A collage and a poem for University of the West of England’s “The Mountains are Calling,” Bower Ashton Library, 2nd April – Friday 31st July 2026. The book I chose for inspiration was Michelangelo’s Mountain by Eric Sciliagno, one of the books that formed part of my research for a project around the marble quarries of Carrara, with the poem and collage drawn from time spend there.
Noon:
thick heat
weighs heavy;
sun glares scree,
makes unscreened eyes squint.
Lizards crackle through leaves
that scratch circles after trucks.
Dogs and cocks sound out valley shapes,
hammers, drills and blasts echo their size.
Some higher slopes have severe switch-backs;
others have stepped stages set to choreograph
fluro nylon actors and props in danger hues,
props that raise skirts of dust, force smoke from stacks, that chug, clank,
churn, grind, drone and thump their way up, down and around mountains that might not be mountains any more, just as we – ingesting the quarry ‘waste’ inside us – have become a little mountainous.
