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This week on dVerse Poetics, Shanyn would like us to write about the rhythm of transport. This long weekend, I have been staying with my family who hail from what southerners in England refer to as The North. Well, I was born and brought up in the West Midlands, which is hardly The North, but we do have a lot of industrial history of which to be proud!

Apparently, my birth city of Birmingham has more canals than Venice, and they were used for commerce in support of the the Industrial Revolution. I imagine that they were dusty, noisy, smelly and very, very busy. Traffic jams of narrowboats would have been commonplace, especially in places such as Tardebigge, which has a flight of  30 locks. Taking a boat through a lock system is not to be taken lightly! These days, the canals are used for pleasure, and I think many people tend to to forget that they were the motorways of their day. So, this was my inspiration! Oh, and Gas Street Basin is where a number of canal systems meet in the centre of Birmingham – very pretty now, not so lovely back in the times when it was a working hub of the canal system.

I hope you enjoy this – please pop over to dVerse to see how my fellow poets have been inspired!