Photo: Charley Obo Jo
The photo is reading Ralph Hoyte’s 600m-long epic city poem ‘Walkie-Talkie’. It was written in 2004 for the Launch of Bristol Legible City. The overall concept was thought up between Ralph Hoyte and Colin Pearce, concept artist. The poem is stuck onto the fabric of the city, or as Ralph Hoyte calls it himself: “The City as Canvas”. This photo shows the renewed Millennium Square of Bristol.
Walkie-Talkie was a temporary public art and language project in conjunction with the installation of Bristol's new pedestrian signage system, now held up as an example of best practice for a city signage system.
Walkie-Talkie started on Millennium Square, then the newest part of Central Bristol and ran in an unbroken line 9cm wide for 600m – across the Square, over the Bristol buildings, along the old Ropewalk, past all the premises on Broad Quay, past the Figurehead & Ferkin pub (no longer there). Here it got drunk, fell into the water and emerged round the gunwales of two Bristol Ferry Company boats. They chugged around the harbour with the poem, then, when they redocked, the poem joined up again, clambered up the Centre Waterfall, through the water features (under the water) and sprinted for the statue of Neptune.
Walkie-Talkie was a leyline of poetic energy. It was literally stuck to the fabric of Bristol with adhesive vinyls for 4 months in 2004 (tho’ the ferryboats refused to take it off, so it stayed around two of their boats for 9 months). There was minimal vandalism over its lifetime. It was a kind of alternative guide to @Bristol, engaging the onlooker with 3 voices: an historical Bristol voice; a vernacular Bristol voice (‘hullo my luverrrrr!’); and a contemporary poetic voice (mine). These three voices were interwoven, like an old ship’s rope (Bristol is an old seaport, though actually on a river, the Avon).
> See also: Bristol Legible City
Bristol CityPoem: Walkie-Talkie, Ralph Hoyte
Three extracts from the poem:
String 'em from the yardarm! Er, on second thoughts, string ‘em along instead. Visitor, air yourself. ‘Pause to hear the air vibrating’. Wander r o u n d the corner. Wonder round the corner? Stand and gape at “a genuine city, an ancient metropolis. And as you walk about it, you can wonder and admire. The place has an air (JB Priestley). This organism, this living, beating heart of a city, this thousand year personal(c)ity, this place we live, love, leave, come back to, William Cobbett’s “great commercial city in the midst of cornfields, meadows and woods and the ships coming in to the centre of it, miles from anything like the sea” (1830); your city: here be cathedrals, churches, cycle lanes, honest injuns, vile knaves and wretches, Merchant Venturers, Friars Mendicant, Slave Trade Trails, @Bristols, Cabot Towers, Knowle Westians, Sadly Brokes, Brunel’s Suspenders Bridge, lyons, tygers, chimps, chumps, champs … what? Yes - just turn right at the top of the road, you can’t miss it. Where was I? Oh ancient of cities, we decline you: my bomb-etched visage; your wide brawny streets; his/her/its wrinkled cobblestones; our smooth-cheeked paving stones spattered with the chewing gum of youth; your (pl) varicose vein’d steps, puff, puff; their pulsing motorway and rail arteries. It’s a miracle! No it’s not Americal – it’s Bristol: past tense/future perfect.
(Extract1 from walkietalkie]
The Mayor of Bristow's entitlement to 'prisage of Ffish' in AD 1517 was: "Of evíie boate of Milwell and Lingg, of fresh camps, of Thorbecks and Tynbies, of Soles and Places, of Breames, of fresh Hake, of Haddocks, of Shades, of Mackrells, of Cockles, of Muskels and of Oysters". Gentle reader, where've they gone, then, where've they gone? Requiem for Fish: Sanctus. But no sanctuary. Oh many finned, flappered, darting ones whose watery nature broke like a salty blessing into our raging hunger our hook of greed hath thee in its barbed grip [AGNUS DEI QUI TOLLIS PECCATA MUNDI, MISERERE NOBIS] and of fish and fowl and beast there were of every kind PLOP! PLOP! PLOP! Must be the sound of a few more species dying off.
(Extract2 from walkietalkie]
clackety clack clackety clack clackety clack watch out, ghost tram! " All Change! Centre Promenade". The ancient centre of Bristol? 'The Centre' comes from "Tram Centre". Underneath is deep deep silence where surly backbones of ancient mountain crowd the city specific and swirl to dash intestinal strata. Let s/he who has ears to hear, hear my voice! Singing along lines of joy yet deep within the earth our bodies within the earth our body within... externalised in clay, o'erlaid in rubble, junk, concrete, ducting, concrete, tarmac, limestone, marble, concrete, wood, brick: Listen! Frome maidens sing in vapid rapids of incongruity. Come together and unify. Many faced city. Densify the matrix. Sing your multi-song. I repeat: Come together and unify!
(Extract3 from walkietalkie]
About the author
Ralph Hoyte is a Bristol-based poet, writer and text-based artist who works with words in a variety of contexts: live, visually and sculpturally, across art forms and in new media.
Here is Ralph Hoyte standing next to one of his other ‘City as Canvas’ projects: “PAST, PRESENT…FUCHSIA” – 134m-long hoarding-based work around Quakers Friars, Bristol for Bristol Alliance (£500m shopping centre redevelopment in centre of Bristol).
> See also: Ralph Hoyte website
Millennium Square, Bristol
Photo: sleepychinchilla
Photo: gothick_matt
Photo: All Glory To The Hypnotoad
Photo: Joe Dunckley
Millennium Square before
A view from 1996 of the GWR goods depot at Canons Marsh. This was built 1904-1906 and ended up as derelict and unused. From 2000 it became the Science Exploratory part of the 'At Bristol' development. Millennium Square is now immediately to the left of it, where the cars are parked. To the right of the tree is where the Orange Imaginearium (a large metallic reflective sphere) now is.
Inspiring Cities Museum of CityPoems The Museum of CityPoems has citypoems from cities all over the world. From Alhambra to Zonnebeke, from Taipei to Lima. Got one yourself? Mail us your pictures (free of rights) and description, and we will publish.
Inspiring Cities has collected many citypoems over the years, as well as organized salons with citypoets and cities doing special projects. We have two criteria for what a citypoem is: the intention must be poetic, and it must be in the public realm of cities. Shapes, form and locations can and do differ.