Ian McMillan and Alastair Cook went to Stanley Ferry, Wakefield to make The Water Doesn’t Move: The Past Does. “The aqueduct speaks / In the voice of round here: vowels / Flattened by hammers, words / Shortened like collier’s breath” writes McMillan.

This film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate project.

The Water Doesn’t Move, the Past Does was screened in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on National Poetry Day. 

It has also been screened in 2014 at the Cork Poetry Festival and StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival.