‘Weaving Coventry' by Kim Hackleman, 2020
‘Weaving Coventry’ can be found in the Upper Precinct of Coventry’s city centre. The letters of the poem have been embossed in granite and are situated inside the rills, small decorative water channels located in the planters. The poem begins in the planter nearest Broadgate, weaves between the rills and traverses the newer fountains in the middle, before coming to an end in the planter closest to the round fountain at the crossing of and Market Way.
The arrangement of the planters, as well as the rills, was inspired by Coventry’s silk ribbon weaving history. The poem itself reflects on Coventry’s weaving heritage, and how the lives of the city’s citizens are woven together through their daily interactions. It also references the River Sherbourne, which flows through and underneath the city and was once an important resource for Coventry’s cloth industry. Both the current and historic resilience of the city’s people were an inspiration for ‘Weaving Coventry’.
Kim Hackleman is a writer and poet living and working in Coventry, who immigrated to this city from the United States of America in 2001. She is thankful to Coventry City Council for commissioning her, a local artist, to create a poem specifically to suit the new design of the public space and gratefully acknowledges the support of Theatre Absolute.
The poem is below:
The threads of Coventry
are woven together daily
by all of us who
call this city home.
Celebrate
the
many
rich
colours!
Resilient
hands,
negotiate
the
different
strands,
until
silk
becomes
ribbon.
Let us sit
side by side
at the loom.
Imagine
the design.
Create
our future!
My heart,
like the
Sherbourne,
hidden,
flows into
sea-bound
streams,
connecting
me
to you.
Set aside
work,
pause,
sit,
play.
Feel the
water run
beneath
you.
Rise,
and rise
again,
to weave.