Ways of Mapping – Using Poetry to Map Coastal Erosion

Dani Salvadori

I am a poet and photographer and in November 2022 I attempted to map the water and the beach in Scarborough, North Yorkshire using only poetry and photos. The project uses WhatThreeWords co-ordinates and my own versions of them in both the poetry and accompanying photographs. These results have been published in a 16-page illustrated zine and an expanded version was published in a speculative fiction anthology in 2024.[1]

…..

Weather Warning

You told me there were frogs 

in Princess Street but no locusts 

swimming down Longwestgate. 

Although the days of rain could erase 

the chapters of a thin papered Bible.

You heard St Mary’s peals roll 

through the gap in Paradise, octaves 

bouncing off the lead lined clouds 

to deafen you in standing waves of chimes.

Unless you float on swells of sound 

you will drown in salt and wind. 

I would rescue you but there are 

no maps to navigate this terror.

……

I – As it was

They mapped the shore properly to the north with a meridian at the centre of each page, but had no uniform and precise way of linking the azimuths and the angles (not right angles) to the streams and pools of salt-water. They sketched by eye the traverses, creating personal productions with no obvious grids or graticules. Now all had been corrupted by the storms we had endured.

……

II – On land

We needed our own grid to locate the edge. You spent some time working out how to take three breaths safely. Then you moved to your starting point, one pace to the right. You paced out a 5 x 5 lattice of three squares of breath and marked the corner of each square with a bone. You could not speak to me as you worked. When I looked back the waves had removed all traces of your bony lattice.
…….

III – Along the edge

I paced the only fixed point, the sea-wall. Offsite, others had made a comfort lattice of safe words, a mapping which did not show me where I was.

rain.pierce.needles

winds.wash.seaweed

tide.pull.fierce

lichen.sea.glass

light.ridges.brown

fret.foghorn.navigate

caw caw caw.unfurl.fly

………..

IV – At sea

I tried to run with the sea but each breath moved the waterline and I could not fix the threshold. I tried to swim along the wavelines but was submerged by the breaking surge and I drowned. I tried to fly above the shoreline but it moved with the tide and there was no longer a difference between land and sea. I tried to talk to the sea but I could not hear its answer above the sound of gulls.

…..

V – On the ness

Stand on the Ness to feel the waves break. Listen to the lattice. Wetting and drying. Wetting and drying as isotopes decay. Hear the attack with every storm rising. Signals through static falling away. Don’t dive. Don’t swim. Count the measure. Count the flows. Follow the formula down through the sea.

Notes

[1] Dani Salvadori, ‘The Rain Has Come...’, in Moving Across the Landscape in Search of an Idea, 1st edn (Air & Nothingness Press, 2024).