Vindolanda - Digging Through the Layers - A Poet's Journey

The site of Vindolanda Roman Fort, in the far North of England, is both simple and complex. Simple in that it occupies a defined place, complex in that there are layers of occupation, one on top of the other, spanning a period of almost 300 years. The present collection takes advantage of this to dig through the layers using, instead of a spade, a range of poetic styles, from Homer to Heaney, and tries to scratch beneath the surface to expose the humanity of those who passed this way... the Romans who arrived in AD 85 must have been very different to those who left in AD 37O, as different as we are to those who lived in the early 18th century, but were their needs, wants and desires really so different to ours?