Teme Valley
a walk on the morning of Monday 12th February 2018
long thin shadows
lumbering traffic on main road
wind frost deep ruts
left onto lane
squareness of hedges
recent thorns
tractor ruts
film of frost on pond
spots of light through shadows
hop kilns sharp white cones
yellow digger silvery silos
hoarse sheep
redwhite guarded hole
slight hills either side
dull green beaten down
avenue to left trees gone
wooden sign horse
reflections of looped railings
polytunnel
sun low down
long shed flickering light through gaps in wood structure
caravan in driveway
dog not barking
cows mooing groaning
puddles tinged with ice cracked
sheep blue backs
shadowy uphill section
bird
oak tree against blue
battered yellow sand dispenser
view through six barred gate
hill and eight trees
shadow again
sun brighter
sharp pointed shadows pine trees on green
feet slip still frozen ground
sign circle Worcestershire Way green pear
yellow sand box
discarded monitor blue
lines of fruit trees distant
rumble from machinery
squawk of rooks
whisper of old blown leaves
frayed tops of hedges shown on road
chunk of buildings
chimneys different heights
dents in road old digger bucket
up hill
cattle on right hand side Dutch landscape
mottled grey white shaggy brown Highland horns
clumps of heavy balled green in branches
old fruit trees bent over shorn stubby wind attacked
snowdrops
heavy mud ruts
red helicopter burring
four horses down steep hill
dog with blue jacket
up hill
dead grey squirrel
spot of blood
thunder squeak disturbed pheasant
triangle orange light corner of farm building
home again
home
A WALK IN STUDLEY
ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON IN EARLY NOVEMBER
YELLOW DOOR, YELLOW FORSYTHIA
BLUE WINDOWS, LIME GREEN TRACTOR
BRASS LAMPS, STONE SHEEP
‘LADIES OF DISTINCTION’
MARBLE ALLEY, NEEDLE CLOSE
CHIMNEYS WITH GAPS LIKE NEEDLE EYES
A ROBIN, AN OWL, A KINGFISHER
‘IN HAPPY MEMORY OF BOB’
TUNNEL ONTO BRIGHT, BRIGHT GREEN
FOOTBRIDGE MADE OF SCAFFOLDING
SAXON CHURCH, QUIET, LOCKED, RENOVATING
MOTTLED LICHEN ON STONE
SUNLIGHT, BIRDSONG
framework/holding it together/early stages
use handwriting if you want
or collage
in decorated scribble
or matte photograph
or material which has been stitched and hung and cut and sprayed black
then cut down to size
or woven even
or drawn or typed
a cover holding 5 booklets
with title ‘Holding’
the framing of a photograph on the front face
a list of artists names on the rear flap
in landscape format or square, like a polaroid,
except that’s not square but approximately a 5 to 4 proportion
inside there will be 5 book signatures or folded paper
one item per artist (we are hoping that all artists will contribute)
there is no requirement for words
it can be as long/short as you wish
printed or hand made and the pages need not be bound
each signature or folded paper NO LARGER THAN and TO WORK TO AT LEAST ONE
of the dimensions of the outer cover
each artist to produce own insert using agreed paper
co-ordinating printing so as to keep cost down
using photographs of random or selected juxtapositions of work
all the while recording
the endless possibilities of the imagination
its multiple relationships
and considering the ‘final’ choices made
as they may or may not relate to our own
the whole thing being as clear as mud
as slippery
as holding it together
Letter to Sylvia Plath
Dear Sylvia
You don’t know me
and you being dead already I guess we’re never going to meet
but for about fifteen years we shared the world -
who knows, we may even have bumped into each other -
but whether we did or didn’t meet – in the flesh
- is not the point. Because I’ve met your poem.
At least if you’d been alive I might have come to listen to you read,
I might have admired you from afar,
I might have wanted desperately to be you,
wished we could talk over a cup of coffee at your kitchen table,
that you would smile at me
would recognise that I was there.
But because you’d so very dramatically
(that was part of your allure)
decided to opt out of an unbearable world
you weren’t any longer accessible.
In a sense, I don’t think that matters.
Of course it matters that you didn’t get to lead the rest of your life.
That matters so much that it’s unspeakable.
But in the case of our meeting each other -
all it goes to show is that time is in this case quite irrelevant.
When I looked into the mirror on the landing up there I saw you,
I saw me, but I saw you too. Your eyes, my eyes.
Those little squares of wax interrupted our clear vision –
but fuzzy as we were with the buzzing in our brains
– our eyes did meet.
Now you never knew that
you will never know that,
and it made, will make, no difference to you.
But that recognition, that knowledge that someone else
someone else has felt this
has made all the difference to me.
When I first read your poem I remember -
I remember particularly -
your opening line - ‘I ordered this, this clean wood box’
because with that repetition of ‘this’
I was there with you. We were together,
the two of us - opening the box, seeing it,
touching the wood, hearing the buzz from inside
perhaps even feeling the surface vibrate -
And do you know what they’ve done?
they’ve printed it wrong –
instead of ‘I ordered this, this clean wood box’
they’ve put ‘I ordered this, clean wood box’
no repetition,
no sharing of the moment of opening with you,
we can’t see ‘this’ in front of us. The box vanishes,
you vanish,
the moment goes.
Putting that aside,
leaving the rest of the poem alone,
letting it work its strange and savage magic how it will
there is one other little grace note I want to add
and which connects with the moment I found in the exhibition here
when our eyes met in that mirror.
It’s about a song, recorded some time in 1991
well past your time, long after you’d so sadly got your wish
and gone off and turned into that tree
(every spring I see those blonde colonnades and think of you).
The band is Massive Attack, and the song is called ‘Safe From Harm’
Given everything, you could hardly get better titles, could you?
Anyway, they sing these lines
I was lookin' back to see if you were lookin' back at me
To see me lookin' back at you.
Here’s looking at you, Sylvia