Sometimes roads become rivers and rivers become roads. Sometimes a road will try to go where a river goes. Both carry things. But one is human and the other geological. Or, from the perspective of the Anthropocene, both are geological formations, the road a form of bioturbation made by a fossil-fuel-obsessed species.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN RIVER AND ROAD
Their similarities and differences make them ripe for exploration through dialogue, a form that often depends on conflict and tension to reveal a developing relationship. In poetry, there are some notable 17c dialogues between body and soul. Drawing on this tradition, in this exercise we’ll personify the characteristics of the river and the road and stage a conversation between them. Themes covered may include: the organic and inorganic, the generative and destructive, the circular and linear, the fixed and the fluid.
FIRST STEPS
List five things that rivers and roads have in common.
List five things that are different about them.
CONSIDERING THE RELATIONSHIPS
If the river and the road were people, how would their characters differ?
Consider them as binary opposites and attribute them a prevailing characteristic e.g. the process-driven thinker and the goal-driven thinker.
List as many points of physical contact between rivers and roads as you can.
How do they experience each other at these points of close contact?
COMPOSING YOUR POEM
Choose one meeting place between the road and the river and use it as the stage for a conversation between the two. Begin the dialogue with an instruction given either by the road or the river and see how the other reacts.
Good dialogue often arises out of conflicting desires, ideas, or differences in status. Consider these in relation to the characters of Road and River: for instance, who has greater status at a ford, a road, a dam?
How might the climate crisis change their relationship?
Red River: Listening to a Polluted River was devised and led by Dr John Wedgwood Clarke, Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
These resources have been developed in collaboration with Field Notes CIC. They may be freely used, reproduced and adapted for the purposes of free education/workshops provided the credits above are included.
