Gansey Girl
I sit and wait. I gaze, I hope, I knit.
This is my place, you can find me here
In evening shadows or early morning fret
When mist curls and the sun begins to stir
I know the shape of boat and shape of man
As well as I know my own mirror face,
My searching eye finds them, it always can
And my pulse settles to a steady pace.
For this knitting can forge a future now
Waiting with an already broken heart
Ready to be mended each day somehow,
The talisman I create in woollen art.
So I sit and wait as we have always done
Needles clicking as if dice are thrown.
The above poem, number three in my latest collection ‘Notes of Your Music’ celebrates one of my favourite objects, the Gansey Girl statue on a pier near the harbour in Bridlington. She is looking out to sea while knitting a gansey or a fisherman’s sweater. She’s wearing Victorian clothes, and seems to be waiting for husband, brother or father to return from their fishing expedition. She has no mobile phone or radio, of course, to ease her waiting.
I had been aware of the Bridlington-based artist, Stephen Carvill for some time. With his work on the Carnaby Airfield Memorial, at the Priory and new statue The Barrow Boy in the train station, Stephen has, along with the Gansey Girl, left some beautiful punctuation marks around his home town.
I slipped a copy of ‘Notes of Your Music’ through his front door just after it was published. He responded very positively and we made a plan to meet up in September when David and I had a week by the coast. It was a lovely hour or so where we forged what will be I hope will be an enduring friendship. We recognised each other’s process and creativity and our mutual love for this small historic town by the sea.
Just as I was leaving Stephen gave me a small 3D print of the Gansey Girl. The generosity of the gesture took, and is still taking, my breath away. She sits on my table half a mile from her larger, bronze incarnation and I will always treasure her.
