Caroline Bergvall and Rishi Dastidar among writers to join Daniel Kramb for launch of Little Estuaries ‘poetry bench’ in the Thames estuary
A first shot of wood-burning artist Fawn Brinkley’s work
Little Estuaries will go “from paperback to bench” when six poems from the collection, published by The New Menard Press in 2023, are engraved into a stacked timber structure at the Thameside Nature Discovery Park this month.
To launch the ‘poetry bench’, the New Menard Press author will be joined by writers and collaborators Caroline Bergvall, Rishi Dastidar, Gareth Evans, Lucia Dove, and two fellow New Menard Press writers: Jessica Taggart Rose (The river has no colour, 2024) and Rose Ravetz (Wind, Tide & Oar, 2024).
The free event, on 28 June 2025, 3pm, will take place as part of the Estuary Festival’s Estuary Anthology programme.
The poetry intervention was originally commissioned by art organisation Metal, as part of the SEEPark project, which has been taken on by Essex Wildlife Trust. Thameside Nature Discovery Park, which was once landfill, is a habitat for coastal and wetland wildlife, grassland flora and fauna species. It offers spectacular views of the estuary landscape.
The stacked timber structure in the Thameside Nature Discovery Park
Elte Rauch, publisher, The New Menard Press, said: “Little Estuaries takes you to your own inner ebb and flow and tides returning, and we’re excited that some of these poems are now being placed, in such a powerful way, into the landscape that inspired them.”
Thea Berman, Director, Estuary Festival said: “The Thames Estuary has been a place of inspiration for writers and poets for centuries, so it couldn't be more fitting to have this beautiful seating area engraved with Daniel Kramb's evocative Little Estuaries, so that for many years to come visitors can contemplate the stunning view and these evocative and playful artworks.”
Jimmy Allan, Thameside Nature Discovery Park, said: “The addition of Daniel’s lyrical interpretation of the environment adds a whole new level of appreciation for this scarred landscape.”
The poems will be burnt onto the stacked timber structure by the local pyrographer Fawn Brinkley.
About Estuary Festival
Estuary 2025 (21-29 June 2025) is the 3rd edition of the contemporary arts festival celebrating the stories, places and people of the Estuary. Through the theme of ‘Vessels’, Estuary 2025 looks beyond the boats and ships of the Thames Estuary, to explore how communities, people, flora, fauna and even art events might be thought of as vessels too, carrying stories, memories and ideas. https://www.estuaryfestival.com @estuaryfestival
About the participating writers
Caroline Bergvall is an award-winning writer, artist and performer, whose work explores multilingual identities, translocal exchanges, and histories of cultural belonging through a number of different artforms, media and languages. Renowned for her innovative approach to collaboration, Bergvall has a strong interest in interdisciplinary work, and her pieces are often developed through the exploration of material traces, literary document and historical languages. Projects include performances, installations, books, audio pieces, net-based work, graphic and printed work. Recent projects including Conference of the Birds, Night & Refuge and the interviews for her Language Stations all place a strong emphasis on working publicly with a conversation-led approach as part of a practice of collaborative discovery and connection.
Rishi Dastidar’s poetry has been published by the Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC, amongst many others. His third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize, and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He reviews poetry for The Guardian and is chair of Wasafiri. His latest publication is A hobby of mine (Broken Sleep Books).
Gareth Evans is a London-based writer, curator, producer, publisher and event host. He works on special projects for the London Review of Books.
Lucia Dove is a writer based between Southend-on-Sea, Essex, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her creative nonfiction book VLOED was published by Dunlin Press in 2021. She has published two poetry pamphlets, The Prize (Legitimate Snack, 2022) and Say cucumber (Broken Sleep Books, 2019).
Jessica Taggart Rose is a poet and performer concerned with humanity, nature and how they interact. Her debut pamphlet, The river has no colour, was released in Europe in December 2024 with The New Menard Press. It will be officially released in the UK in June 2025. Her work has been published in Wind, Tide and Oar, Letters to the Earth, Flora/Fauna, New Contexts and Wild Weather anthologies, Confluence Magazine and a range of zines. She’s a founding member of Poets for the Planet and an Artful Scribe Creative Writer Against Coastal Waste. Jess lives by the sea in Margate, where she’s part of the Margate Bookie lit fest team and runs Margate Stanza.
Rose Ravetz is a global sailor and maritime professional whose adventurous career began at nineteen, when she ‘hitchhiked’ to New Zealand on sailing vessels. Since then, she has sailed extensively as professional crew, worked as a traditional rigger—including on the historic Cutty Sark—and restored her own 23-foot boat. More recently, she co-produced and featured in the theatrically released film Wind, Tide & Oar and contributed to the eponymous anthology published by The New Menard Press, both of which explore the artistry of engineless sailing and humanity’s relationship with the extra-human world. Currently studying Philosophy at the University of Essex, Rose is motivated by a passion for understanding and addressing the ecological challenges of our time.
About the pyropgrapher
Fawn Brinkley is a pyrographer based in Essex. She practices the art form of woodburning, a technique that involves using a heated tip (metal) to create designs into wood, or other various materials. She began this hobby during lockdown, utilising her time in a creative way and has since been specialising in animal portraiture and typography, while studying for a design degree.