A Longer Water is a site-specific poem written for the River Frome and installed across 12 windows at M Shed, Bristol. It was first exhibited as part of Bristol 2015: It Doesn’t Stop Here.
A Longer Water imagines a walk along the high tide line of a future Bristol. Follow the poem from left to right and travel upstream from the Cumberland Basin (where the harbour drains back into the Avon) all the way to the small gate in the harbour wall where the River Frome emerges from its long journey underneath the city. Taking its cue from the diverted, culverted, inverted routes of the Frome, the poem can be read according to the reader’s movement, either following two long lines across all twelve windows or weaving through all twenty four lines as if they are couplets. It is also possible to change course halfway through, slipping between the lines across the windows.
A Longer Water was commissioned by Bristol Museums and Art Gallery and has been acquired for the museums’ permanent collections.
