Email: There to stimulate

Published: Monday, 14 January 2013

The swelling mini-furore over lines of verse on lock beams does not surprise me. The world is full of utilitarian philistines happy to clamour for more bread while shunning circuses, and I guess the boating world is no different.

Your heart has to sing as well as merely pump, otherwise your life is going to lack a dimension. Poetry is there to stimulate and delight; if you're a person immune to these human faculties, that's a shame.

I've not seen the costs of poetry generation and inscription—nor do I wish to—but the presence of a canal Laureate, and of partnerships with vision that dare to look beyond the necessary but humdrum items of infrastructure that concern us all, gives me some hope for the future of our waterways!

Sincerely and in mere prose,

Suzanne MacLeod