Ely

<p>In this experimental dream-poem a famous European cathedral literally takes off and travels - as in a Japanese animated film - calling in at the Sargasso Sea then the West Mariana Ridge in the western Pacific and on to the Transantarctic Mountains. On board are a small band of people who happen to be in the cathedral when she takes off led by a young and bemused cathedral canon. </p><p>The East Anglian Fenland - especially as it was in early medieval times - lies deep within the cathedral's sense of herself and her people as she travels the globe. But she isn't all local memory; her twenty-first-century almost-silent Octagon <em>engyn </em>powers her and her crew on a tour through geological and historic time.</p><p>In her newfound freedom the cathedral gets up close and personal with Archean grey gneiss discovers eel leptocephali finds magical ancient plants in her own transept and welcomes a stowaway cat called Mrs Chippy. </p><p>Drawing on many sources of inspiration including Geoffrey Chaucer's <em>The House of Fame</em> this poem is surreal intricate and sometimes comic. </p>