‘Bathymetry’ by Andy Jackson comprises a re-worked poem woven into a bathymetric chart of a fictitious Scottish loch. The verse draws the eye into the deepest part of the loch. Andy was inspired by a Tay Estuary Research Centre pamphlet, 1985, which includes bathymetric charts.
Bathymetry by Andy Jackson
Microsoft Publisher laser printed on A1 board
“I was drawn to a small pamphlet from 1985 publishing the Tay Estuary Research Centre’s Bathymetric charts of ten Scottish lochs. The simple images contained were inverse topographical maps, like the contours of a mountain pushed inside out, with the innermost ring drawing the eye to the deepest part of the loch. I reworked a poem I had written to St Hyacinth, (patron Saint of drowning people) which also has echoes of Antony Gormley’s Another Place. Taking the contour lines as boundaries, I worked the lines of the poem into a bathymetric chart of a fictitious Scottish loch which I had constructed, again trying to draw the reader to gradually swim out to the deepest part of the loch, where the darkest lines of the poem lurk.”
Andy Jackson is a poet and editor of several collections, anthologies and online projects, including Whaleback City, an historical anthology of six centuries of Dundee poetry. His new collection The Saints Are Coming! is due in May 2020. www.andyjacksonpoet.co.uk.
River Deep Mountain High was an exhibition in the University’s Lamb Gallery to mark the Year of Coast and Water curated by Archive Services. Artists, designers and creative writers were invited to respond to the University’s rich archive, museum and rare book collections on the themes of rivers, seas, coasts and mountains. Original photographs, journals, plans, models and specimens relating to whaling, the River Tay, the natural world and mountaineering inspired jewellery, artwork, sculpture, poetry and much more.