Articles
In 1978, Mark Carson had just made a career change – from a seagoing engineer with Britain’s Institute of Oceanographic Sciences to a lecturer at Nairobi University in Kenya – when he read a piece in the IMechE magazine bemoaning the lack of interesting engineering characters in contemporary fiction.
Carson didn’t have the time to write a novel, but in the gaps between teaching he started to write poetry. He wrote poems about his seagoing time, poems that tried to explain why he decided to jump ship, and poems to document the facets of engineering that made it such an interesting occupation.
Decades later, and now running an engineering software company, he has begun to go public about his poems, joining local poetry groups and helping to run poetry events in Furness, Cumbria. His engineering poetry was first published in 2007 by Flaxbooks, and in October 2105 he published his latest works.
“It’s gone from being a hobby to an obsession,” he says. “I read poetry, write it, perform it and publish it. I love the buzz of an open-mic performance, the excitement of a successful reading. And it’s generated a busy social life, too.
“I’ve just published a pamphlet, Hove-to is a State of Mind, which includes some of the seagoing poems – including the first one written all those years ago in Nairobi,” he says:
The door crashes back.
Diesel roaring, a man falls stumbling,
shaking my shoulder he shouts….
… Later we’ll take it apart,
strip it down, check it out, set it up
for the next launch, next night watch,
next shake in the dark.
Carson is now working on a collection that will focus on both the creative and the emotional aspects of a life in engineering.
Hove-to is a State of Mind is available from www.wayleavepress.co.uk
Do you have an interesting mechanical engineering-related hobby? Email liz.wells@caspianmedia.com