Image courtesy of Guus Snaterse
Echo Delta
Poem written as part of collaborative project with Guus Snaterse, September 2019. ‘Echo Delta’ was laser-cut by Guus into wooden board with projection-mapped footage of the Delta Works region for presentation at the first showcase of Cartographies of the Vanishing Now a five-day collaborative laboratory for artists, coders and scientists, hosted by FIBER Amsterdam. The 8km-long Delta Works dam is the largest flood protection system in the world, standing between homes and farms, and the sea that still strives to cover them.
ALPHA
BRAVO
CHARLIE
DELTA
designated stable with your two-step syllable
pinned into NATO’s grid of agreement
a motion tabled
a clarion call for clarity
a code to stop tongues tripping on radio waves
delta and twenty-five brethren letters
defended by twenty-nine militant neighbours
shored up against each other
to guard an Atlantic
that crowns their damp brows
echoing delta
of trick slick slippage,
you get sedimental with age
lilting upstream and down
your salt meets sweetwater
in land and sea melting
where the line in the sand shifts
they say no delta works
alone, key actors turn locks
turn in their dreams, and who
would sleep when the sea
unrested, remembers
how we sleep in its bed
BRAVO
ECHO
DELTA
over, or out