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Paper short abstract:

This paper suggests that the river can challenge identity perspectives and bring together diverse travellers; re-surfacing memories and narratives for travellers to reflect upon, as the river surrounds and resounds; a liquid material medium continuously shaping the literary and literal

Paper long abstract:

For travellers in Devon and Cornwall, the literary intersects with the literal. Many have read about the rivers of Du Maurier, Defoe, Williamson and so come to the banks; their imaginations filled with adventures, tales and emotional narratives from those sources or beyond, as they sit, watching the surface of the water, looking to the deep.

Language equally articulates identity politics: an "us and them" living across the river; the visible banks of the other side inviting comparison. Within the undercurrent of political uncertainties, the troubled traveller meanders in mind to rivers which separate counties, regions and nations; a liquid barrier which determines and defines the identities on this side from that side in an all too tangible way. And yet the interactive mingling space of the river; with swimmers and boaters and crabbers and ferry crossers; in bringing diverse people together simultaneously pulls as the definitions of such arbitrary definitive boundary markers.

This paper draws upon research conducted through in-place, mobile methodologies on the banks of three rivers in Devon and Cornwall; sharing some of the lyrical narratives of participants weaved and inspired by rivers. A resounding on-site phrase is the act of "reading the river"; in terms of traveller's awareness of tides and currents, sounds and shifts. This paper considers to what extent the river speaks back to inform those sounds, voices, and dialogues drifting with the river. In so doing, understanding the river as a material medium in which traces of conversation, thought and inspiration can re-surface.