Illustrate Your Point A collaborative project with Swindons’ artists and poets edited by John Richardson
Illustrate Your Point A collaborative project with Swindon's artists and poets edited by John Richardson
On the back cover Starting at twelve o’clock and working round clockwise the artists and poets are: Maria Holohan & Hilda Sheehan Angela Cutler and Dee Carter Vicky Silver & Teresa Davey Tim Carroll & Jay Arr Gina Dunford & Jill Sharp Katherine T Owen & Tracey Baker-Stewart Gordon Dickinson & Mick Gilford
With grateful thanks
Tony Hillier, Robert Kyle & Andree Langhorne
to:
Elinor Brooks & Moon
all the artists and poets who made this book happen,
Lawrence Quigley & Janice Booth. The artists and poets missing from the pairings are:
Clare & James who took the back cover photographs,
Heather O’Neil & Nick Pike Emily Drake & Sarah Jean Bush
Tony & Katherine who did the proof copy readings,
Adam Crosland & Alys Cambray Matt and the anonymous contributor who provided the funding.
This book is a celebration of the wonderful collaboration of pairs.
Introduction
Illustrate Your Point (IYP) is an exciting, fascinating and local collaboration of thirteen artists, who are members of Artsite and thirteen poets, who are members of BlueGate Poets. Working together from January to April 2010 in pairs, they have produced art inspired by poetry and poetry inspired by art. Their collaboration was undertaken in preparation for an exhibition launch on 1st May, just before the start of the 17th Swindon Festival of Literature. It was an opportunity for this group of artists and poets to collaborate and explore each others’ work in order to discover common ground. Their work was not in accord with any recurrent themes, movements or styles. It was created with the emphasis on the individual quality and beauty of each piece; allowing the viewer to appreciate each work as a collaborative entity. The IYP exhibition is on display in Swindon's Art Centre during the festival and throughout the remainder of May. Importantly, IYP provides an enjoyable and inspiring experience for all the visitors to the Art Centre. Maria Holohan IYP Coordinator [This is a rewrite of an extract from the press release]
1
Late Summer Haiku
Butterfly alights On Buddleia - sucks nectar Summer's last sweetness.
Note: the differences between the poem above and the one on the right are deliberate and are a result of collaboration.
2 Mick Gilford
Gordon Dickinson 3
The Pain Tree There is a tree in Afghanistan where women go to lodge their pain driving nails deep down into woody flesh. Long lines of metallic heads weep their way down the tree's long trunk, a stalactite of frozen tears, each one a separate sorrow. Excised. Set apart. A dryad imprisoned in her bower sighs and bows her balding head. Thick sappy tears ooze unseen behind robes of desiccated bark. She tells me of her bloodline held within the circle of her rings, of the hundred Christian virgins given in yearly tribute to their Moorish overlords as depicted on the portal of Santa Maria del Camino, at Carrion de los Condes, on the road to Compostella beneath the Milky Way. Now a rooted incarnation holding on to arid soil with hennaed fingertips, she sifts the sand, each grain the empty shell of an unnamed soul freed at last to fly in paradise.
4 Teresa Davey
Vicky Silver 5
Bassett Biker Brigades The sun rode high in the NATO-blue sky Over bearded, balding and bumfluff bikers Over Bassett Green Zone Hullavington locus-swarmed from dawn Harleys, Kawasakis, Royal Enfields, triumph from Caephilly, Southampton, London, Luton, Leeds. Hell for leather Biker Heroes burned rubber as Afghan Heroes burn their desert shit where the sun always rides high These Biker heroes had no need to scour for roadside bombs Roadside mothers stood strong in Bassett High Street. Tattooed highlight Eyes right at stone-faced cenotaph Eyes left to catch eyes of roadside wavers Flagged, cheering, nodding, clapping, crying Tearful with their Private Pain He’s safe back home now but not the same Rarely speaks, goes out, or laughs He’s safe back home now but we no longer know him He doesn’t bloody know himself Our Afghan Hero, changed by war Haunted by War, Saluted by Hell’s Angels riding all day, lump-throated through Bassett in Brigades of 500 tearful helmets with traumatised ghostly pillions as the sun rode high in a NATO-blue sky Swindon’s Community Poet, responds to Mother’s Day Bike Ride through Wootton Bassett 14 March 2010. Approx. 15,000 motorcyclists raised money for British Service personnel killed or injured in Afghanistan.
6 Tony Hillier
Robert Kyle
Andree Langhorn 7
Into His Heart One after the other seven sons, each wonderful in his own rambunctious way; rolling, punching and gun-fighting, dressed in blues and blacks and dinky trainers dipped in dirt. But now she – the eighth – is a girl who pirouettes into his heart; soft-edged with love for all things pink and white, dancing and flowing. He holds this little creature close, to hear “Daddy” in a sweet girl’s voice; looks into eyes certain of his strong protection. He will not disappoint.
8 Katherine T Owen
Tracey Baker-Stewart 9
Witness We push our monsters shaved and tethered, led Astray down Sainsburys aisles, glared to Argos Grey chairs. They sit, our flaccid marionettes, Trolley-surf, wind under legs for pencils. Each monstrous show of undirected life Unsettles marbled waves rising bitter. They swallow down our bile to caulk their skins Pierrot-white, chalked up to the brimming eyes – What eyes could witness such encroaching hardness And not spill over bounds? We leave the spills To sour, while our mouths beat down their smiles. Let’s eat our young. Let’s snap away the tender And leave our lipless children with no choice But shows of teeth, no expression save baring.
10 Heather O’Neil
Nick Pike 11
Deep Southern Heat Summer penetrates like a burnished sword, slashing the air as fireflies multiply in choreographed storms of hot wind, and hasten their dance under Orion's Belt. Bronze blends with tarnished nickel, as leaves flake like blistered skin, burnt by scorching radiation tongues sucking moisture through sand-blasted lips.
12 Angela Cutler
Dee Carter 13
prologue
Stories we tell about ourselves, told in the past tense, make sense winding backwards from where we stand. No longer the actor, it’s the spectators who choose to speak, the breadcrumb trail marks out our tale. Other times the path is gone, picked clean by mis-remembered birds. Words the story flies over, blanks complete with dubious ands or then create another myth, another self to dance with the fool, the goddess and death; our hands holding hands across the sands of time. Me - serious? I’m aving a larf I’m half woman half man enjoying the dance, the sun’s on my skin
wiv mi girl Shiva. Yeh thought we’d strip off like saw these two
dressed in pearls that are cool, so cool about my neck; I wear my beautiful silver sandals.
messin about an joined em.
These fools know nothing of me as Nataraja.
aving a larf. Time? We got all the time in the world; dancing.
14 Jay Arr
the goddess
the fool
We’re ere on oliday
On this beach I dance the Tandava until time’s end to end this weary universe.
Tim Carrol 15
Not your stereotypical persona I agree but I’ve had a PR makeover. Out went the scythe for a younger fresher up to date image. Sorry about the dress it’s a mess - was out clubbing last night.
We’ve practised this turn and turn about ever since his first sketch. If her on the right doesn’t break my wrist, if Shiva can hold her pose and more importantly, that fool takes his eyes off my bum, we can all make this work.
And I know, I know, my hair’s a sight but with a bit of luck I might, just might, be able to drag this lot off now I’m all warmed up. Once more round and they’ll all
Then we’ll be here for posterity; unless he changes his mind again. Oh Shit - look out! he’s got the brush out ...
fall down: the fool, the goddess and the dancer ought’a complete my drop dead bonus quota.
death
the dancer
The trouble the artist had arranging our limbs; and he’d only to ask. Drawn us a hundred times. Look closely beneath this layer and you’ll discover other versions - dancing. Still, I do like what he’s done with my hair.
It will come to this (betrayed not with a kiss) a last dance on the sand: the fool, goddess, dancer and death, hand in hand. The fool won’t care (he’s happy just to be there). The goddess takes her place, has practised the steps since the dawn of time. The dancer
epilogue
perhaps you? Take another look at the face, will dance for us all, if not free from death’s grasp, finally free of her thrall
16 Jay Arr
at the end of time. Time’s out of time, betrayed not with a kiss. It will come to this.
Tim Carrol 17
A Brief History of Flies Once they were small and silent, elite airborne divisions of geometers; their mission – to square the circle of a dining-room light-shade in tireless pursuit of the perfect right-angle. If they mutinied to an occasional hypotenuse, causing spasmodic scuffles beneath the bulb, they were always back to their corners. Alighting, they’d patrol at a respectful distance and wait until you’d left the table before taking their turn on your plate. Now they’re all wideboys with ASBOs banging round the kitchen like marbles, torsos by Rambo, wing-design nicked from the jump-jet. Why wait for grub to be plated up when you can dive-bomb the pot? The leader squats on the worktop rubbing his legs at the thought of an almighty carve-up; a media chef with his fuck-off wrist action sharpening the knife.
18 Jill Sharp
Gina Dunford 19
God knows what time she is God knows what time she is: her face has stopped, a little hand points five. He opens up her face, time strikes later, God knows what time she is. He takes the precious quartz puts her with the rest of her, a little hand points five. He smells the bed she grew in, time strikes later, much later God knows what time she is. She’ll never work the same parts are lost and shaken, a little hand points five. There is no key to turn this right; wind back the over-wound and broke, God knows what time she is, a little hand points five.
Mr. Potato Head, a Friend of Ours ‘I am no more a child, and what I see Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.’ Amy Lowell He looked at me with all kinds of eyes and talked from a hollow belly that stank out wrong. His nose was like a drunk on fruit – rot to the face. No woman loved; could sight his stink. If I see him now, I’d build a picture, take his pieces; tear them to my play space, put ears in his sick eyes; listen to him see. Mouth goes to the back of his great big head body, to lie his talk and I’d fill his holes with wrong bits and pieces: hands, feet, ears, two mouths, a pipe – this is what touch, like that, does to the way we play.
20 Hilda Sheehan
Maria Holohan 21
Here as a strange tide turns might be a counting house, where angels keep thick ledgers of the dead - avenging storm, tsunami, suicide - all salty souls awash, immaculately scribed, plume-dipped in font of watery blue. They do not sleep but keep a watchful wake above an endless swaying of the sea. Inland, a valley guards St Guthlac’s church where Evensong is ending and a man of God bears down upon his bible, grips the eagle lectern by its wings. This raptor Lucifer, it will eviscerate our lambs. The farmers count the cost as they say grace and white doves scatter from the foundering belfry as the old bell swings. Along the shore, the gathering angels hear its heavy clanging, hear the lych-gate creak. They see a lonely mother, arms outstretched to fold her wayward child back in, his skin brine-shiny, hear her fretful echo in the dimming light, say You must leave your castle to the turning tide The waders sense a second coming as a shadow passes over church and valley to the shore. High in the glowering cobalt sky, as night obliterates the day, a white-tailed eagle hurls itself with furious intent upon a cavalry of herring gulls that strut and fidget, restless in the fret. How at the water’s edge perspectives shape and shift! What trick of dying light turns driftwood into dry contorted bones, spume-breaking horse into a drowning child, the vastness of a bird of prey with flaming outstretched wing, blitzed in the sun’s last horizontal beam, its talons red, into a bleeding cross?
22 Janice Booth
Inside the counting house where angels keep thick ledgers of the dead they’ll take the child who lingered and is lost, who might have seen an angel as he gathered feathers falling from the sky and waded in too far and deep as in his head he heard the chant his father used to sway him off to sleep ... sethera lethera hovera ...
Lawrence Quigley 23
Honeymoon in Soho They never broke their stride but just as though they'd meant to all along plunged down an unknown street did not look back. Death's spies were everywhere: with hooded gaze they tore the eyelids from the curious lovers' faces dried their eyes and left them infinitely posing on parade reflected in each other's sight, lit by the flashing neon signs for peep-shows. They could not cry but coruscated into sin and sainthood prayed for the humidifying dark.
24 Elinor Brooks
Paul A. Walters 25
Armagh Crows
Our slow presence disturbed the Armagh crows And we watched your boyhood Darkling confetti in the sky You remembered and filled my mind with pictures
26 Sarah Jean Bush
Emily Drake 27
Linden Tea There was an age old simplicity in her occupation Snipping away at the lime Watermelon scents, resin stickiness Piled into a shopping bag slung across the handlebars We had attempted a mime show conversation Her hands struggling to explain Fragile flowers first dried gently in the sun Boiled water, an infusion, a tisane to ease the throat Linden tea, medieval, middle European, ancient Soothing the nervous and anxious Storm heavy heat laden stems A deep remembered balm for a modern curse
28 Sarah Jean Bush
Emily Drake 29
Road Island Rage So you think you own the road In your little battery cars Jostling for pecking order, Scratching at traffic lights Clucking at roundabouts, Headless chickens rushing To block my course Through the crosshatching. Don’t you know your Highway Code, you birdbrains?! Get out of my way! I’ve got a big black truck. Free range. Pumped full of hormones. It’s a Chav-ara. Cock of the road, me! Go on, shoo! See this? It’s an egg. See that? That’s your windscreen. See there? That’s where I want to go And you, you addled fowl-pestilential fool Are in my way So move or the yolk will be on you. I am the egg man Doo doo pee dooo
30 Alys Cambray
Adam Crosland 31
Reflections on working with an artist 1st meeting: I bring along some examples of my poetry. The artist brings copies of some of his work to date. He has ideas for a painting based on a small artefact* he has at home... (*a wooden house on stilts?) Key words: Guardian angels, angels waiting, sea shore, dusk. I draw on references to my childhood, growing up near the coast in East Anglia, my love of remote winter beach walks, sea birds, spirituality and my work as a practitioner of Chinese medicine which forces reflection on the whole self. The artist talks about myth and allegory, a liking for using ladders and chairs as symbolic representations in his work, masks and deception, make believe...We each agree to make a start with these themes as guiding background ideas. 2nd meeting: We bring sketches of ideas. I have written 20 or so random lines towards a poem. Artist has some sketches. I am trying to get my teeth into angels as a starting point and have found a way of interpreting the artefact*, 32 Collaboration
which will feature in the painting – a counting house for angels to record the dead. Key ideas: I draw on a polemical article about the reintroduction of sea eagles and the furore which is ensuing. Some claim that the eagle will prove a reckless predator over the coasts and farmlands of East Anglia (as they reputedly have since their reintroduction in Scotland). Others describe the return of majesty to the skies. I want to play with this ambiguity - a battle of good and evil? The East Anglian coast and hinterland is my imaginary landscape.... driftwood, shrill winds, sandcastles, gulls, the ephemeral nature of beach scenes, children screeching like gulls...(‘Voyaging through strange seas of thought’ William Worsdworth) I am beginning to focus on certain words and want the poem to reflect the ebb and flow of water and the tides. The strangeness of the ideas, coupled with the uncertainties of the project is leading me to use strange tide in the title. The artist underscores lines he particularly likes which I will
retain and I will lose a few which don’t resonate.
· St Guthlac ‘s church - St Guthlac lived out his life in East Anglia and reputedly survived on a cup of muddy water at sunset.
· Easter comes and goes... reflections on Good Friday, Resurrection and the Cross.
· Eagle lectern in a small coastal church in Cornwall Before our final meeting I set to work on refining the structure and coherence of the writing. Question: is it ambiguous or over-explanatory? 3rd and final meeting: Both of us have almost done – time for finishing touches to be determined by each of our reactions. The artist likes my title and will adopt it for the painting – Here as a strange tide turns... there is the possibility of extra images in the painting which crop up in the poem – lost boy, herring gulls. The launch: Seeing our two pieces together - writing and
painting- along with the other 12 collaborations was quite overwhelming - beyond just words or just painting to a new and powerful dimension! Janice Booth
The story of our IYP collaboration is straightforward. Like all relationships, once we had developed a mutual trust and respect for each other and our work, we simply got on with things. Fortunately we had exchanged emails and examples of our work before we met for the first time and I was extremely impressed that Tim had his work displayed on the Saatchi Online website. These first impressions helped ease our first meeting. Well, that and a bottle of wine we shared.
painting 'George and The Dragon' which once appeared as one of Swindon's famous murals and used that as a model for my approach.
At that first meeting we talked and listened to each other - a lot. We did some paper folding to create the original idea of what and how we were going to proceed. This basic presentation idea has not changed, even though it has thrown up several challenges during its implementation.
We did have some discussion about the number of panels. I wanted eight, then seven and, eventually persuaded, compromised on six. Tim accomplished the original assembly with, in his words, “… a homespun construction using basic DIY techniques”. He also did subsequent reassembly and I did the follow on re-re-assembly!
As a poet my problem was to create a response to Tim's work. This took me several weeks of reading, research and thought. Fortunately I remembered a poem sequence that U.A. Fanthorpe had written in response to Ucello's
Whilst Tim recreated his original work on three separate panels I drafted my six sonnets. The sonnets are narrative. The first and last in the sequence (titled Prologue & Epilogue) are recounted by an unknown commentator. The central core of four sonnets relates the story told by the four characters in Tim's painting from their individual perspectives.
The format, font, size and positioning of the sonnets were not the least of our concerns. Just how do you get words onto a painted board? Not with Letteraset at £80 for an A4
page! You'll observe, given the construction of the piece, the best suited sonnet would have had to have been lean and short lined. Unfortunately only one of the six fulfills that requirement. We settled on the Gill Sans font because of its clean simple lines, its readability and it would (just) accommodate long lines in the limited space. The unusual positioning of the sonnet titles was my idea, endorsed by Tim, and fits the presentation and proportion of the piece.
the sonnets, and from full on to appreciate the piece as a collaboration.
We arrived at the construction at our first meeting, with the aid of some creative origami. I was very keen not to have a painting and a poem just lumped together as two individual works of art. I wanted to produce visibly a single collaborative piece of work. But at the same time I wanted the painting and the poems to be able to be viewed independently and to stand alone. I feel we have achieved this.
Jay Arr with Tim Carroll
This is my second collaborative work with an artist. It has been enjoyable, informative, frustrating, demanding and a learning experience; well worth that initial investment of a bottle of wine, which incidentally has been repaid with allotment grown parsnips!
You will see that the structure is designed to be assimilated from three viewpoints. From the left to view the painting as a whole, from the right to view Collaboration 33
Vicky and Teresa decided to get to know each other before starting their collaboration for Illustrate Your Point. After initially meeting at the Post Modern, where Vicky has her studio, they visited the Art Gallery in Old Town and had lunch together. After these meetings they explored each others work, learning from each other by discussing art and poetry in general terms. They found common areas of interest, slotting easily into a working relationship. Vicky was inspired by Teresa’s poem “The Pain Tree’, empathising with the Afghani women of the poem. Vicky’s painting focuses on the first four lines of the second stanza “A dryad imprisoned in her bower, sighs and bows her balding head”. To incorporate the poem into the artwork Teresa has presented it as a visual interpretation of the words “long lines of metallic heads weep their way down the tree’s long trunk”.
Teresa was inspired to write the poem after viewing an exhibition of black and white photographs by Seamus Murphy in a gallery on the South Bank. Both poet and artist are pleased that their collaborative work will continue to highlight the suffering of women without a voice. Teresa Davey
Hilda has been a psychiatric nurse and Montessori teacher. She’s a busy mother of five and finds odd seconds to write; usually on shopping lists and the backs of cereal packets. She’s a National Poetry Competition prizewinner and her poems have appeared on the BBC website, Voice and Verse, The National Poetry Society, South, Commonhead, BBC Big Screen and The New Writer.
parallels in our work. Very little needed to be said between us, we both totally understood what the other was trying to say in our unique ways; both dealing with subjects that are difficult and perhaps not often aired. It was wonderful to come together and see Maria create pieces that took my poems deeper into the visual; to distort and highlight the covered up and unheard voices of the poems.’
Hilda is a founder member of Swindon’s Writers’ Café and BlueGate Poets. She aims to write poems that highlight both a beauty and strangeness in the ordinary, and enjoys experimenting with language and image to speak about who we are.
Hilda Sheehan
Her experiences working in mental health inform her work and are the subjects of the two poems Mr. Potato Head and God knows what time she is. Both poems deal with the devastating effects of child sexual abuse. ‘When Maria shared her canvasses, images and journals with me I was immediately struck by the
34 Collaboration
Collaboration... A Response... A Journey It is a lovely thing to be assigned an artist. Everyone should have one! My assignment was Tracey BakerStuart. I googled her and found her on Facebook. Her smile is the first thing I remember – an impression of someone who has somehow remained open to life. We saw each other at Lower Shaw Farm on the 21st January, and smiled in recognition across the room. Later we met and hugged. I had brought some of my work with me. Tracey picked out several poems, but one stood out for her: The Hug – a poem she read even though it was crossed out on the page. She felt so inspired that by the time I came back with our teas, she had already done a provisional sketch of both The Hug and another of my poems.
Tracey had also brought copies of her work to show me, and it turned out I had unknowingly already seen some of her pieces at the Artsite studios. I was delighted to have been assigned an artist whose work I could so easily and enthusiastically admire. We agreed that in addition to her response to my poems, I would go into the studio to respond to her work. She described in detail a picture she was working on and the story behind it. I woke the next day with a poem in my head, wrote it down and sent it to her. She responded with “Oh Katherine, your poem is beautiful! What a lovely collection of words!” It was several weeks before I got into the studio and saw the drawing. I felt as though I knew it already. My poem was called Into His Heart and Tracey has paid me the compliment of sharing the name.
Somewhat unusually, our collaboration therefore involves my response to a picture I had never seen. The same energy that Tracey expresses in the picture flowed through her as she described it. It has been a joy to work with Tracey. We hope you enjoy the fruit of our collaboration. Katherine T Owen
The drawing of The Hug is not yet complete. The drawing for Into His Heart is in the exhibition today.
Collaboration 35
We’d done something similar with an “Angels” project before Christmas. A key difference was that “Angels” had a topic word whereas Illustrate Your Point (IYP) was to be on any topic the collaborating pair chose. Another difference was that IYP had the benefit of learning by experience from the Angel project. Perhaps that was expecting too much because we still ran into a revised set of challenges with IYP – but I feel it did indeed help. Imagine trying to harness a dozen visual artists with a dozen poets. Add to that mix, the requirements of a Literature Festival and an Arts Centre, then scratch around for funding….a few of the factors which, as I write, 3 days prior to launch, we have engineered and created into this amazing Exhibition with firm plans for a booklet later. My journey included : A change of artist after several weeks of work, never physically meeting my second artist, we made phone and e mail contact work, struggling with a wide, 36 Collaboration
self-set Swindon social brief first, considering and then rejecting new takes on Swindon’s Magic Roundabout and possibly the Mechanics’ Institute – a controversial derelict building, finally deciding to respond to a topical local and international issue: Afghanistan. The next variable, the outcome of which is not, as I write, known, was that the artist had a colleague who also wanted to respond to the poem – hence there may or may not be two pictures connected to one poem – We will all have to wait and see the curator’s final decision. Finally, I found the collaborative and responsive experience challenging, stimulating and one that I would recommend to others. I would tread a similar path again – wiser no doubt - and hopefully, it will hold its own challenges and rewards. Tony Hillier – Poet Bloke
and discharged it in the direction of Gordon's studio. Most of the heavier work fell out of the sky prematurely, but a few shorter works completed the journey. One such, a tiny haiku, hit Gordon in the middle of the head, its sharp edges lacerating his mind. Bleeding profusely, Gordon started to panic. Mick rushed over and applied alcohol to the affected areas. Gordon insisted that the poem should be short... using the guiding principle that less is more; also it could be incorporated bodily into the artwork. The haiku started to intoxicate Gordon. A few beers later Mick and Gordon were rushing round his garden, picking sprigs of buddleia. Gordon was inspired to render buddleia and butterfly in steel mounted on a circular board. Mick liked this idea: the circle representing the late summer sun, washed in the sweet honey tones of a misty sunset. After a brief flirtation with punched lead printing, painted letters won the day.The result is Late SummerHaiku. I do rather feel we have illustrated our point.
Gordon said he didn't like poetry... so Mick loaded a blunderbuss with all his poems
The Oxford Girl Here the city ends: a final row of houses, low, uneven, face the waterside. In the lamplight, railings cast their shadows on the grass, laying their stripes like stitchmarks on a scar joining road to river. Moonlight paints the rooftops white. Behind the yellow door in an empty room dust clings to the carpet thickening into fluff. Grey ash in the blackened grate stirs in the chill night air. Wind sifts through the billowing curtain nets: deep under layers of air that weigh upon her chest and press her down she lies beneath the rippling waves that flow across the ceiling night after lamplit night. Elinor Brooks
Mick Gilford
Poem included since it was part of the collaborative process
Collaboration 37
38 Collaboration