Tag Archives: trawlers

Hive of activity on the hottest day of the year

On the hottest day of the year I went down to the docks and just watched the trawlers and those working on and around them.

Hive of activity on the hottest day of the year

Welders and painters, sparks flying
From angle grinders, clouds of
Black exhaust, electricity generators,
Shouts and yelling and drilling and movement
And fork lifts and pick-ups and crates
Of fresh catch fish ice packed and
Unloaded as ropes are slung and
Boats tied secure and everywhere a motion
‘Of individuals and yellow wellies and
Sweat brows wiped and amidst all
This toil unnoticed across the trawler
Basin entrance, a lone paddle-boarder,
Vain and so painfully superfluous.

All-night humming at the ice factory

One of the most unsettling things of living in Brixham is the presence of a perpetual hum. Not everyone can hear it and these hums have also been heard in other places around the world. Some people reckon that this is a supernatural manifestation. And while I’m not discounting that, the most likely explanation for Brixham is that it is the ice factory down on the quay, manufacturing ice for the trawlers to use for their catch.

All-night humming at the ice factory

At night I dream of the ice factory
Manufacturing glittered frost under corrugated iron,
Snow on cue, sleet on demand,
I dream as it chills the night for me
And glaciers the dawn.

Three in the morning, in sweated sheets
Flung aside!
Windows open and not a breath of air,
There’s a humming noise coming from the quay.
What could that purring
Possibly be?

I’d like a snowdrift, please,
And ice so fine you can
See right through it!
I want to see my breath
In the trawler lights!

The sweat is rolling down my face,
And the hum, that’s just adding to the
Intensity of it all,
And a throb of engines too,
The sweat is rolling down my face.
Don’t tease me.
Freeze me.
be my icy queen!

Get me through this night!

At night I dream of the ice factory,
An ice conveyer belt and iced up workers,
Hauling ice and shovelling ice
And moaning about the cold.
Snow on cue, sleet on demand,
Blizzarding the morning as the sun rises
Over the trawler basin
And I moan and sweat as a clock strikes three.

Squidbox : Homecoming

This week I embarked on a new project, writing a sequence of poems about the Brixham fishing industry, with the help of Torbay Culture and the Arts Council. Fishing is a major part of Brixham life and has been so for hundreds of years, and the town has the biggest fishing fleet in the UK. I thought this would be a great opportunity to get to know exactly what it is that makes people want to go out on the high seas and risk their lives week after week.

This is the first poem from what, hopefully, will become a sequence. Homecoming is inspired by watching the trawlers come back home after a long stint at sea.

A lonely dot on a wild wild sea,

A nestle of rigs and beams, a mess

Of rust with nets slung low,

Giant spools and ropes slack dripping brine.

The hairpin concrete bend of jutted brick breakwater,

Of faded dead slow lettering, a test of time,

Scratched and blotched this tub sides a-slap

With the remnants of a sea bed scoured,

Hauled loads from sonar technology blips. At night

Each bunk holds dreams or high sea murmurs

As plastic macks drip dry, this metal tin

Of deckhand muscle, winches, graft, sweat.

They gain their sea legs, these sons and daughters.

A throb of diesel purrs the shuddering deck

And slantwise rain in a spotlight’s glare,

Bow break waves and quayside forklifts, home, home.