"The water that is past.."

Recently I've been reading some of the work of Katrina Porteous, a poet who writes a lot about changing landscapes and vanishing communities. So it was interesting last week to visit Clencher's Water Mill on the Eastnor Estate near Ledbury, on a workshop organised by the Ledbury Poetry Festival. It's one of a series of mills that stood along the Glynch Brook and it milled flour for almost two and a half centuries before becoming redundant in 1939. Now it's been restored to full working order and we were shown around by a real enthusiast, who demonstrated the milling process and explained the technicalities.

What struck me very forcibly on the visit was the language of the mill, the words and phrases that must have been in common use in our great-grandparent's day but that are quite foreign to our generation - wallowers, brayers, layshafts, tuns, many more. Although I've written before about the tragedy of a language loss when a community becomes displaced or dies out, I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to the importance of individual words and their associations - some real food for thought there (and material for more than one poem).

In the afternoon we had a walk on the Malvern Hills, the stamping ground of much of my childhood and adolescence. It was interesting to hear the variety of poems that came out of the group's short time there - again a lot focusing on the history of the hills, the lives of the people who have lived, worked and walked on them over the centuries. Perhaps you'd like to hear them too - Jean Aitken, the "Troubadour of the Hills", will be launching a celebration of them at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in six weeks time; do join us for a poetry breakfast under the Market House, 09.30 - 10.30 on Sunday July 7th. Coffee and croissants included!