Symbioverse

Date: 3 May 2024
Time: 5pm
Obsidian Tags: #practicenote
Place: Lake Terraces, Towns End, Grasmere

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Visuals: A gallery of images captured on a walk to John’s Grove, as well as at a poetry workshop in the Wordsworth Cafe. Faces of fellow participants blurred for privacy.
Audio: An original composition, ‘John’s Grove’, inspired by a beautiful area of woodland named for the Wordsworths’ brother, John.

Studio Notes:

Today, I have plans to explore a few of the woods and pathways surrounding Dove Cottage. Later in the afternoon, I will attend a poetry workshop in the Wordsworth Trust’s cafe, focused on the subject matter of Wildflowers, and then spend some time working with text and music.

For Wordsworth, walking fuelled his compositions, and movement provided fire for his thoughts as well as a space to work through . As De Quincy once wrote in Literary and Lake Reminiscences:

“…with these identical legs Wordsworth must have traversed a distance of 175,000 – 180,000 English miles…to which…he was indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we for what is most excellent in his writings.“

I have a lovely chat with staff in the cafe who give me directions to John’s Grove, a short walk from Town’s End. At this time I am combing through other blogs and diaries about visitors to the Lake District, and come across a lovely anecdote about walking, traces and memory in Literary Rambles. In a poem called ‘When first I Journey’d Hither’, Wordsworth notices a path left by his brother’s own wanderings through the woods:

‘With a sense
Of lively joy did I behold this path
Beneath the fir-trees, for at once I knew
That by my Brother’s steps it had been trac’d.
My thoughts were pleas’d within me to perceive
That hither he had brought a finer eye,
A heart more wakeful: that more loth to part
From place so lovely he had worn the track,
Out of his own deep paths!’

Notes from the Poetry workshop in the PM:

In the afternoon, I spend two happy hours in the cafe writing poetry with a group of visitors to the Trust. Hosted by a lovely member of staff who is a poet herself, we trace our way through William and Dorothy’s writings on mosses, lichens, flowers and ferns, noting the Wordsworth’s love for the local and the wild. My brain makes yet more connections between the natural processes and relationality of Warm Data, and the sense of grace, allowance, love and attention paid by the Wordsworths to the gardens of their home as well as those of the mind.

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Critical Reflections