On Friday 11 April at 11am we will be near the 'Theatre of the Sea' on the prom at Southsea Castle for the unveiling of a poem on the sea walls by the Poet Laureate, including Cllr Pitt and the Lord Mayor. The poem is titled 'Theatre of the Sea'
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00:00The performance is never the same one day to the next.
00:04A cruise ship enters stage left, or a gull swoops down and steals the sea.
00:10What song the weather will sing is anyone's guess.
00:14The moon's reflection understudies the full moon,
00:18and at noon the sun delivers its big speech,
00:22costumed in flowy robes, and still gets outshun
00:26by the extras and bit parts of the yachts and clouds.
00:32Beyond the orchestra pit of the seawall, the hovercraft sashays in for its curtain call.
00:39But maybe you're the real star of the show,
00:43playing your true self, watched from a balcony sky,
00:47lit by the footlights of coast and shore.
00:51You stand to leave, and the waves rise to the floor.
00:56A lot's changed in the forty years since I was a student,
01:00and I've changed a lot as well.
01:03So it felt like something of a reunion, really, coming back to the city.
01:08And I used to spend a lot of time down here as a student,
01:11playing football on the common and walking along the seafront here.
01:15But I hadn't seen the poem in situ until I got here today.
01:20And I just think they've done a really amazing job.
01:23It looks really professional.
01:25It looks as if it's a natural part of the furniture of this area.
01:30It's made out of ship's brass, which is very fitting.
01:33And it looks like it's built to last.
01:35So I'm really pleased with it.
01:37For more future generations to come and see it.
01:40And so how does that make you feel to be part of that course of history?
01:45So I was studying geography when I was a student here,
01:49but secretly I was reading poetry.
01:51And I think what's nice about this is that I've come back to the city,
01:57and I've put poetry into the geography.
02:00So it feels like the coming together of two things that were,
02:05you know, for a while quite separate.
02:07It's a huge honour to be asked to write a poem,
02:12especially if that poem is being put into the landscape
02:16in front of people who might just be strolling along.
02:19And I sort of think that's where poetry works best,
02:23when it's unexpected, when you're not anticipating it.
02:27So I hope that people will get enjoyment from the poem.
02:32And it's been arranged to face this amphitheatre
02:36where people can sit and look and read it or not read it
02:40if they don't want to, just stare at the sea.
02:42So, yeah, it really feels like it's found a natural home here.
02:47Excellent.
02:48And I understand that there was a lot of preparations
02:50behind the film as well.
02:51Could you tell us a little bit about that in regards to how you've played it?
02:55What?
02:56A little bit about the tonic itself?
02:58Yeah, these things don't write themselves.
03:01I came for a look around, well, I came two or three times,
03:05and as soon as I saw the location, I knew what I wanted to talk about.
03:10People have been using this phrase, the theatre of the sea,
03:13in connection with that bank of stone benches behind.
03:17And I think straight away I just had the idea that, you know,
03:21there's something very dramatic going on out there that changes every hour.
03:25And I wanted to write about that.
03:27But then I wanted to flip the poem over at the end,
03:30so that the sea and the landscape became the audience,
03:34and you were on stage.
03:35You became the star of the show.
03:37And I suppose there's something in the poem about self-worth,
03:42value in yourself, especially if you're, you know,
03:45connecting with nature and the outdoors.
03:48So, yeah, and also I noticed when I was here that there were 14 sections of wall
03:54that could be read from the amphitheatre,
03:56so straight away I was thinking that that'll be a sonnet.