Building Bridges: Tying Experiences in Grasmere and the Borderland

During the last weekend of November 2018, my team and I had the opportunity to venture back to Grasmere in the English Lake District for a “Sharing Skills” weekend. We interacted with other Wordsworth scholars, as well as people from other professions, some who possessed a familiarity with the father of Romantic poetry and some who did not. Being familiar with Wordsworth’s life and work, I think we actually gained most of our inspiration from the latter group of individuals. The work they are doing is incredibly pertinent to the questions listed in our former blog post, and since our excursion back to the Lake District, I have been doing more research that has helped solidify the connection between the El Paso, Texas/Mexico Borderland region and Wordsworth country.

During this latest trip to the Lake District, we were able to take advantage of several workshops conducted by The Wordsworth Trust that discussed ways in which Wordsworth's poetry could be applied to aspects of human existence beyond the basic study of literature, a true connection of humanities and community.  Thus, these workshops were informative, not only from an academic perspective but from a community perspective as well. They helped us to better understand the importance of relationship with both humans and nature, which are staples in Wordsworth’s poetry.  I realized this outside the classroom, as I witnessed complete strangers communicating and sharing their experiences, achievements, and struggles. In those moments I realized that sharing skills transcends the classroom. In those moments we also abandon our “selves” and commune with others. Our work and the humanities in general need to have that kind of presence and awareness to be successful. I’m confident my team members Dr. Thomas Schmid and Katelynn Hernandez feel the same.






What we gained from the workshop were mostly ideas about how to make Wordsworth relevant in the work we do with children.  One thing that was absolutely inspiring was the work that a nurse was doing both with elderly patients as well as her co-workers. She did something called “collaborative poetry,” where she would give a prompt question (e.g., "What is your favorite place in the world?") and have the participants write a sentence about how that place made them feel. The group would then work together, line by line, and create a poem. Here is a sample of what a group of her co-workers came up with:

New Life Begins 
Written by The Hospice at Home West Cumbria Nurses Group 
(reprinted with permission)

Excitement stirs within me. 
Nature is beautiful, 
Reminds me of childhood, Barrowmouth Beach. 
It holds many happy memories, 
A stream leading up to the trees, 
The hills, the sky. 
Clear blue water, 
The sunset over mountains, 
Calm, peaceful, tranquil. 
No worries. 
Content and happy, 
Familiar, relaxed and free. 
Heaven and earth are united, 
I can imagine paradise to be like this. 
So lucky to be alive at this moment, 
All the beauty I could ever imagine is in this place. 
The sweeping white sandy beach fringed with palm trees, 
The pond quivering with life, 
The water rippling along. 
Empowered and humbled, 
I can see the stunning fell on the horizon, 
The sun shining 
The towering mountains silhouetted in the lake. 
Open, free, exhilaration, 
Laughter, fun and happiness, 
This place holds my most treasured memories. 

This poem touched all three of us. As our overall project involves using Wordsworth's poetry to connect with schoolchildren, we asked ourselves: "Why not do projects like this with the children?" So, we have added this to our curriculum of activities with hopes that by the end of the project, we can publish a book of poetry written by school children from our region.  The ideas did not stop there, however. They flourished over the weekend.

Since I have been back, I have been searching for ways to connect Wordsworth with the United States Southwest. I have looked at contemporary poets from El Paso and Mexico, as well as poets who are not contemporary but share similar ideas with Wordsworth. However, perhaps the most interesting piece of research I have come across has been William Bullock. In the 1800s, he and his son made a six-month excursion to Mexico and brought artifacts back to the Lake District to display to the public. Dorothy Wordsworth, William’s sister, mentions this in one of her letters. I think using a facsimile, which I retrieved from the Trust, and sharing that with the children will help establish a concrete connection between the two regions.

  

These connections are still growing, as are our ideas. We look forward to taking these ideas and others and practicing them in the spring with school children from the Borderland.  As with examining literature, the more I look and the more I think, the more connections between these two seemingly disparate lands come to light . . . and grow.

Until next time, cheers!

Written by Matthew Foster
Undergraduate Research Fellow, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP