The poetry of chairs - Telegraph The Floating Chair by Gillian Clarke is written in response to Tom Gottelier and Bobby Petersen's Floating Chair. Out of the Woods was devised by the American Hardwood and the RCA. The organisations hoped to highlight the issues of sustainability in the timber industry. The students were set the task of designing the chairs with their environmental impact in mind. They recorded exactly the amount of energy and material used. David Venables of the American Hardwood Export Council said, "'Out of the Woods' is one of our most exciting and rewarding projects to date. The talent among these students is astounding. Read some of the pieces below: The Not Full Stop By Joe Dunthorne This bench is dedicated to the memory of Anna Linsell, David Martin, Rich Kirby, Petra Lossing, Paula Hiden and Larry Gordon, who all loved sitting here, together. They had decided to get the dedication made now, while they were alive to enjoy it. Petra liked sitting in the middle, feeling the cool bronze of the plaque under her left thigh. It had been her week to carry the bench to a new destination. of late, there had been a bit of oneupmanship, taking it to difficult or obscure places: between chimney stacks, the lock at grand union canal, rush hour on the tube. The canal had been fun, lifting their feet up each time a houseboat passed but Petra decided she wanted something more classic: a circle of trees on top of the heath, an unrivaled view of the six odd-shaped skyscrapers down near London Bridge. six skyscrapers, six friends, a seventh building was in construction, and feathered with cranes, which she felt, would spoil everything. Arriving on the heath, she was narked to find a man, cross-legged, right in her spot, taking in the spectacle. she approached. It was not easy to carry the bench subtly and she was reminded of her great-grandfather trying to quietly read one of those old-style broadsheets. The man saw her. "Am I in your spot?" he said. "It's as much your spot as it is mine," she said, lying. He frowned and cast his eyes over the bench. You look like an ant carrying a segment of leaf many times its own size," he said. The man's name was Gus Holder. They sat at far ends of the bench, for privacy, but got on so well that they slowly crept along the seat towards each other, their thighs meeting on the plaque's cool bronze. It would have been romantic had it not been such a very long distance and had her five friends not arrived. All seven of them sat side-by-side. The next week, the plaque read: This bench is dedicated to the memory of Anna Linsell, David Martin, Rich Kirby, Petra Lossing, Paula Hiden and Larry Gordon, who all loved sitting here, together, with their good friend, Gus Holder, who they forgot to mention at the start. Beeeench by Peter Thorne. Photo: Petr Krejci The Floating Chair Remembering wind in the white oaks I plant my chair in a wilderness, settle it neat as a lark's nest in a cleft crushed in the grass under buzzard and crow, the wind-blown flocks of curlew, clouds, ideas, words. Remembering cherries shaking foam from their hair. I launch my chair on a wave for the spray on my page, the taste of salt, the snap of a sail, words homing in paragraphs over the sea, a silver leap from the depths. Remembering songs of chainsaw, chisel, plane, I float my chair on a floor smooth as a lake, its mind on reflections. I consider carpenters, makers, hands silking the wood. A stipple of thought surfaces like a trout, a tug on the line. Floating Chair by Tom Gottelier and Bobby Petersen. See images of the all the chairs here For more information and videos see the American Hardwood Export Council