Led by Kerry Steed, Lit in Place St David’s offered community members opportunities to explore the natural environment of the St David’s peninsula through creative writing, learning about local biodiversity and climate change while supporting mental wellbeing. Delivered in partnership with EcoDewi, the project strengthened links between creative practice and local environmental action, helping to raise awareness of EcoDewi’s work and attract new volunteers. The project will be celebrated by a ceramic artwork by local artist Rosemary Alderwick, incorporating the below poem by Kerry Steed and illustrations created by local primary school pupils.
My soul is here
between earth and sky,
where the wind, mimicking the tide,
soughing in, sliding back,
transects the heavens instead of the shore,
and the air, carrying the speech of all things,
cries a language no one knows how to hear.
My soul is here, flowing
with shadows and shapes moving,
with sky waves rolling,
with the sea’s changing, its surface,
day and night, hightide and low
and in between
linking all the land edges of the earth.
Unity.
And my soul is here
… by the shore, I stand, and know that they are on some other shore,
or on a ship on the same sea …
Timeless.
Linking.
Ley lines
of rock,
an ancient stone
accepts my form.
And with my back to its quiet curve,
we touch the warming sun,
the energy of a new day, of kinship and connection.
… how does an ocean, plant and ant
crossing my page receive my exhaled breath?
As I breathe them, they breathe me,
By every atom we are kin …
We watch ribbons of sea foam,
like stretch marks on the ocean,
the skim and soar of a fulmar on taut wings,
we see the seal … does seal see us?
And the memory of a dolphin dream,
of swimming beside its velvet skin;
down thirty feet deep,
among silent forests of kelp
and the friendly, curious bass.
Do they know how they make us feel?
Seal, dolphin,
a smooth pebble, a slow ripple
… do they know?
So full of life,
my soul,
so full of beauty,
it trembles
… do we know how we make them feel? Do we?
Do we know?
How beauty hides their suffering.
How beauty hides the human harm.
Battered. Beauty. Destruction.
Sadness. Pain. All are colliding.
And as the wind, unseen,
will hammer faces, beat against rocks,
my soul cries
… does anyone know?
Does anyone know how to hear?
Ocean, plant and ant,
all that I am,
I feel you running the wildness through my veins,
without you? There is
… nothing.
But I am here,
and my sorry soul,
reaching into the living ground,
asks,
who is already awake?
Who would cure the ocean,
the earth?
Who is here now
to listen, to learn, to hear?
The song birds are chatting, like Guardians,
the wind is circling in celebration,
in expectation of clearing a new way,
and I am here,
full of the earth and the sky,
of ocean, plant and ant,
and I am here, now, I am here.
– Kerry Steed
