Hilton Liverpool / buried poetry

In the beginning. This was the first piece of work at the start of the course where I knew that I'd done something.

After a force seven gale, in which my boat came loose from its moorings in the night, I wrote a poem recording it and asked workmen working in a hole in the entrance outside the Hilton, outside my temporary winter mooring to bury it for me. This was the start of a series of transactions that I carried on throughout the course, ultimately ramping them up at the time of the collaborative projects to become grander in scope yet keeping the same themes of chance, serendipity and everyday bravery.

Coming from a mountaineering and quite macho upbringing I was used to defining myself partly though physical and outdoors feats, like pulling the boat in during a storm. After a nerve operation shot my ability to communicate as well as to walk, I felt that trying to test my ability to talk my way into things was as heroic as a physical feat of endurance. Beginning to start to redefine for myself what heroism and what my upbringing meant for me.

These transactions were the beginning of many small collaborations with people of Liverpool that I carried out throughout the course. I would ask or allow people to help with my work in return for a volunteered secret or recommendation, often people living on the margins in different ways, gangsters, river pilots, road diggers and priests.