Route 57 Journal

Route 57, the University of Sheffield’s creative writing journal. Issue 15, Environs: Modern Natures, was the result of a collaboration with The Hepworth Wakefield and The University of Sheffield. The words on the pages took inspiration from The Hepworth Wakefield’s ‘Modern Nature’ photography exhibition which explored the relationships between the urban, the rural and the modern world. Helen Angell created this poem in response to my Ferrybridge Power Station photograph.

Download a pdf here.

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Ferrybridge Power Station by Helen Angell

only the children speak,
thumb-sized warriors face concrete
struts, the rest twist, turn

towers, clay-wet from the potter’s wheel
then fired unglazed, loom like my father’s shadow
pewtered against the sky

their curved walls
quell and vaporise anger,
cool the whirlpool seethe

chimneys, tapered and tipped, dwarf pylons
whose delicate fretwork webs the air
with frail Egyptian symmetry

in the loft, Jenny sews her quilts silently,
collects soap shaped like shells. Right now
it is those little pleasures that remind you who you are

downstairs, kitchens jut, mornings
leak and pool,
the dog barks at the door

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