Windjammer: A Poem for the SS Great Britain

In 2024 poet Beth Calverley visited the SS Great Britain with her poetry machine and spent a day speaking to our visitors, hearing their experiences of being on board the ship. By weaving their conversations into the things she learned about SSGB's real-life passengers, she produced the original poem 'Windjammer'. The full text of Beth's poem can be read below:

Windjammer

I went through a bad time. I held on so tight,
hold fast was tattooed on my insides.

I forgot my gallop of flags - no hooves running high.
The lucky coin in my mast-step lost its shine.

How had I run aground again?
I longed for home, sea-sick for the first time.

I wanted to turn straight back and catch
the first tide home to love. My hull sighed rust.

They called me an old iron pot, a windjammer,
the clipped albatross of Sparrow Cove.

Then I thought of the icebergs I'd side-stepped,
the snowstorms I'd felt on my weather deck,

the fogs of more than a million sea-miles.
I remembered my spine is a skylight.

I laughed, a low slow laugh,
thinking about the goat let loose one night

and years of voices shouting this lavatory is occupied!
I thought of the sail-makers who gave me wings,

the stewards who gleamed my pride,
the cooks who simmered my saucepan lids,

the bakers who baked the only good smell,
the lamp-trimmers who kept me alight,

the boilermakers, nicknamed idlers, despite 
the toll of coal on their young lives,

the surgeons who soothed the rope-burns of sailors
who taught me how to hold on tight.

I tried to remember the signal flags. One came to mind:
affirmative. Yes, that's who I am - affirmative,

built to keep spirits running high, a floating town,
strangers thrown close as neighbours by the tide.

I was engineered to care, the healthiest ship,
defying the norms of my time.

Visitors, I listen to your voices now. I learn.
I've rusted long enough to regret

the colonial growth my owners propelled
and how the souls on board were treated differently.

Some dined and danced in my gilt saloon,
some tore their hair out in hot trapped gloom.

Strange - to me they always weighed the same.
You learn from me too, from my good and bad days.

A dad whose father worked at sea
points out the baby's cry, the captain's responsibility.

Brothers who fight over top bunks
agree how cramped it must have been.

A football player pictures the pitch of rigging,
screaming to her team-mates in the wind.

I show you passengers as real as you - 
as full of worries, complaints and hope.

I show you hope is an orange after weeks of salted pork,
a notice saying wanted: to borrow a sea-flute.

Most of all it's that top deck view,
regardless of first class or steerage, feeling on the top bunk of the world.

Remember, it takes more than one pair of arms
to turn the wheel in a storm. If you need help, ask.

Windjammers, take your time. We don't need to get there fast
to feel the wind in our sails at last.

Our retail team were keen to collaborate with local artists to create a piece of commemorative chinaware. We wanted a product which could play a useful role in people's homes, as well as reminding them of their visit to this historic ship which changed so many people's lives. 

The Windjammer mug is a result of a collaboration between two women: Beth, the poet and Bev, the ceramics artist.

Beth Calverley is a poet, performer, creative guide, and founder of The Poetry Machine. Beth is fascinated by the way we express emotions, particularly the less easily identifiable mixed emotions everyone experiences. Beth takes her poetry machine to places of work, hospitals, schools, heritage sites and more, collaborating with the people she meets to create unique poetry. You can read more about Beth at her website.

Bev Milward is a ceramics artist based in Bristol, who is interested in the emotional impact that commemorative chinaware can have. She uses remainder chinaware, made in Stoke, to produce limited ranges of unique pieces. She designs the ceramic transfers herself, then applies them by hand before firing in her solar-powered kiln. You can find out more about Bev's art here.