In mid-2021 The Sciku Project teamed up with the Literature and Science Hub at the University of Liverpool to run the ‘Research in Verse Poetry Competition’, open to staff and postgraduate research students across the university to submit poems about their research subject. The competition saw poems addressing all sorts of topics, ranging from gravity to slavery to life in the lab.
Second prize was won by Dr Katy Roscoe for her poem ‘Progress’:
Progress
The scratching and scraping of steel on rock,
In concert our muscles, they crunch and creak.
Slow inch by inch we chisel out the dock,
Ankles bound in irons, the hulls in teak.
Wiping sweat from my brow, I gaze afore:
I’m dazzled – bright sun, blue sky, white lime.
Ocean’s eternity returns ashore,
An excess of brightness ¬– like hope – can blind.
Night falls, men drive us into beached ships,
Dank air, sodden bodies, yellow fever.
Vessels for human cargo turned crypts,
If my body holds out, I will leave here.
Will I be able to retrieve the past,
Or will that monolith be all that lasts?
Background
My research is about convicts who quarried stone to build the naval dockyard at Bermuda, an Atlantic archipelago. Around 9,000 British and Irish men, many poor and starving, were transported there from 1842-63. Prisoners slept in decommissioned ships (hulks) which were dirty and crowded. Over 1200 men died there from effects of hard labour and yellow fever. Some went temporarily blind (opthamalia) from sunlight reflecting off limestone. “Retrieve the past” is a quote from a convict’s letter (1857). He hoped to be released under a “Ticket-of-Leave” in Australia, where he could earn an honest living, rather than return home.
Dr Katherine (Katy) Roscoe is a historical criminologist at the University of Liverpool with research interests centred on global mobilities, unfree labour and racial inequalities, with a particular focus on mid-nineteenth century crime and punishment in Britain and its former empire. You can connect with her on Twitter here: @KatyARoscoe