David Dobson - Reservoirs
The Friday Feature
Reservoirs
Climbing bramble-twisted fence in
pinking light for the dawn chorus, dole
money round my neck in new binoculars,
song ringing in city-wide ears from
sharp mouths of this migratory choir.
Grebes dance by Victorian pumphouses,
necks inflamed with crests erect, sounds
of striped chicks in the reeds and a barn owl
outpacing early sun, bleeding through the
shadow of the copper mill’s Italianate arches.
//
Warped boards of anglers’ jetties splinter
in my thumb, pinprick ticketing for picking
hops in the shade. A dozen long-tailed tits
chatter on the vines, and the densely wooded
island is raucous with egret and heron. Goat
willow sheds catkins, woolly among knapweed
and marsh marigold, the sward spotted with
ochre goblets for butterflies; commas’ frayed
wings stutter for nectar and peregrines
glare from pylon summits.
//
The reservoirs were dug by navvies’ hands,
twenty-four feet deep carved down into gravel,
new lakes over five hundred acres of pipe and pump
with redshank and sandpiper probing storied silt.
July and swifts are flocking the Engine House,
barnacle geese sweep pied heads through toadflax
and tansy, white campion and oxtongue, avenues
of gorse cream-scented and packed to the heart
with tiny nests, the city’s hushed interval
where I tend this ragged noticing.
From the Press:
In a busy world where most of us are wrapped up in our pocket-sized devices, this poem is fundamentally about attention as practice—the deliberate act of noticing the landscape that most people pass through without looking. It accepts the overlap of nature and human industry as an ordinary, ongoing condition rather than something that needs redemption.
Across this body of work, David consistently employs observant imagery that collapses the boundary between the natural and the manmade until they are visually inseparable. Avians are framed against infrastructure that feels familiar and utilitarian: the pumphouses, pylons, mills, and reservoirs. He doesn't treat them as intrusions but as part of the visual grammar of a landscape quietly inhabited by birds, insects, and plant life.
Dobson recognizes human labor, history, and the infrastructure we utilize every day, without diminishing the vitality of the natural world we are part of. The subtlest of movements accumulates into a dense, layered environment rather than a series of inconsequential moments.
About the Author:
David Dobson is a writer based in the Yorkshire Dales. He is a co-organiser of More Song*, a poetry reading series held in Bradford, West Yorkshire. For details on upcoming and past events, or to sign up for their newsletter, visit www.moresong.co.uk or follow @moresong_ on Instagram.
David can be found on Instagram @david_dobson_
*More Song is a poetry reading series based at the 1 in 12 Club Library, an anarchist collective in Bradford, organised and hosted by Tom Branfoot and David Dobson. Specialising in experimental and radical poetics, previous guest readers include Kimberly Campanello, Zaffar Kunial, Hannah Copley, and Fran Lock. At a time when the arts, and poetry in particular, are chronically underfunded and facing a crisis of accessibility, grassroots events like More Song provide both a platform for innovative literature, and a space for people to share their work as part of a diverse and supportive community. Featuring three headliner readers and a popular open mic, More Song's events have been at the centre of Bradford's literary scene since March 2023, working alongside the 1 in 12 Club to foster and develop a space where poetry can thrive.
