The season theme was ‘Maritime’. Sophie explored and researching Exeter’s maritime past, and contrasting how the Quay is used today. She dug out maps and charts from the city’s archives and took inspiration from people still using watercraft on the river. She will be ran free Found Poetry workshop and Sensory Mapping workshops, encouraging particpants to spark poetic creatins from the Quayside space.

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About Sophie

Sophie Dumont is a poet, copywriter and ex-canoe coach living in Bristol. She is an alumna of Exeter University and her poetry has been published widely, including in The Rialto. Sophie won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize 2021, came 3rd in this year’s Magma Poetry Competition and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize twice.

Sophie’s poetry is anchored in themes of urban waterways as she explores her relationship to bodies of water and what the river can carry. Sophie completed a Creative Writing MA at Bath Spa and was awarded a poetry residency along Bristol Harbourside through Boat Poets. She’s written three immersive productions for Riptide, a Leeds-based theatre company. The latest production, SONDER, is an app experience using GPS satellite navigation and a 360° binaural sound walk along the river Aire in Leeds. Her website is sophiedumont.co.uk.

Photo: Paul Blakemore

You can read Index of Exeter Quay /From the blue door, I beckon
on our Writer-in-Residence blog. and watch Sophie reading it here. The poem was written at the Exeter Custom House and inspired by Sophie’s time as writer-in-residence during our Maritime season.