Waymark (collaborative haiga) © 2021

Poore Widows photograph copyrighted 2021 by Alan Peat, and
senryu copyrighted 2021 by Gary S. Rosin. All rights reserved.

a narrow alley
rowhouses for poor widows
alms box marks the way

Photographer’s Note, Facebook (9 November 2021):

Spotted in Kendal yesterday—just off the high street there’s a narrow passageway that leads to a row of almshouses (built in the 1650s for “8 poor widows” by the mayor of Kendal). The original almshouses were rebuilt in the 1850s but a 17th-century collection box still exists in the wall of the passageway. The poor light made it incredibly difficult to photograph but a little manipulation in Photoshop rendered it readable. I love coming across fragments of the past like this. Another favourite find are “ghost signs”—the barely visible Victorian signs (usually advertising) painted on house and shop walls.

Here’s a more extensive history: Sandes Hospital Cottages

Publisher’s Notes:

1. Alan Peat’s Photographer’s Note appears above with his permission.

2. Waymarking is a less time-consuming form of community treasure hunt than geocaching, the latter of which is a high-tech scavenger hunt that combines GPS tracking with outdoor adventure to locate hidden stashes of objects. With waymarking, treasures are not hidden. Waymarkers catalog and mark interesting locations around the world, fun activities, good food, or “just plain old weird stuff,” and then freely share the information, encouraging others to visit and explore. Even though many participants use GPS technology to pinpoint and mark locations, GPS is not required in order to enjoy this educational and entertaining hobby. A zip code may provide enough information to go on.

Sources include the following (links retrieved 16 December 2021):

National Geographic:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/geocaching/print/

Waymarking: https://www.waymarking.com/help/faq.aspx

“Waymarking for Beginners” at GPS Tracklog:
https://gpstracklog.com/2014/07/waymarking-for-beginners.html

Alan Peat

is a U.K. based poet, educational consultant, and Fellow of both The Royal Society of Arts and The Historical Association. He is the author of several books aimed at encouraging children to write creatively, including Writing Exciting Sentences, as well as books about art, history, ceramics, and textiles. He has a long standing interest in surrealism and, with Professor Brian Whitton, co-authored the catalogue raisonné of the surrealist artist John Tunnard (Scolar Press, 1997).

Peat’s poems have been published by Iron Press, Redbeck Press, Crocus Books, helio sparrow, Mayfly, Heron’s Nest, Blithe Spirit, Modern Haiku, and Presence, among others. In 2021 he placed third in the International Golden Triangle Haiku competition.

Gary S. Rosin’s

poetry and haiga have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various literary and poetry magazines such as Concho River Review, Eastern Structures, Failed Haiku, Harbinger Asylum, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poetry24, The Legal Studies Forum, The Lift, The Wild Word, and Visions International; as well as in several anthologies, including contemporary haibun (Volume 17, Red Moon Press, 2022), Faery Footprints (Fae Corp Publishing), Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (Dos Gatos Press), Texas Poetry Calendar (Kallisto Gaia Press), Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press), and elsewhere.

His poem “Viewing the Dead” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Two of his poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008) (offprint).

Selections of Gary’s poetry and photography can be found at his website, 4P Creations: http://4pcreations.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Crossing Kansas by Gary S. Rosin in The Wild Word (7 February 2020); includes audio of the poet reading his poem

⚡ Two Readings: “Apparition” and “Black Dogs” by Gary S. Rosin for Texas Poetry Calendar 2015 at the Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas (20 September 2014)