‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ CD

Voiced by the entire pupil and staff body of Coleridge Community College, Cambridge in January 2005

Conceived, recorded and edited by cris cheek, with soundscore by Simon Keep and cris cheek using recordings made in the school building

 

 

 

Now available online or by post at special launch price of £7.50 + P&P

 

  

The Friends of Coleridge are proud to have the opportunity of supporting this project. Hearing this poem spoken by a collage of voices line by line gives a uncanny and atmospheric sense of dislocation that goes to the heart of its strangeness. We are delighted that the Rime was used as a vehicle for a multi-cultural community; the Rime’s very elusiveness enables it to serve as a national folk poem that speaks to all.

 

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About the recording

 

N JANUARY 2005, collaborative arts duo TNWK (Kirsten Lavers and cris cheek) spent a week in Coleridge Community College, Cambridge recording Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s canonical ballad, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner line by line—literally line by line—with all of the school’s pupils and all the staff including the support staff (canteen workers, cleaners…) taking part.

       Coleridge Community College was at the time facing closure (though since then it has been saved by federating with Parkside Community College). It had recently emerged from the albatross of ‘special measures’ but was considered too small to be financially viable. The fact that all of the teachers knew every pupil in the school seemed to TNWK to be worth valuing, so the idea of a school portrait, but a portrait rendered in sound rather than a photograph, suggested itself. The recording begins with the voices of Year 7 and concludes with students from Year 11 providing a trajectory that reflects the process of ‘learning’ in the Mariner’s narrative. So, line by line there is a shift of voice, often dialect, intonation, pronunciation, cadence, rhythm… the sheer range of pupil’s names in this school is extraordinary, very, very culturally diverse.

       The final vocal mix is complimented by an atmospheric ambient soundtrack composed by cris cheek and Simon Keep from extreme microphone recordings of the fabric of the school building—the pipes, equipment, creaking doors and echoing corridors.

       The CD publication of this project has now been made possible with support from the Friends of Coleridge, it includes images from the recording process and a second track, a poem about Neighbourhood, devised and written by a group of pupils and subsequently translated and voiced by the seventeen native language speakers in the school, conveying a poly-linguistic reality not too often accorded to Cambridge but genuinely reflecting the college’s cultural richesse.