Heritage-Inspired Verse

Two poems, both ending with a human structure underwater in the dark. Only one of them is still readable. The difference should change how you write. An artistic illustration of Glastonbury Lake Village In 1912, Thomas Hardy wrote about the wreck of the Titanic lying on the seabed — the jewels designed to dazzle now lying lightless, and the fish drifting past them asking what all this vanity could possibly have been for. It is one of the great poems in the language, and the w

Some places give themselves up in an afternoon. Others withhold, and ask to be read the way we read a difficult poem — slowly, twice, out loud if no one is listening. Brampton is one of the withholding kind. I went looking for its official history and found four ledgers stacked one on top of another, and then I went looking for something the ledgers could never hold. Here, first, is the poem that came out of that looking. Read it before you read anything I have to say about i