Anthony Fisher: Londinium
Anthony Fisher’s poem “Londinium” celebrates London’s genesis, its diversity of people and language and has been translated into 37 languages.
The audio recordings have been beautifully interpreted as Voice Portraits by artist and poet Giovanna Iorio who has curated this virtual exhibition.
Londinium was built by the Romans in 5 CE and the first occupants would have been the Roman army and its language Latin and that of the soldiers who were from all over, so London has always been a city whose strength lies in its diversity and richness in many languages. In the few metres between the pavements and gravel bed, lies all of London’s History remnants of is people from times past.
Londinium
Put your ear to the ground –
hear the shouts of rotten flesh,
the clash of smith and wheel wright,
twist and stretch of the rope maker.
Your eyes will sting with the scent
of wood smoke, run with the bite
of ammonia from foetid urine.
Long below all this runs
the mark of Boudicca’s revenge
in the thin, red slice of burnt iron;
splitting a line of ash and clay
layered in the stones and tiles,
wood, old fires and bones.
Now squeezed by North and South
within its mud-soft lined canal;
the river once nurtured Neanderthal,
Homo Sapiens; lonely itinerants
drifting by for half a million years.
The first hut 15,000 years ago,
now a city of a myriad tongues
that adopts all who come –
hunter, farmer, the dispossessed.
© Anthony Fisher, February 2011
Music "Eagle" by Louis Cennamo (electric bass) Jim McCarty (keyboards/percussion) David Balen (tabla, world percussion) Dugald Brown (Electric Guitar) Recorded 1992
The audio recordings have been beautifully interpreted as Voice Portraits by artist and poet Giovanna Iorio who has curated this virtual exhibition.
Londinium was built by the Romans in 5 CE and the first occupants would have been the Roman army and its language Latin and that of the soldiers who were from all over, so London has always been a city whose strength lies in its diversity and richness in many languages. In the few metres between the pavements and gravel bed, lies all of London’s History remnants of is people from times past.
Londinium
Put your ear to the ground –
hear the shouts of rotten flesh,
the clash of smith and wheel wright,
twist and stretch of the rope maker.
Your eyes will sting with the scent
of wood smoke, run with the bite
of ammonia from foetid urine.
Long below all this runs
the mark of Boudicca’s revenge
in the thin, red slice of burnt iron;
splitting a line of ash and clay
layered in the stones and tiles,
wood, old fires and bones.
Now squeezed by North and South
within its mud-soft lined canal;
the river once nurtured Neanderthal,
Homo Sapiens; lonely itinerants
drifting by for half a million years.
The first hut 15,000 years ago,
now a city of a myriad tongues
that adopts all who come –
hunter, farmer, the dispossessed.
© Anthony Fisher, February 2011
Music "Eagle" by Louis Cennamo (electric bass) Jim McCarty (keyboards/percussion) David Balen (tabla, world percussion) Dugald Brown (Electric Guitar) Recorded 1992