Different justifications are used to establish ecological protection. They can be broken down into two groups: those that promote the economic value of the ‘ecosystem services’ provided by a river; and those that protect the river as an object of intrinsic value like love, joy or singing, or as subject with inalienable or sacred rights. These systems are based on different engagements with the ecosystem in question: the first on quantifiable market values, the second on unquantifiable emotional and/or ‘spiritual’ exchanges.
RIVER OF MACHINES, RIVER GODS
Whanganui River was granted rights as an independent entity by the New Zealand government in 2017 as part of a treaty settlement with the Maori people. Guardians were appointed on its behalf. Other rivers have the status of gods, or are considered indivisible from the body of the people for whom they are sacred. Think of how this might change your relationship with a river you know.
This exercise requires participants to write their poem in the form of a prayer. Prayers have particular cadences, rhythms and rhetorical tropes and are a good way of liberating writers to reach for a different register or tone for the voice they use in their poems.
EXAMPLES OF RIVER GODS
Anuket, goddess of the Nile and nourisher of the fields.
Ganga, the personification of the river Ganges.
Condatis, god of the river Wear and healing.
Nyami Nyami, a river spirit of the Batonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe.
FIRST STEPS
List the work that the river has been made to do for humans in the past and present. The Red River as a good example of a river turned into a machine to serve human ends.
List five things you might do differently to the river if it were declared a god or sacred being.
COMPOSING YOUR POEM
Find a prayer and consider how the prayer addresses its sacred or secular object. Notice how the object is named and the nature of the exchange that takes place: what is given and what is requested? How does the poem close? You might like to think of The Lord’s Prayer, or take a look at Carol-Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Prayer’.
With these prayers in mind, write a short prayer to your chosen river that both praises its presence and asks forgiveness for what it has been made to suffer. Be as precise as possible in your praise and acts of contrition.
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.
