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The Making of a Trug Poem by Crystal Bennett
Introduction
Sometimes another voice sees your work in a way you cannot see it yourself.
This poem, The Making of a Trug, was written by my friend, a spoken word poet, after spending time with me in the workshop. Their words capture the rhythm of copper nails, the breath of steam, and the quiet conversation between wood and maker.
It feels like an echo of the traditions I practice every day — shipwrights’ methods, Fenland skies, and the meditative flow of slow craft.
The shipwright’s land of Fen and clinker’s yard
Begins to blink and colour in morning shards
Where moving through the air in graceful lines
Nods Norfolk reed, agreeing with the time
Inside, head’s nod or shake sees wood appraised
Now ash, now walnut wait one maker’s grade
And once acquainted, conversation sparking
Wood to maker, starting, ending, starting
So from these two connecting points is riven
A pulse of natural law, a hammer’s tap, a rhythm
Now hand, now heart, now eye must joining tether
If one small sum is wrong, the parts won’t pull together
On workshop bench the wood sees mille feuille rendering
And steam box resting fibres soften, slow, as if remembering
Old ways and forms and lines of clinker boats
With planks o’erlapping, held by nails and roves
Purest copper, gleaming, sings each line
From ancient boatman’s ditties to remind
The singer that they are the song
The craft by practiced hand, in measures short and long
Now holds the maker tools, old faithful friends
Each knows the ways to make the pieces bend
To where the maker wants the lines to flow
The workshop clam’rous clanking - there they go!
Trug’s ash and walnut bend to will at last
With copper nails and roves to hold them fast
And so for purpose fit and fine they go
Now kitchen table, now forager’s arm, now evening fire’s glow
