In Their Own Words

Have had little time for anything other than teaching and its related admin recently. The nature of the academic work-cycle but still a shame. I'll try harder this month. However, K- and I had a one night micro break away from London last night to go to the mixed media exhibition at Sheffield's Bank Street Arts Gallery: In Their Own Words. To be honest it was just a pleasure to have a little trip away, but I did enjoy the exhibition too. Set into motion and coordinated by writer John Clarke, ITOW comprises the work of 36 artists, 36 poets (including me) and 36 jewellers - considering I have a bit of an amateur passion for jewellery, I was particularly interested by this third artistic stream. The commission was along the lines of a traditional ekphrastic project: the artist provides a visual documentation of their work, the poet writes a poem in response. The jeweller receives a descriptive and practical summary from the artist (rather than a visual guide) and produces jewellery. The twist in the physical exhibition was the absence of the artwork. Poetry, jewellery, and artist's 'brief' were available to view. So there was also a sort of meditation on two streams of translation, interpretation and response: a kind of ekphrasis-in-absence.

It wasn't a totally pure absence as a mosaic of postcards with artwork on one side and poem on the other was evident. There was pleasure in this design - it took more effort on the part of the viewer than that of a purely painting-and-poem display, but it was undeniably interesting; the absences of displayed artwork both mysterious and eloquent, in a way. We are all, in a way, reading clues from uttered language and presented design all the time; the central artwork of another human being's consciousness and intention often seeming to be at one remove.

Anyway, I had interesting conversations with a number of artists and jewellers, especially on the parallels of the creative process, its trajectory if you like from inspiration to a necessary final detachment. More on this (if I get the time!) in a future post because it ties in with some other (class-based of course) reading and discussions of late. Much as I love rings and all sparkly wearable things, I know I have a lot to learn about the art, the craft and vision of jewellery. One day.

Here is my poem, although the layout is somewhat flattened in this version I'm afraid - it was written over a year ago in response to the original invitation and photographic brief: a story book, a young girl, old photos of Native Americans in traditional dress. I found myself considering issues of identity, writing and readership, the erasure of intention by an influx of light (as in photographic overexposure, but also perhaps in a spiritual sense). Here (with permission) is one of Lucy Harrison's striking photographs, so I can at least display the two together here, in the cyberspace version of my intermittently articulate consciousness:

Mariska

You ask for a passport –

I say what age are you
you offer me a feather

(‘just a girl’)
Number its fronds, says the woman at your side,

if you would understand
the clock’s fibrous delicacy;
stasis of my ribs, each internally displayed
a pure caught cry –

Read. You must be taken. Smile. Your teeth blue white against the sky’s
glowering, the slow snap of the shutter.
hushed clatter. Slick ticking of an eye.

You ask for safe harbour among us;
seclusion, stuck poles struck broke from the earth,
the whump of furry rump for scrabble,

(scribbled fury)
a name dances itself upon you;

sand or brick-dust lines a mouth like mine.

Your northern star dilates on leatherette,
here’s the sergeant’s stamp:

a disc the size of a bullet’s ripple

(rip hole)
there is another text, a palimpsest

stretched across this skin of paper: page’s dazzle
untranslated, luminous
(and crayoned in).

The story’s of
Mariska,
an articulate heart,

your power in its flickerbook white cage.

Grace’s aura scales your skull: each whispered impulse

fibrillating,
kissed with light.