and skeletons.

Canisters, chains, tanks and bullets falling
at the same speed the sea falls from the sky

to a bed lined with silver, gold, nickel
visible only in someone’s dream.

Another dreamer swims through a rerun
of themselves discovering
a sunken truth in Planet of the Apes.

Elsewhere a hermit crab
takes an aspirin bottle for its shell.

Not newborn, not dead, there’s life unaware
of the wind above pressing these currents

this way, that, they fall
a slow synthesis into dark, sucked closer to the vents
where heat crushes
the last flecks of sun from memory.

featured in Sea-Creatures

If You were Walney Lighthouse and I Cockersands
At dusk we break open the loneliness of night,
hold steady on each muddied tide
and fix ourselves; keepers of light.

The gulls and boats of dawn blot you from sight:
you’re far further than the Bay’s northside.
But at dusk we break open the loneliness of night.

All I do, you reflect back at me, at times too bright;
a warning sign, you stand a quiet guide,
fix me, keep my light.

My wood, your stone; as such, we’re unalike,
cut by this channel that keeps us tied.
At dusk we break open the loneliness of night.

Closer when water’s at its height,
a flooding shoal of silt as shores collide
we fix ourselves; keeping our lights.

Throughout the long dark, we transit white,
our worlds made one: two-eyed
at dusk we break open the loneliness of night
and fix ourselves; keepers of light.

Published in The Rialto

Hold Fast

In readiness for the rising seas
he roped all his fears into one final tattoo, a bicep piece
of lightning forks astride a girl whose flesh he’ll never touch,
a dagger through the blossoming rose of Lancashire
a compass with no marked cardinals.

His skin disappeared in the blur of rain,
low wind. The propellers on his back,
the shoulder scrolls of lovers and family,
protected him from anonymity.

Shrinking as the Atlantic swelled, he couldn’t resist
and ink-anchored both feet,
insured the buoyancy of his left knee with a pig,
a rooster on his right.

Then hung another coil
on the LoveLoveLove necklace about his throat.

Published in issue 32 of the Ofi Press

Hammock

swings
— the outdoors in
——– oceans dry
—- latitude a spine
———- shoulders to wings
—–tomorrow today
———– an open shroud
— cumulus low
that pause before

published as part of the Burns Night Celebrations in Dumfries, Windaes Project, 2012

Migration

— Compressed between chalky light and sea,
— the lowest island is glacial but
— for the dimple of footprints.

—- Elsewhere bladderwrack redefines a land drifting east.
—- Children’s eyes wink from the shale.

– The channel cutting that and a third
– slips so slowly
– granite is doubled, reflected block cut below block.
– A library of stones, lettered in algae.

—- A shoreline of limestone pleats.
—- Here, birds are white,
—- and skin flakes like ash from a volcano.

Two miles south, and chimneys unbrick gradually.
Clay exposed where potatoes once grew.
At low tide fossils swim another cove.

— A different, although equally treeless, skyline churns,
— lumpy as the bedbound, facing dawn.

— Across the thinnest sound,
— slowly widening,
— a kelp causeway foams,
— knitted by eddies and fish into empty Sunday suits.

– The long dead, buried under firs on a windward shore,
– wrapped in oilcloth, reel with landslides,
– dipping closer to each tide.

Published in Poetry Wales 2013

Lost, with all hands

Winched pewter and perry at Archangel,
hauled flax and hemp onboard,
weighed anchor, hoisted sails (crew);
tilted sextant over Hammerfest (Captain);
pumped bilges, hitched rigging, oiled mast,
tarred the hull, grasped at whisky (crew);
plucked poultry, cut cheese (cabin boy);
stroked thighs, sealed lips, clenched at floggings (crew);
gripped helm, plotted past Shetland (mate);
scrubbed on deck (crew), filthed (Capn’s wife);
snatched at sheets, slackened sails (crew);
dropped the lead (mate), prayed for once (crew);
jabbed at Seldom Seen (all),
shifted cargo (crew), clung to rigging (wife and kids),
tore at railings (crew), slung the whisky (Captain),
combed the tide, kneaded mud (all).

Published in Under the Radar

You can read other poems in the Modernist Review, And Other Poems, The Island Review and Stride