The Navigators

explores the portals that connect time and place, and meditates on the element of water, as it moves through both. The book opens with rain falling in the Lake District, flowing to the South Yorkshire waterways, before arriving at the North Sea. The poems triangulate mental journeys between past, present and projected future. They draw on the dynamic physical geography of Cumbria and the East Yorkshire coast and on the life (and afterlife) of the canals of Leeds and Mexborough. The personal and historical ghosts that populate these landscapes are invoked or addressed. Versions of Apollonius, Aristophanes and Homer introduce an extra-temporal dimension, most apparent in the closing sequence of the collection, where these mythical, personal and historical threads are finally woven into one fugue-like movement. The Navigators is an affirmation of the reflection and regeneration that we find where waters meet and mingle; these literal and metaphorical thresholds offer both expedition and epiphany.