Welcome to a selection of work from our project Ways of Exploring Morecambe Bay, an exhibition created by Elizabeth Hare and Stephen Barlow from 2015 to 2017.
We visited different parts of Morecambe Bay that excited, intrigued and/or fascinated us at different times of the day and at different seasons of the year. We took a trip on the Knott End Ferry on our side of the Bay, and we went to Piel Island on the other. We hope that if you live here you will see the Bay with new eyes, and if you don’t have the good fortune to live here, that you will be inspired to come and visit.
All poems ©Elizabeth Hare. All images ©Stephen Barlow.
Ways of Exploring Morecambe Bay
On a train, on a bus, on foot, online
on holiday, on business, on your own
As if you live here and as if you don’t
With a map and without one
With a false moustache, candy floss and rock
or scrambling over the rocks
or a Campari on the rocks
in the sun lounge at the Midland Hotel
With people who have always lived here
who remember how Grange-over-Sands used to be
with people who’ve never been here
with people who’ve never seen the sea
With children who never think of danger
and lifeboat men who think of little else
With ghosts of monks and cockle pickers
and people who didn’t think about the quicksand
With birds who are just passing over
with tourists who are just passing through
With people who, on their way to somewhere else
stopped here and found they couldn’t leave
Trying to capture what it looks like, sounds like
with the sky and the sand always shifting
with the birds and the tide always moving
and no two moments the same
In photographs, in poetry
in sunshine, in the wind, in the dark
in pictures in words
in the rain
The Wyre Ferry
Sunderland Point
Heysham Nuclear Power Station
Piel Island