What’s in a name?(who’s in the frame?) Mardale Head
Aim
To enquire into how we name (and frame) the mountains and other physical features of the landscape, and how we might do so otherwise through a more embodied engagement with (and movement through) them.
This experiment has been developed in collaboration with Scott Thurston. Scott is the author of sixteen (yes, really) books and chapbooks of poetry, and is Reader in English and Creative Writing at the University of Salford. In his own words, he is ‘passionate about poetry that dares to do different.’ He co-organised The Other Room, a reading series promoting experimental writing in Manchester, for ten years, and co-founded / co-edits the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, the first and only journal of its kind in the UK. Since 2004, he has been developing a poetics integrating dance and poetry which has involved him collaborating and studying with dancers in Berlin, New York and the UK; he has also collaborated with therapists on the Arts for the Blues project.
Background
As a child, hillwalking with my Dad in the Lake District, it became a ritual – at the top of every single fell – to scan the horizon, and challenge each other to identify (name) as many peaks as possible. The skyline sketches which Alfred Wainwright made of the views from every Lake District summit were our reference points. Meanwhile, as a budding young photographer, Dad provided me with early guidance as to how best to frame a picture. But in neither case did either of us ask the questions which inform this experiment: on what basis were the fells named, and why is this considered the ‘right’ way to frame a landscape image? What principles and assumptions are at play, and what’s the impact of these? These questions provide the starting point for this experiment: for are the processes of naming and framing not key indicators of how we traditionally ‘think’ the fells (and thereby of the questions Scree poses more generally)? This experiment responds to these questions by inviting you to respond to three different ways in which the fells have or could alternatively be named, and through visual images which foreground both the process of framing, and encourage you to look outside and beyond the limits of the framing device (see slide show below).
The first of the three kinds of ‘naming’ which the experiment explores are those names by which the fells have become commonly known. The Haweswater fells were specifically chosen because their names seemed so resonant and suggestive: Kidsty Pike, Rampsgill Head, High Street (or its alternative name Racecourse Hill), and Mardale Ill Bell (which we were thrilled to learn ‘translated’ as bad / evil hill of the boundary valley!) The second kind of ‘name’ that the experiment explores are those generated by the what3words app. what3words was launched in 2013 when one of the founders, an event organiser, struggled to help bands and music to get to venues as a result of inadequately accurate address information. In response, the three founders split the world up into 3m squares, each of which were randomly allocated three unique words - the address for 10 Downing Street, for example, is ‘slurs this shark’! (Another reported influence upon the developers was their inability to locate the door of a slum dwelling which didn’t otherwise have an address, which adds a social dimension to the project – who gets to be findable on a map and why?) The third kind of naming encourages you to participate in your own process of naming, through movement exercises which seek out a more embodied experience of landscape as the basis for words. These exercises derive from Scott’s own movement and writing practice which he describes as a ‘kinepoetics’ – an approach to composition and performance in which the experience, representation and dynamics of movement is central. During our own recce for this experiment (and associated writing prompts below) such ‘kinepoetics’ was explored initially by tracking the movements of internal sensations, feelings and thoughts in a body scan, but developed to incorporate moving and voicing in situ in response to place names and landscape features, and then also to finding opportunities for more expansive, conscious movement in the landscape. This included repeatedly crawling or running up a slope, running or rolling down it, and extending and repeating the rhythm of walking on a stone path to transform it into a small dance.
The visual art element of this experiment engages overtly with our aesthetic response to the Lake District landscape. There are few who would contest that the Lake District is scenic. But this claim is in fact far from neutral, and highly contingent upon a certain aesthetic understanding of what comprises landscape ‘beauty’ - an understanding which artists and writers have played a key role in creating, communicating and perpetuating (as some of the other Scree experiments demonstrate, many of the early tourists were writers and artists). In other words, both the content of the view and the form in which it is presented frame how we respond to it. By presenting the landscape in certain ways, artists exert influence and power over both the landscape itself, and also our own human experience of it, helping to train us (programme us even) to differentiate between perceived ugliness and beauty. This experiment foregrounds these dynamics, invites you to find beauty outside the frame, and to pay greater attention to our responsibilities as artists in helping create (invoke) the landscapes we supposedly evoke.
In both cases (whether working with words or images, or indeed any other art form), kinepoetic movement exercises aim to help us feel more present in our bodies and therefore more present in the spaces that we encounter: to access and embody the vital energy of our bodies in the landscape.
A day out with an IKEA Billy Frame
Hover cursor over slides to see what3 word image titles.
Route instructions
Click on the image above to open an interactive version of the map on Outdoor Active. Otherwise you can download the GPX file of my route here (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Route: Medium (7.5 miles, 2050 feet of ascent)
Starting point: the car park at Mardale Head (see here on google maps) at the southern end of Haweswater reservoir.
Accessible alternative: this route is unfortunately not accessible. However, to use the what3words app you don’t actually have to visit the summits or other landscape features. The writing and visual art experiments provided below could, thereby, straightforwardly be undertaken from the car park (or nearby) from where there are good views of the surrounding summits and other landscape features, and whose what3words names can be found by clicking on the appropriate location on the map. Alternatively, the experiment can be conducted on an accessible walk of your choice (see https://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/things-to-do/walking/mileswithoutstiles for a range of choices) using the principles outlined below for the ‘walk-from-home’.
Writing & Art Ideas, & Virtual Alternatives
During our reccce, Scott and I kept on coming up with new ways to explore the above questions. Fortunately, it’s a fairly short walk or else we’d have still been up there playing around with new ideas (in fact Scott just told me that his own playing around continues, albeit on a remote basis from his Manchester base…)!
Writing
In order to achieve a contrast between the different kinds of naming and resultant writing, you will probably find it helpful to identify a few places en route in advance where you plan to conduct the experiment (up to a maximum of five if you want to be home by nightfall!) These might be the summits of fells, a tarn or other body of water, or a pass between the fells - the important thing is that these places have been ‘named’ on the map. In advance of setting out, you might find it helpful to do some research into the background of these names; my own advance research revealed the following:
Kidsty Pike: Kidsty may mean ‘Cydda’s path’ from the Old Norse.
Speaking Crag: I haven’t been able to find out the origin of this (who spoke there, or why), so I’d be fascinated if anyone knows more.
Rampsgill Head: perhaps from Old English ramm = ram. The head of ram’s gill.
Haweswater: Hafr’s water, from Old Norse. Hafr could either be a personal name or translate as ‘goat’.
High Street / Racecourse Hill: named for the Roman Road which travels over the summits from the Roman fort in Ambleside to Brocavum, at Penrith. Previously known as Bretesstrete (‘the Britons’ road’). The alternative name of Racecourse Hill derives from the horse racing that took place on the summit during summer fairs in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Selside Pike (one of the hills across the other side of Haweswater): Selside = Old Norse for willow shieling.
Branstree (another fell across the valley): possibly a variant upon Old English ‘bransty’ = steep path.
Mardale Ill Bell: bad / evil hill of the boundary valley!
Nan Bield’s pass: the pass of the shelter, from the gaelic ‘na-n’ (of the) and bield which is a Scottish and Northern English word for shelter.
(The above place name interpretations are taken from The Place Names of Cumbria by Joan Lee (Cumbria Heritage Services 1998)).
During your walk, the idea is to ‘stop’ at these places and to engage in three kinds of writing. The first of these takes the ‘given' name as the starting point for a piece of writing. You are then invited to check the what3words reference for that location (having downloaded the app in advance), and to use this as the impetus for a second piece of writing. The idea behind the third piece of writing is to see what words arise during a movement exercise in situ, which might comprise one of the following:
(a) a body scan meditation, noting what thoughts come to you in the process (which you have let pass by during the process of meditating), and what images, sensations and feelings arise;
(b) an improvised movement exercise which invites you to move your body with and in response to the landscape and its shapes / forms, and to place names and any other verbal or written research / materials;
(c) allowing yourself to feel the pull and drag of gravity during a running exercise down and back up a short stretch of hillside, or to slow the force of gravity by crawling or rolling down the slope (see video below);
(d) engaging actively with the landscape's forms (eg playing hopscotch on some of the rocks on a constructed section of path, exaggerating /extending the rhythm of walking so that it becomes a dance - see below);
(e) sitting perfectly still and silent, and engaging in deep listening, watching, and other sensory practices.
Your writing might take the form of notes or more complete bits of writing - it’s entirely up to you. You can then rework the three sets of notes from each location into three different pieces of writing, or combine them into one piece which involves elements of all three or which explores the dynamic tensions between them.
Visual art
Find some form of ‘frame’ which you are willing to carry up the fells with you - I chose an old IKEA frame, but I’ll admit that it was a bit cumbersome, and I got a fair few odd looks! A cardboard mount or similar would work equally as well, and might prove more portable, although you might have some difficulties if it starts raining or if it’s windy. Feel free to make the frame as large or as small as you like, or perhaps take two or three different sizes and see what works best.
During the walk, whenever you feel the urge to take a landscape photograph or to make some sketches for a landscape drawing, notice instead how you are framing this, and place the physical frame / mount in such a way as to capture this. Then step back and instead draw or take a photograph of the wider context of the scene such as I have in the images which illustrate this experiment. You might like to notice how you would have instinctively framed the image - what did you choose to include or to leave out? Why did you think that this particular perspective was the most beautiful, and what assumptions have you made in the process about what is meant by ‘beauty’ (the golden ratio might be one convention to explore and complicate / work against)? Might there have been another image you could have created which you hadn’t originally seen? In the slideshow below, I combined this experiment with what3words by using the randomly generated words as the title for the images. You might alternatively like to choose various ‘named’ locations, and to use these as titles, or to complete a movement exercise and to see what ‘name’ your more embodied experience of the landscape conjures up. Or indeed, the pieces of visual art could sit alongside combinatory pieces of writing deriving from the three written exercises above.
Virtual alternatives
Use the slideshow and image titles below as the start of pieces of writing which respond to the extended perspective upon the framed landscape through the lens of randomised language.
Route adaptation for walk-from-home
This experiment is straightforwardly adapted to any walk in your local area, with the help of a good map, some background research into place names, and the app! It would work especially well in an urban context, in fact, where the street names could be played off the what3words and your own language, for the urban environment is one upon which we have undoubtedly exerted particular influence.
Scott’s poetry
NAN BIELD SHELTER
in the pass of the shelter
in wind in the shelter
a small plea consented
to what small wind sheltered consent
dividers slogged back into bedrock
wind back into bedrock in the
pass of the shelter where you
take courage against night’s might
breeding consented to divide us
in the shelter in the pass
where your small plea consents
a squad of them chinned
you in the pass a shelter where
your small plea consents to
breeding nothing many depths
visible in the valley drowned
village – nothing – drowned walls – nothing –
village consent – nothing – many nothing
connected in breathing in breeding
your small plea does not
consent to many nothing
in the wind in the pass
in the wind in the pass
in the wind in the pass
of the shelter
Lucy’s poetry and photography
See slide show above for my photography: ‘A Day Out with an Ikea Billy Frame’
Above Speaking Crag, Haweswater
i. nerves
A Scottish ‘how’
(translates as why)
or who are you kidding?
We drowned the goat herders
flooded the bridge
and baptized the church with silt and
mud-water. And us? Oh aye.
We drink to them.
ii. jammy
the wind at my back
leaves no remaining space for breathing –
if you cannot hear your breath
for the weather
then what about living
the burning of my right foot
marks a momentary slant of sunshine
while the easing of the angle of my pelvis
sits off-kilter to the earth
I feel too large
for the smallness of my thinking –
my chest expands and
I let the cold (just be)
iii. relate
Ahead now. A line of traffic pulls apart
the lower landscape as
I scratch my fingertips along
the boundaries of what remains
(mainly dykes and house foundations)
scrape the net of bracken from my face.
The horizon moves at speed.
Has gravity. So much mud beneath
my fingernails. Rhizomatic? Sporing?
The double-sided hope of something
borrowed something always new.
Mardale Ill Bell
The evil hill catches uneven slope breath in my left breast versus the familiarity bell of I’ve been here before you and if I already know that you are you mine you ask I overshoot the limits of language out beyond time where unlined out of line unread we meet midway because nothing serious of gravity if both we smile and climb intestine descending out of head bad tussocks evil moss and boundaries of valleys difficult as flighting cotton creeping up on you and what you make of it.
Pass of the Shelter - Nan Bield
To have breeding
and to have consented to it
(take it on the chin).
Small many nothing depths of
slogged bedrock.
Squad dividers.
This is, but, my plea.
