Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

Sunday 8 July 2018

Heat

The scent of heat soaked masonry
Envelops you. Forming out of hot clay a
sense of time.
Kiln-like, the golden rocks stand against the blue sky
As permanent as Mary
As the resurrected cathedral
With the gold and blue finding a different kind of worship

The scent of heat soaked masculinity
Suffocates you. Forming out of muscle a
sense of beauty.
Godlike, the man stretches his lithe body upwards
As hard as rock
As the stone in the ancient buried city
With the flesh and blood creating a
Different kind of worship

Let me embrace the rock and the gold:
Sighing inwardly, wishing to be your mould.
To take you into the heat of the sun’s desire
Wanton I lie here and simply admire.

Friday 3 November 2017

Gently

The dark muted autumn peeps through mist
Dark and earth and wet and cold
Scientific method strives to rise
As golden sun appears
All is magically uplifted
Quietly, roaringly, gaseously
The vibrant autumn calls us clearly home.
Gently.

We are but shadows against an illusory life
Fleeting and swift and temporary
We strive to love and rise above our failings
As people come and go
All is supposedly revealed
Closing, dying, ending
The unknown winter beckons us clearly home.
Gently.



For a friend of Victoria Stamps. I only met him once, but he passed away 21/10/2017.


Monday 13 February 2017

Lost found lost

Lost found lost

In earth orange they lost their treasures
Small somethings across the stage
Socks, umbrellas,
slike, stuffed dogs
As they lost their minds they found their breath.
To catch a body to hold aloft...

In muted reds they found their voices
Large nothings beat deep inside
Fathers, emotions, limbs, virginity taken
And as they found their breath, they lost nothing.
To land a body with perfect poise...

In fierce pinks they lost their breath
Many and all fighting hard
Metronomic, arrhythmic, moving lines
And one by one they noisily collapsed away
Fall falling body fallen lost.

Lost found lost


Inspired by the Janis Brenner & Dancers Concert of Dance, Voice and Music presented by the Sarajevo Winter Festival 2017 'Silk Road Art' National Theatre, Sarajevo, Friday 10th February 2017.

Saturday 4 June 2016

The Croatian Literary Baroque

Bartol Kašić (1575-1650)
On my island of olive growers and fisherman I feel as far away from the baroque as is possible. The landscape is dotted with tiny café latte tinted stone chapels, perfectly contrasted with the pine green forests and iron rich soil. These appear to have sprung out of the earth, so sympathetic are they with their natural, yet cultivated surroundings. Human in scale and spiritual in content, they are reminders of a simple, aesthetic and pure faith. This seems to be what the architects of the baroque were trying to bulldoze in their efforts to appeal to the emotions and senses of the wavering congregations. Revision here is quite entertaining, and what follows is a fleshing out of the notes that I'm working through - it is inevitable that an art style which I really don't like has produced so many posts!
 

Monday 18 April 2016

Walking on Vis

Night has fallen over this scene of convivial voices;
Brotherhoods bonded over the thrum of tones.

Sounds revolving around the thickness,
Atmosphere of fire smoke inviting wisps of mountain down.
But the notes rise up to send love skyward


Day has filled us with sounds of light and conversations;
Friendships walking together winding up through the green.
Crunching over stones sibilant voices harmonise.
Atmosphere of pine scent catching all with amber glow.
And our loads lightened by love falling skyward...

Swifts

A piercing of the air
With cries of summer
A graceful winging arc
Against the pastel blue


A stirring of the sky
With an urgency of spring
A vortex of black specks like
Tea leaves in Wedgwood.

Saturday 2 April 2016

Some Poetic Playing: Mrtva Luka, or Dead Harbour

The new writers group I've just joined here in Split talked about inspiration. What inspires us, why are we here in Split, what is making our lives colourful? Although I have yet to put pen to paper about that, the previous day I was incredibly struck by a meeting I had with a PhD student from the University of Split. Although we were initially having a coffee to discuss klapa, we covered pretty much everything within our broad range of interests. Talking about music naturally leads to discussion of poetry. In my opinion, writing about music in a cold academic way is one of the hardest things to do and whenever I've tried to do it for fun, it seems best expressed as a poem. After all, what is poetry but music expressed as words?

Saturday 6 February 2016

Travelling

The beauty sparkles from deep inside;
To catch the city pulse to see the light.
The unexpected shoots sideways,
To glow, to shine, diffuse across my mind

The lights have been my safe harbour;
The bustle of noise has been my home.
The planned voyage takes me further east,
To travel, to explore, my mind takes shape

The old and the new collide
In glass and metal and skin reflected.
Reflecting on both leave me in colour,
To imagine, I am free, your spirit is free

Friday 9 January 2015

On Burrell at Bonhams

Thoughts tumbling, confused memories
When connected curiosities crisscross
Like curlicued brambles which
Frolic over a falconer's purse

To breathlessly chase appropriate words
Like the tiny embroidered dog
Perpetually swimming after but
Never grasping the knowing duck

Stringing ideas like pearls
On Salome's neck, real, lustrous, pure
Incongruous they sit, her infamous deed
Leaving screaming St John with no head.

Concentrating on making mental echoes
Patterns in the dappled green oil reflecting
The Provençale light; golden, warmly
Remembered, longed for sun

Standing considering the diminutive Emperor
His empty visor unsees the crowd
Shiny still, yet battlefield battered
His corrugated strength lives on, upright.

Taken as a whole, this precious
Time capsule collects and connects;
Full of threads to knit, and wire to link
Living cabinets with those now lost.


In appreciation of the Cabinet of Curiosity which is the Burrell Collection.

Friday 3 October 2014

Poetry Inspired by Anselm Kiefer

Vanishing varnishing points
Leadenly lead us in
Heat from exertion
Icy from snow
Numb
From loss
From pain and hate
And dropped burned books
Bomb these stark shadow lines


Deadened punctured landscape
Endlessly blackly repels us
Pale and bloodless
Not seeing
Dead
Empty book
Scrawled endless

Words emerge from the soil
A blankness awaiting new life



Inspired by Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy Oct 2014

Für Paul Celan Ash Flower (2006)
Black Flakes (2006)

Sunday 2 March 2014

Ghost Ship

A ghost ship of rivet dots
Pattern of metal unjointed
A warrior's ferocious footprint

Orderly curves follow the lines
Orderly place as flesh turns
To chaos rot and soil red

Metal rusted into orange
Metal blooded but still here
To carve a shape in time

The host ship carried its crew
Pattern of body disappears
A warrior's honorable departing


On the non existent burial boat of a warrior 
Viking Exhibition, British Museum, 2 March 2014


Wednesday 1 January 2014

Tasso and the Search for En-light-enment

It has long been appreciated that an interdisciplinary approach has to be taken when looking at the arts. A book from 1922 said the 'pictorial qualities of the arts corresponded psychologically and aesthetically to the musical qualities of literature'. But it was the author's next words that struck me as particularly relevant, 'the formal objects of the art historian and the literary scholar, as far as the Baroque is concerned, are ... similar because the mode of conceiving reality is the same, and this same type of concept is anchored in the spirit and will of the men of that epoch' (my emphasis).1

It's an old fashioned way of stating that art, literature, music – and not forgetting the natural sciences – are all products of a particular time and place. Therefore although I'm ostensibly focusing on a piece of art, I feel that it is crucial to see across as many disciplines possible, whether art, literature or music because all of these offer valuable insights into prevailing thoughts. This explains why the final part of my essay moves from baroque musical monody to a different kind of poetic voice.

Friday 20 December 2013

The Nativity by Torquato Tasso

Nativity of Christ, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome
I looked everywhere for this poem online but it seems to be only in a fragile pamphlet 1907; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

I was very much struck with the mention of the study of nature. I enjoyed the allusions to truth and light, and the chasing away of pagan and pre Christian gods. But above all it was the 'flower of endless love' when all the imagery and 16th century language falls away, leaving nothing but warmth and sincerity. A stunning piece.


Sunday 15 December 2013

My Love Affair with Cardinal Alessandro Peretti Montalto Begins

Although the intellectual life of the artist is crucial, my focus this weekend has been on the patron and his concerns. I'm coming round full circle to my initial essay idea which focused purely on the Montalto Madonna - this would embrace all the thoughts I was having regarding the renewal of the church, private devotion, poetry, music, innovations in the creation of art and so on. The other paintings are interesting but I think I will end up using them as guest appearances to support the main feature. One of the reasons for this is we can only be certain of one of the commissions - I have been unable to find out who commissioned the other paintings and this would lead to a very unbalanced essay. These are my musings about the man who commissioned the Holy Family so far.

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Migraine


The pain sizzles and spins,
Unreal rainbows rise and rotate
As the escalator in my head
Spews forth movement.

The earth doesn't turn as it should.
The disorientation in my mind
Unmaps, unravels, undermines,
Lost stumbling forward.

The stomach queases sickly and
The battering ram of pain unstills
And unceasing assaults my eye.
Unseeing arms outstretched.










Tuesday 3 September 2013

Elector and Engineer

A kindly pink face peers down at the bookish historians,
Handling mysterious metal pieces and glowing wood.
They give him an occasional glance, a flirtatious smile,
Comments made quietly as wunderkammer shimmers,
A nod to Papi, an acknowledgment of mastery.

A Saxon prince argues with his smouldering engineer.
Roles reversed as he belabours the capstan;
Pincers attack and pull at the gleaming wires,
'Nein, ziehen, sanft ziehen', croons the gentleman.
As in fairy tales, so magically the gold is woven.

The gruff engineer deftly adjusts the die, just so
And carefully wipes the hot wax from the cold steel
His hands see the bench, but his noble unskilled
Apprentice clumsily works, looking, checking, sweating.
An orderly world overturned by a mechanical universe.

An efficiency of tools and the process changes;
Sheets of fresh traded wood from the east, fragrant lie
To be tortured gently to make furniture pieces.
The engineer stands to the side and the Elector presses;
People, nobles, Emperors, timber bending to his will.

These Promethean princes each praying for knowledge;
Reforming Kingdoms under a new God of reading,
Remanufacturing their states and forcing their will with
Steely determination and ballistic intelligence.
Stamping paternal authority over the natural unnatural land.

Sunday 28 July 2013

Blue

I close my eyes and yet still see
The shimmer of blue horizon
And gentle furl of quiet water
The endless shifting of light-shapes
Imprinted on the camera of my mind

Now light pierces from a closer sun
Looking up at endless blue void
Shapes of tiny island disappearing 
Whilst clouds loom to merge sea-sky 
Light imprinted on the camera of my mind

Imagine embracing that watery state
Recurring dreams of blue depths
Ghostly fingers glowing quietly
Skin melting in sea, silk-light on skin
Imprinted on the camera of my mind

I now see both the above and the deep
Impossible blue beauty suspended
Words float away evading my grasp
Always chasing illumination: eyes close
Light imprinted on the camera of my mind

Monday 22 July 2013

Moon Colours

We didn't watch the sunset tonight
We ignored the lurid display of light
Instead we sat entranced by the moon
Casting shadows on the igneous rock

Silver dancing on the shifting blacks;
Fish ripples adding the diamonds
Quiet copper mirrored boats hover,
Shifting; lightly kissing the gentle swell 

Count the varied subtle moon colours, 
Each one richly echoes its brighter light
Turquoise is hematite; vegetation jet.
Reflecting back I gleam black and white. 


Friday 12 July 2013

Agustín Dreams

Agustín dreams of flying machines
He finds lightness in detritus and
Potential for flight in flightless junk;
Each cog and chain and tube is imbued
With devised purpose and patient hands

Agustín dreams impossible dreams
He knows the community's failings,
The people who adore him, the
Brother who for no reason departed,
Dismissive official but, still, he works

Agustí dreams incredible dreams
From here to there took twenty years;
Complications resolved in time,
A gnarled hand and broken body
But in his head he's been in the air

Agustín dreams of compassion for all
Once he gave barefooted kids shoes,
To visit him makes another child sad.
The respect he deserves, he returns;
Kindness, simplicity, wonder, care

Agustín dreams of his time machine
This automaton subsumes his life
Halting, juddering, yet still it moves;
A new wheelchair sent to help his body
Dismantled to build his mind machine

Agustín dreams of universal machines
They mock him, this determined man;
He is not crazy, but has a keen mind
Educated by marvellous patience
Piece by piece; repeat and perfect

Agustín dreams of computing machines
Telescopes in space looking into the void
Up to highest and rarest atmosphere; but
He's incapable, only a lame shoemaker.
Uncaring imagination, ignores, carries him up

Agustín does not dream of heaven
When he is dead he will not care
Where his earth bound body lies
The machine he makes will stand
A reminder to live, to dream, to fly




Written in response to the story of Agustín and his helicopter and inspired in part by Eric Whitacre's  Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine









Wednesday 26 June 2013

Bubbles

Bubbles of time carry us through
Temporary states, atoms in flux
Weightlessly lifted mutating forms
Fleeting and turning with wind
Like notes of the band drifting out
Down over the water, down to the sea
Bubbles in swell both beneath and above

Bubbles of air are carried aloft
Endlessly recreated, suddenly stop
Nothing but puddles, like our footsteps,
Remain to show silent whispers of soap
As music ebbs, time shouts out
Bells of the churches, chug of the boat
Bubbles in swell both beneath and above