Workshop: poetry in the watery commons with Katy Lewis Hood

Delve deep with poet and researcher Katy Lewis Hood in this creative poetry workshop exploring the submerged histories of Royal Albert Wharf. This workshop is part of Common Distributions.

Can we use poetry to rethink our social and environmental life in the docks?

The Royal Docks were dug from drained marshlands between three of London’s rivers. Transforming this waterscape into docklands let capital and empire flow through the city. This flow of wealth, relying on racial and colonial violence, dispossession, and extraction, transformed the waters and the lives of people elsewhere. From Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, to the Royal Docks Impounding Station, to Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works, we can see how water and waste infrastructures still hold together everyday life in this watery place.

This workshop will explore different ways of sensing the many layers of this space: you are welcome to make notes or drawings, collect objects, record voice memos – whatever feels like a good way of documenting your experience. En-marshed in the watery docklands, we will pay attention to submerged histories and changing environments. Be prepared for conversations, creative mapping exercises and poetic experiments. We will be inspired by the work of Stephen Watts, Nat Raha, and Larry Achiampong.

Together, we will think creatively about the waters we carry with us into this space:

How are waters distributed through bodies (human and nonhuman)?

Where can we find water in infrastructures, memories, cultures, and weathers?

What might a watery commons look like (and sound like, and feel like) in this space? And how could such a commons be oriented around social and environmental justice and collective care?

This project is part of London Festival of Architecture, exploring public play as part of this year’s theme ‘In Common’.

About Katy Lewis Hood

Katy Lewis Hood is a poet and researcher from the Midlands (UK), currently living on the waters of East London. Katy’s work is concerned with how poetic practices can respond to watery environments transformed by colonialism, racial capitalism, and ecological crisis. In conversation with others, they seek to generate anti-colonial, feminist and queer approaches to living in and with bodies of water, and to share creative practices oriented around play, experiment, and collaboration.

For more of Katy’s work, see the online eco-poetry magazine amberflora (co-founded with the poet Pratyusha) and the collaborative poetic research project @coneffluents (with poet/biologist Jac Common). 

Access information  

This building has step-free access from street level, with accessible toilets available next door. This venue does not have a hearing loop system.  

Transport Information  

Opening hours: Friday – Saturday 12 – 4pm
Nearest station(s): Gallions Reach (DLR)
Bus: 101, 262, 474
Parking: No parking available
Bike: Limited lockable rings bike parking available.