Marshland: Marsh as muse

Marsh as muse

Wide and flat.....green and brown...windy and battered....alive with the sound of geese and insects....silent, still, quiet and brooding.... These are some of the words and phrases used to describe the marsh by those who watch its ever-changing face. The marsh continues to play the role of muse, a goddess or power that can inspire creative work. The landscape itself, including the human structures such as hay barns that were increasingly falling into a state of ruin, serves to provide inspiration to the local and regional arts community. Mount Allison University and community arts groups have offered courses and summer institutes based on marsh landscape themes. Others have explored them on their own terms. These new voices force us to focus on the longer history of this landscape and those who have shaped it. In this section we provide documents and publications produced by selected local and regional authors, poets, artists, photographers, playwrights, and people inspired by the Tantramar Marshes. Many more works are in existence and many more wait to be written, painted, photographed, and performed.

Here, right where my foot takes weight,

what Acadian sweated and froze in the

ever-wind to make these dykes? There is

a sense of history here and all

across this marsh.

- Douglas Lochhead, "September 2", High Marsh Road (Toronto, 1980)

Click on the documents below to learn more.