The Space in Mill Bay

Millbay, Saturday 3 August 2024

Samedi.

A decade has passed since Sam Ferguson published his question* on the innovative story by André Gide, called, Paludes. In English that book title could be rendered as Swamps, or, Sourpool, perhaps. Plymouth's Sourpool is recorded in 1439 when the town's boundary was fixed during its incorporation as a Devon borough. The record reads ‘between the hill called Windy Ridge – by the bank of the Sourpool – against the north all the way to the great dyke otherwise called the great ditch’. 

Damp, mossy, ferny, even swampy boundaries blurred the edges of the space we call Millbay today.

Paludes occupies a critical point of experimentation in the trajectory of published diary-writing […] exploring the possible relationship of the diary with the literary œuvre, and its capacity for addressing philosophical and aesthetic questions. The pertinence of this experimentation to the modern field of life-writing makes this a suitable moment for another rediscovery of this text" (Sam Ferguson in 2014).

 

Boul’Mille’

In order to explore the emerging European space of Millbay in Plymouth, I chose Paludes and its new English version, called Marshlands, to be my literary guide-books. Millbay Boulevard was open by the summer of 2021. Beneath the new European boulevard, a space was made for the Sourpool. With Interreg funding, rain gardens were dug and planted to handle the rising sea level and increased flooding.

The Marriott hotel chain opened a new branded venue, which you can see in the distance in this photograph above, which I took of the sign for the Boul’Mille’. And, up on the hotel’s car park, which would have been part of the old Millbay railway station, Marriott have very thoughtfully planted silver birch and pine trees. Please see picture below …

The Moxy Hotel opened on 13 June 2023, and I took the photograph below from the front steps of the old Duke of Cornwall Hotel to capture the full vista of where Millbay Station, or Plymouth M.B. would have stood. My picture shows the full panorama of the new hotel.  My photo, below, is dated and timed at 12:44 19 July 2023, to give it its full diary entry for future reference. 

Dialogue Journaling

My dated and timed diary-keeping is the foundation for a type of writing practice we call, dialogue journaling. Acting as researchers and as visitors, we explore urban spaces that are re-emerging, and that are trying to connect with nature through planting and ethnobotany, From the mass of entries in the journal notebooks and through meeting and talking with other visitors and people who work there, I store a huge and rich resource of narrative knowledge. I can draw on that to prepare formal research, but it also works as a foundation for literary place-making.

Lots of social media connections bring the research into the present tense. Making new discoveries, checking facts and allowing us to recommend places to visit, see and eat. For example, during my writing, I discovered the amazing ethnobotany work of Flax Project CIC through a one-day workshop on Union Street, Millbay.  This citizen science also lets you name-check and ask readers of the blog to give support with a Follow or a Like on Facebook to our new friends:

Flax Project CIC and Ana Teaches French

Lots of fieldwork helps me notice places not normally seen, for instance this little piece of French, almost hidden just below the level of the pavement. Do you know where this is?

The Story

In late spring this year (2024), I spent more time closely reading Marshlands, and more of Sam Ferguson’s writing on André Gide; Gide won the 1947 Nobel Prize for literature. I began to find literary clues in Gide’s life and novels that deserved to be collected into a story format for other visitors to this dockside part of Plymouth.

With a regular Brittany Ferries service from Roscoff, France to Millbay, my story, or récit, I felt ought to be in French. Our French-speaking visitors could then read the story during their ferry crossing. Once installed in the Moxy or the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, they could try to find the places mentioned and spot the clues to Gide’s books. Literary clues are spaces left in a story for readers to fill with their discoveries and their own thoughts.

How would the story start?  Standing on the top step of the that old hotel, évidemment ... 

j'avais mon exemplaire de Paludes avec moi, et même si le livre me troublait, le relire me rassurait. Je restai longtemps debout sur la plus haute marche de l'hôtel Duke of Cornwall ... 

______________

Tuesday 8th October 2024 was the launch event with Exeter UNESCO City of Literature at Exeter Library, some pictures from the evening:

Ysella Sims, Swarnim Agrawal and Charles Mansfield at the launch in Exeter Library 

Ysella Sims - you can follow Ysella's writing on Substack at ysella.substack.com

You can read more about Swarnim Agrawal on her portfolio site at swarnimagrawal.my.canva.site

Please give a link back to my magazine blog from your site with this address  https://travelwritersonline.blogspot.com/

References

*Sam Ferguson (2014). André Gide's Paludes: A Diary Novel? French Studies, Volume 68, Issue 1, January 2014, pp. 34–47.

If you would like to use the Dialogue Journaling Process Model in your own research or teaching, a detailed article and pilot study is published in this issue of JTR, below:  

Mansfield, C., Séraphin, H., Wassler, P., & Potočnik Topler, J. (2024). Travel Writing as a Tool for Sustainable Initiatives: Proposing a Dialogue Journaling Process Model. Journal of Travel Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875241269902

 

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks to Dr Sam Ferguson for encouraging this tentative step into a more literary exploration of Gide’s work, and to Anaïs Tissier for her patient guidance in using le passé simple for a more modern but less modernist audience.