Mordros

Poems from Cornwall: a land shaped by sea

and

photograph by

Stand on the shoreline and listen.

Stand on the shoreline and listen. Out there, beyond and beneath the blue, are words

whispered into water. Words spoken by generations of mariners, adventurers, fishermen and the communities who relied on the sea for their livelihoods. Words that continue to resonate today.

Ella Walsworth-Bell founded the Cornwall-based Mor Poets in 2020 as an artistic response to the vast numbers of women who have taken up sea swimming. "It’s cold out there - why do it?" she asked, along with "Hey, let’s write some poetry together". Mor is the Cornish word for ‘sea’, and the all-female group has since created and published three collections of poetry inspired by the sea, as well as run community poetry workshops and held spoken word events. They continue to write alongside and within their coastal communities, and are currently working on their latest anthology celebrating wild Cornish women.

For this SeaVoice volume, Fi Read’s ekphrastic poetry is inspired by paintings featuring

ordinary Cornish fisherfolk, whose traditional way of life often included speaking their own Celtic language. Fi’s poetry gives kernewek fresh exposure, while the language itself, seen as a symbol of identity and resilience, is undergoing a cultural revival within the county.

Kernewek even has a specific word to describe the sound of the sea: mordros. Read these poems and hear the ocean calling as tides rise and fall. From seahorses hiding in eelgrass to the linseed coating on smocks, these emerging poetic voices shout like breaking waves on Cornish shores.

Ella Walsworth-Bell lived on her parents’ sailing boat Silverstones until the age of five. She sailed to the West Indies and back before moving into a tumbledown house in a small village in Cornwall and starting school. Every year, Ella moves aboard her own boat with her children; her poetry explores motherhood and the sea.

From Sea Life: On Second-hand Sails

after Sean Borodale

we come from Essex marshes

mudflats waiting for the tide

greenshanks digging bills in

praying there’s no fog

we listened to shipping forecasts

at six pm and midnight

Dad’s fags glowing

above the chart table

a gentle swaying

of the hull at anchor

I saw dolphins mid-Atlantic

the curved back of a humpback whale

noshed ration packs of bitter chocolate

biscuits in silver paper

Silverstones our steel boat

on a broad reach home

I didn’t know where home was

Mum wanted apple trees

Dad needed shirts and ties

deck needed a fresh coat of paint

we dropped hook

up the Penryn River

re-built a house

dropped roof-tacks

into waist-high grass

grew raspberries and roses

the mud in this new creek

smells of lugworms

thick as congealed blood

sticks us to land

let’s watch the tide rise

bubbling and oozing

the flap flap flap

of swan’s wings

steady as a gimbled stove

we are far from Essex

slit open my chest space

my heart beats silt-slow

ragworm-red

the sun sets the same

wherever we live

Anchored Just off Falmouth Town

A boat is a very small place

in the rain

thunder-sound of engines

the Dock's massive piles queening up from a sea-bed of shopping trolleys

kelp roots, bones

here we are in town again

squawk and call of gulls

someone shouts low tide

damp cushion under my bum

today is grey

grey as in unshed tears

some sections of sky thicker

closer to the sea of masts

today smells of petrichor

today could be a doughnut day, a croissant day

a kinder to my children day

we don't know how long we share this space

my granny would have said

further over in the grey sea

a cormorant dives

his back a rounded n

perhaps he will be lucky

No Anchoring

We are eelgrass. We sway in the current,

surge with the tidal ebb and flow.

We’ve been anchored here for generations;

yet the roar of your propellers -

the bite of steel flukes and the grinning chain

carves us to shreds.

There is sunshine in these shallows.

Seahorses snuggle their fry,

tiny tails spooning our stems.

Your own young are squealing;

paddling with outsize feet,

startle pipefish, who flee like arrows.

When the moon rises,

Dinoflagellates dance the fandango.

Cuttlefish ripple happiness.

Inch and crunch, your chains

scour us naked, strip us of shelter, rag our dresses.

Bowing sideways, we cry.

Morning comes and crabs bury themselves in the deserted sands.

Rays ghost away, soaring across shadowlands.

Then the hauling begins. After your coffee,

anchors hack their last graves,

roll taut to snarling winches.

You yachtsmen have had your weekend fun.

Our forests are scattered to the ocean, to your foredeck.

You recognise our corpses. ‘Oh look – Eelgrass.’

Fi Read grew up in Australia but caught her first wave in Cornwall. She swims, surfs, snorkels, and wishes the water was warmer. After sailing from Flushing to the Canaries, she’s also keen for more ocean adventuring. Nurse, activist, life model, bartender and mum, Fi squeezes in time to write when she can.

What the papers say: 24th October 1851

Helluva long way Newlyn - London

‘specially on foot. Back bent double

willow creel a heavy crown containing

rumours: turbot for Queen Victoria

grievances for the Lord Mayor, she’d

done waiting for a national pension.

Too poor for stagecoach or steamship

at 84, Mary’s exploits made The Times

Cornish Telegraph, Royal Cornwall Gazette.

5 weeks 300 miles: drops in the ocean

compared to a lifetime trudging sands

hawking fish all round the district.

Mary Kelynack, jowster by trade

hard-grafter by birth. Hauling pilchards

from boat to shore to be cleaned, gutted

salted, pressed in oak barrels or laid

in stinking cowals: pillars of community

fishwives kept families, industry afloat.

Celebrity Mary died as she lived

boghosek, while postcards, paintings

even songs proved Breadwinners:

black felted bonnets, leather head-straps

heavy cotton towsers, coloured shawls

worn with pride and tradition, backalong.

Smock

sail cloth cut simple and plain sewn T-shaped with wide neck

collar stand up or front slit and flat slick coat of linseed protects

from sea spray cold wind driving rain

when hauling in nets up on deck

pockets for warming ice hands

a garment that’s earned deep respect

no buttons no pretensions ‘til they

caught the attention of artists round

Newlyn flaunting pyskador uniform

workwear rebranded bohemian

sold on Etsy in Regatta and Next

still worn by old sea dogs gone fishin’

sure as time flows and tides ebb.

Cornish glossary:

helluva extremely, very

jowster hawker or seller, usually on foot. Newlyn fishwives were called fishjowsters

cowal large wicker basket, commonly used for carrying fish

boghosek poor, no money, destitute

towser a course apron

backalong in times gone by, long ago, a period in the past or more traditional way of life

pyskador a fisherman

Notes:

In the late 1800s and early 1900s artists travelled down to Cornwall for the clarity of light, cheap lodgings and a more rustic, simpler way of life. A burgeoning art colony known as the Newlyn School, pioneered by Walter Langley, were fascinated by the lives of local fishermen (and women) working at sea, as well as in and around the harbours and nearby villages. Painting en plain air, they had plentiful models to choose from at inexpensive rates, like fishwives in distinctive traditional garb and fishermen wearing practical, durable smocks. Immortalised in watercolour and oils, their hardship and suffering the price paid for fine art.