River Quotations from participants in the Future Rivers Seminar at the Isis Farmhouse, Oxford, UK in March 2012

River Thames, Oxford

“England’s drought draws attention to the condition of England’s rivers. And England’s rivers – with those in Scotland and Wales – have ancient names, often conferred before the Roman legions came, and passed down almost unchanged to the present. Daily Mail spread on the misery that will last all summer featured the Bewl, the Chess and the Pang. But these are just the start. What about the Mease, the Tees, the Dee, the Cree, the Nar, the Ter and the Ver? Or the Box, the Yox and the Axe? Or the Neet, the Fleet and the Smite? Do not forget, either, the Ebble, the Piddle, the Polly, the Nadder or the Wandle. Or the Feshie, the Mashie and the Wissey. Then there are the Lugg, the Ugie, the Meggat, the Tud, the Lud and the Irt. Like these other rivers, the Wampool, the Snizort, the Skirfare, the Deveron, the Cocker and the Stinchar speak of a deep Britain, to which we are more connected than we realise. Or would be if it rained.” (Guardian editorial, 13 March 2012). Sent by Elizabeth Wilson.

‘The river’s tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers.
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are
departed.’  From The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot. Sent by Laura Degenhardt.
‘There are bits and pieces of the Thames all over Oxford, runnels and reaches and backwaters-‘more in number than your eyelashes’, Keats said – and beneath the very centre of the city runs the Trill Mill stream, a gloomy underground waterway in which was discovered, one day in the 1920s, a rotted Victorian punt with two Victorian skeletons in it. … The early inhabitants of Oxford must have considered themselves river people, like Mississippi mudlarks, and the very names of the western districts-Osney, Binsey, Hinksey- recall old island settlements in the swamp.’  From ‘Oxford’, Jan Morris, p.17. Sent by Laura Degenhardt.

I studied biology many years ago, before turning to fine art as a complementary way of engaging with the world, and I find my interest in rivers spans both these disciplines.  I walk by the Cherwell every morning and I find this has the same effect on me as a really good artwork, it fills my senses, opens a space for creative thinking and sharpens my powers of observation. I see rivers as a living, breathing thing and a measure of the health of our environment. Sent by Jane Wafer.

“It’s called the River Hipper? I didn’t know it had a name. To me, it’s just our little river” (local resident talking about River Hipper as it flows under Morrisons car park and past factory workshops in Chesterfield; 2011). Sent by Elizabeth Wilson.
‘The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, “followed the sea” with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith– the adventurers and the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on `Change; captains, admirals, the dark “interlopers” of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned “generals” of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.’ From Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Sent by Ben Gidley, Oxford University COMPAS (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society).
The banks of the Thames “display all the softer graces and all the
attractive loveliness of Nature in her sweetest mood, heightened by the
taste, skill, and ingenuity of man”. ‘Picturesque Tour of the River Thames’ William Westall & Samuel Owen 1828. Sent by Mark Davies.

“I think that the river
Is a strong brown god………

The river is within us, the sea is all about us”. TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. Sent by Cookie Scottorn.
“Every drop of the Thames is liquid ‘istory”. John Burns (1853?-1943). Sent by Mark Davies.

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink”. ‘Three Men in a Boat’ Jerome K Jerome (1889). Sent by Mark Davies.

“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.” Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Ch. 1. Sent by Cookie Scottorn.

‘riverrun through Eve and Adams past bend of shore and curve of bay’ James Joyce, Finnegans Wake. Sent by Tracey Warr.

“My chief piece of equipment is a pair of sturdy boots [and an always obsolete digital camera, currently Nikon D70]. Walking is a means of uniting heart and head, both emotional and analytical intelligence” (Sukhdev Sandhu, Night Haunts, 2006:15). Sent by Paolo Cardullo, Visual Sociology PhD student, Goldsmith’s (getting married today). http://kiddingthecity.org

“The Thames is liquid history” John Burn quoted in Portrait of the Thames by J.H.B. Peel. Sent by Colin Priest, School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University.

“The great street paved with water, filled with shipping,

And all the world’s flags flying, and the seagulls dipping.” John Masefield. quoted in Portrait of the Thames by J.H.B. Peel. Sent by Colin Priest, School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University.

‘150 million people’s homes will be lost as a result of climate change by 2050.’ Climate Refugees Report, Environmental Justice Foundation. Sent by Tracey Warr.

‘Migration is an adaptation strategy in itself … and should not be seen as an intrinsically negative outcome to be avoided … climate change will be experienced very differently around the world and across countries, as the vulnerability to nature is ultimately a product of the socio-economic forces that shape all societies.’ Etienne Piguet, Antoine Pécoud & Paul de Guchteneire, COMPAS, Migration and Climate Change: an Overview, University of Oxford 2010. Sent by Tracey Warr.

‘To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a pleasure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition … water seemed like a clemency, a beneficence’, John Cheever. ‘The Swimmer’. Sent by Tracey Warr.

‘I can dive in with a long face and what feels like a terminal case of depression and emerge a whistling idiot’, Roger Deakin, Waterlog. Sent by Tracey Warr.

‘The river where you set your foot just now is gone – those waters giving way to this, now this.’ Heraclitus. Sent by Alan Boldon.

‘Besides the sky, the river is the only aspect of our urban environment that has not yet been parcelled out into real estate or butchered by human insensitivity and carelessness. It suggests far-away places and distant memories and thus gives to the urban citizens a most needed sense of freedom.’ Gyorgy Kepes, Artist, MIT, 1972. Sent by Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas.

Syndactyly – webbed toes or fingers – is a recognised condition that 1 in 2000 people have. Wikipedia. Sent by Tracey Warr.

‘Meandering through meadowland and having little contact with civilization … The Thames enters lonely country … The Thames meanders extravagantly … By Port Meadow the river is now significantly wider, flowing between sandy banks to Binsey … Soon a water crossroads is reached, with the unnavigable Bulstake Stream running off to the west … Downstream of Donnington Road Bridge suburbia keeps its distance and the river proceeds along a green passage to Iffley Lock, with its pretty balustraded footbridges and fine lock house, all surrounded by trees, with a white-painted pub nearby.’ River Thames & the Southern Waterways. Sent by Tracey Warr.

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

Dao de Jing, Chap. 78, Lao Tzu (trans. Stephen Mitchell). Sent by Mike Blow.