Poetic foundations for watery terrain – three poems below Venice

Abstract

The Venetian lagoon is a geographical extremity imperilled by extreme weather events. Increasingly regular flooding endangers the lives and livelihoods of Venetians, not to mention the built and natural environments around them. In response to the documentary film Saving Venice (Bulling, 2022), I have produced a short series of poems that address the existential threat that climate change poses to Venice. The first poem refers to the MOSE sea-gates project, a feat of engineering designed to prevent catastrophic flooding of the lagoon. The second takes up the motif of the foundations of Venice, specifically the use of wooden pylons that excise oxygen and moisture and prevent the city from sinking. The third poem deals with the effects of erosion caused by shipping. This poetic work builds upon my previous creative and critical output focussed on Venice as a liminal and literary space, notable for the in-between-ness that comes from being a city built on water (Venzo, 2015; Venzo 2019; Venzo 2022). Extending this scholarship on Venice as a city both real and imagined through writing, these poems represent this watery terrain as simultaneously poetic and ecological (Bryson, 2002). Using the technique of concrete poetry (Draper, 1971; Bray, 2012), each poem syncretises these hidden elements that speak to the effects of extremity, to address the “slipperiness” of this physical environment and construct new foundations in word and image.