English Study, 2004, Recollections
Having grown up in the greater Bangor, Maine area and choosing to go to college near my parent's house, I felt the need to get out and explore another part of the world in my junior year of advanced education; therefore, when I was 21, I traveled to northern England to study abroad in the Newcastle-upon-Tyne / Sunderland area of Durham county. It's supposedly the area from which George Washington's relatives emigrated.
I do not know why I chose that area in particular, something about being in northern England sounded unknown to me. I wanted to know more about the world, and I had enjoyed England when I visited the country and our relatives there with my parents four years prior.
That fall, I lived in a dormitory located near the University of Sunderland, the school I attended full-time as a student. Sunderland is a northern England city that used to have functioning boat-building, coal, and glasswork industries. After those industries collapsed (though the glasswork still exists but in a smaller, more craft-driven way), the area suffered because many families existed off jobs at the boat-building yards. The city itself was blue-collar, and there were many neighborhoods that visibly had fallen on hard times.
I remember how in some backyards, people had their properties 'fenced' in with concrete walls. Atop the concrete walls were shards of glass sticking out. They had been placed there when the concrete was still wet. The glass was meant as a pigeon deterrent. It was visually striking, especially on a cold morning when the light came in from behind the clouds and struck a piece of glass not far from the shape of an isosceles triangle.
In addition to being an English major, I was also a fine arts major, and I took full opportunity of photographing strange things I saw while I was there.
My flatmates were actually a bunch of random other American students, hailing in from Washington, Kansas, Ohio, Illinois. I liked them all for different reasons, though I particularly bonded with a girl from Athens, Ohio, named Michelle Maynard. She's visible in the close-up of the lighthouse below.
She was studying to be an art teacher, and chose to do her art teaching assistant-ship abroad in Sunderland, England. She told me she had been a smoker but had quit before she came to England; however, after stepping in the classroom for one day at the school she'd been placed in, she quickly returned to the cigarette. She was an excellent friend to have made there. We traveled to Amsterdam, Rome, and Paris together.
The photo above is a picture I took in Sunderland. Someone had thrown the shopping cart into a fountain-pool. I ended up using this image to create an etching when I returned to Maine, but I really enjoy the contrast of the metal 'trolley' against the texture of the water. I also enjoyed those candy bars advertised on the front of the cart, "Aero" bars, which had little air pockets inbetween all the chocolate that constituted the bar. These photos are all from the year 2004. I remember this because it was also the year when the Red Sox finally won the world series, and I was in another country and missed it.
Here is a photo that my relative George Quirk took of me when we were visiting the poet/writer William Wordsworth's house in the Lake District of England. Here I am standing in front of the house.
We were on our way to Sunderland, and George and his wife Barbara, knowing I really enjoyed English literature (poetry and writing of the Romantic period in particular) so kindly took me to his cottage to catch a glimpse into the life of that prolific, early 19th century writer. The entire Lake District was beautiful beyond words, and, when I looked out from the window in Wordsworth's writing room, it was easy to see why his writing was so beautiful. It was writing that described the land he saw, and his relationship to it. My belief was because the land was so beautiful, any descriptive poem trying to encapsulate its energy had no way of not being beautiful and unique. See book one of Wordsworth's poem, The Prelude of 1799, below:
I do not know why I chose that area in particular, something about being in northern England sounded unknown to me. I wanted to know more about the world, and I had enjoyed England when I visited the country and our relatives there with my parents four years prior.
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| This is a photo I took near a lighthouse on the shores of the North Sea. It is really close to the border of Sunderland (to the south) and Newcastle (to the north). Sunderland is on the east coast of Britain, and is awakened by cold gusts that blow in from Scandinavia via this body of water. |
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| Photo: 'The Bridges' of Sunderland, England set over the Monkwearmouth River |
That fall, I lived in a dormitory located near the University of Sunderland, the school I attended full-time as a student. Sunderland is a northern England city that used to have functioning boat-building, coal, and glasswork industries. After those industries collapsed (though the glasswork still exists but in a smaller, more craft-driven way), the area suffered because many families existed off jobs at the boat-building yards. The city itself was blue-collar, and there were many neighborhoods that visibly had fallen on hard times.
I remember how in some backyards, people had their properties 'fenced' in with concrete walls. Atop the concrete walls were shards of glass sticking out. They had been placed there when the concrete was still wet. The glass was meant as a pigeon deterrent. It was visually striking, especially on a cold morning when the light came in from behind the clouds and struck a piece of glass not far from the shape of an isosceles triangle.
In addition to being an English major, I was also a fine arts major, and I took full opportunity of photographing strange things I saw while I was there.
This is a photograph I took while walking home to the dorm one night in Sunderland. You can see the houses in the background were on the smaller side, and the style of them didn't shift much from what's visible. Row after row of houses like that constituted the streets. Oddly enough, the truck parked in front of a house had that mannequin's head stuck upon it. Even weirder was the red pigment that someone had smeared around the the neck. I took out a Nikon Coolpix digital camera and snapped a shot of it.
My flatmates were actually a bunch of random other American students, hailing in from Washington, Kansas, Ohio, Illinois. I liked them all for different reasons, though I particularly bonded with a girl from Athens, Ohio, named Michelle Maynard. She's visible in the close-up of the lighthouse below.
She was studying to be an art teacher, and chose to do her art teaching assistant-ship abroad in Sunderland, England. She told me she had been a smoker but had quit before she came to England; however, after stepping in the classroom for one day at the school she'd been placed in, she quickly returned to the cigarette. She was an excellent friend to have made there. We traveled to Amsterdam, Rome, and Paris together.
Here is a photo that my relative George Quirk took of me when we were visiting the poet/writer William Wordsworth's house in the Lake District of England. Here I am standing in front of the house.
We were on our way to Sunderland, and George and his wife Barbara, knowing I really enjoyed English literature (poetry and writing of the Romantic period in particular) so kindly took me to his cottage to catch a glimpse into the life of that prolific, early 19th century writer. The entire Lake District was beautiful beyond words, and, when I looked out from the window in Wordsworth's writing room, it was easy to see why his writing was so beautiful. It was writing that described the land he saw, and his relationship to it. My belief was because the land was so beautiful, any descriptive poem trying to encapsulate its energy had no way of not being beautiful and unique. See book one of Wordsworth's poem, The Prelude of 1799, below:
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| Derwent River |
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| Wordsworth's Cottage |
Book One, the Prelude of 1799 (excerpt)
Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song,
And from his alder shades, and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou
O Derwent, traveling over the green plains
Near my "sweet birth-place," didst thou beauteous Stream
Make ceaseless music through the night and day,
Which with its steady cadence tempering [1.10]
Our human waywardness, composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Among the fretful dwellings of mankind,
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song,
And from his alder shades, and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou
O Derwent, traveling over the green plains
Near my "sweet birth-place," didst thou beauteous Stream
Make ceaseless music through the night and day,
Which with its steady cadence tempering [1.10]
Our human waywardness, composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Among the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A knowledge, a dim earnest of the calm
Which Nature breathes among the fields and groves?
Beloved Derwent! Fairest of all Streams!
Was it for this that I, a four year's child,
A naked Boy, among thy silent pools
Made one long bathing of a summer's day?
Basked in the sun, or plunged into thy stream's [1.20]
Alternate, all a summer's day, or coursed
Over the sandy fields, and dashed the flowers
Of yellow grunsel, or whom crag and hill,
The woods and distant Skiddaw's lofty height
Were bronzed with a deep radiance, stood alone,
A naked Savage in the thunder shower?
And afterwards, 'twas in a later day
Though early, when upon the mountain-slope
The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapped
The last autumnal crocus, 'twas my joy [1.30]
To wander half the night among the cliffs
And the smooth hollows, where the woodcocks ran
Along the moonlight turf. In thought and wish,
That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,
I was a fell destroyer.
Which Nature breathes among the fields and groves?
Beloved Derwent! Fairest of all Streams!
Was it for this that I, a four year's child,
A naked Boy, among thy silent pools
Made one long bathing of a summer's day?
Basked in the sun, or plunged into thy stream's [1.20]
Alternate, all a summer's day, or coursed
Over the sandy fields, and dashed the flowers
Of yellow grunsel, or whom crag and hill,
The woods and distant Skiddaw's lofty height
Were bronzed with a deep radiance, stood alone,
A naked Savage in the thunder shower?
And afterwards, 'twas in a later day
Though early, when upon the mountain-slope
The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapped
The last autumnal crocus, 'twas my joy [1.30]
To wander half the night among the cliffs
And the smooth hollows, where the woodcocks ran
Along the moonlight turf. In thought and wish,
That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,
I was a fell destroyer.
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