Paul O’Prey’s Fleet takes the form of a pilgrimage along the course of the buried River Fleet, from the springs on Hampstead Heath, down through the busy streets of north London, to its meeting with the tidal Thames below Blackfriar’s Bridge.
The once ‘silvery’ River Fleet is forced underground for most of its life and so is said to be ‘lost’. But it is still there, running beneath the busy streets of North London, to be heard and glimpsed now only through slatted storm-drains on Georgiana Street and Ray Street.
’Tracing the course of the River Fleet, Paul O’Prey takes the reader on a darkly fascinating journey: a ghost-walk, in which the poet gives a deeply felt account of the Fleet’s history, its myths, its old gods and its mysteries. This lyrical limnology flows as the hidden river flows – itself but also a version of itself, the river’s own dream life.’
– David Harsent
Published by The Melos Press
ISBN: 9781838170134
24 pp
