Commissions

Crescent Swift (commissioned poem)

I was commissioned by Sophie Hayles, CEO of the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, to write a poem about the swift for the Belfast Book Festival (2022). The common swift, Apus apus, migrates between Africa and Eurasia, and the Crescent Arts Centre is home to one of the largest swift colonies in Ireland.

The migration of swifts connects Europe and Africa today, but also hints at the memory of Pangaea, when the continents touched. Swifts evolved during the Eocene, almost 50 million years ago, when life was diversifying into new habitat. I thought about all of this, and about the swift’s commitment to flight and return. It seemed that the shape of a swift’s body, which can also that of a crescent, was the right shape for the poem. A concrete poem emerged to let the words lift off.

The poem, “Crescent Swift”, was launched on 16 June 2022, at “Flying Home: the World of Swifts”, a conversation between myself and Sarah Gibson, author of Swifts and Us, as part of that year’s Belfast Book Festival. It was mounted as a permanent installation in February 2023 at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast.

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