How many mermaids

How many mermaids?

Unfinished Poems and

 a make your own mermaid event 

 

Doxey Pool (c/o Adrian Lambert)

From the beautiful but dangerous maid in deep, cold Blakemere on Morridge to the golden-haired temptress guarding her treasures in the Kinder Downfall, to the more recent and more sinister tales from Doxey Pool on the Roaches, we have a rich legacy of watery people here in the hills. Flowing out of the hills and onto the Cheshire plains and here are stories of a waterspirit in Redesmere and tales of the Asrai, a tribe of water people in the waters of Cheshire and Staffordshire.

At Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, we have a dramatically something mermaid. Beautiful say some, hideous say other, less tactful, visitors, fascinating say a few but always worth stopping and having a good stare at…

Our mermaid is a Victorian fancy: a construction of wood and wire, human hair, seashells, bone, leather and fish skin, the years have not treated her well but she still intrigues and provokes

Find out more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17038668

Over the last few months, among other activities at the musuem, i was running an "Unfinished Poems" project which has unfinished itself for now - we hope to revive it again - and I am slowly working my way through the 50 poems that came in. (some have already been published on this blog, go questing....)

Visitors could pick up one (or more!) of 8 postcards with a drawing and two lines to start a poem about a particular aspect of the museum display. Their poem could use those two lines as a launching point, or they could ignore it completely...We wanted to over people a different challenge,  different way of looking at and thinking about the collection.

Here are a mermaid set…

1. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

My path links the underground rivers and pools of the Peak,

I’m the mermaid of the heather

2. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

This is a creature you must not miss,

Like modern mermaids, all artifice.

(Susan Crane)

3. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

Her partner’s a merman but keeps out of sight

So pooling their resources whatever the weather

(John Goodwin, 1/11/17)

 

4. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

It will be out tonight

But only if clear weather

And just to keep your mermaid appetites well-whetted, we are having a Make your own mermaid (or seamonster) activity 

at the Museum. 

Thursday 22^nd February 2018

10am - 12 noon

Free, no booking needed, just dive in 

and make your own sea-person to swim away with

5. Travelling wonder, a sideshow delight

In fish and bone and monkey leather,

A bewildering sight

With many thanks to all our poets, named or anonymous!