A Manifesto for Chesil by Sarah Acton

I stand witness to myself through words, work, research, practice, passions, projects, actions, empathy.

I tend the fire at the altar of my soul’s own reckoning. Priestess work. Focus. One fire.

I protect and serve this place, this life-force, origins, all that is in my power to serve.

If all communications and intentions live on as waves through the universe, I mouth words like soundspells accountable for their ripples and echoes.

I share and learn generously with communities through the concept of Dynamic Equilibrium* for creative resilience and collective well-being, and tend to mine.

I seek creative partners to collaborate with courage, trust, wind oboes, treasure maps, kindness in ebb and in flood. Summon long-lifespan energies and reach.

I quest adventure, friends to stir disruption and play like wild elements.

I acknowledge memory in multiple dimensions, where the collective power to make change lies. I will gather, collect, create, unafraid of storms that will pass through.

I join forces with the horizon, distance from above.

Voice is inherited, connected to all the joys, all the sufferings, all sorrowful shames and prayers and guilts. They all remain to hold the shape, I understand this.

Whatever the response, here I return between earth, sky and sea.

I will write as if time has run out.

Long miles on the shingle ridge, each step forwards slow and gradual.

How do we continue? Hope.

Flow and momentum towards the sea and seasons.

Author good news and listen.

I Robin Hood ambition to give to the future, stretch towards joy, and story this small path to meet you as widely and as generously as I dare hold your attention.

***

Sarah Acton is a poet, oral history writer and community theatre-maker drawn to the sea, maritime culture and myth.  She is the author of Seining Along Chesil. Sarah’s writing is inspired by how we shape narratives in collective and individual memory, the lens of myth, and sense of belonging to and of landscape – drawing on a passion for poetics and the living voice, rhythms and dialect. Her work  also takes the form of participatory events, poetry walks and  performance, such as the ‘Heart of Stone’ community project on Portland which brings together local communities in co-creative theatre-making that celebrates folk culture. Her most recent project is ‘Caught in the Net’, a community play celebrating Dorset mackerel, music and dance. Read more on her website.

* This is the force that redistributes balance and reforms itself again after a storm disrupts the beach at Chesil.