Collaboratively speaking

Just got an email off Angels Of Anarchy, which looks slightly weird sitting there in my inbox. A bit surreal, you might say. I'm guessing that effect may well have crossed the minds of the good people at Manchester Art Gallery, where there is currently an exhibition of the same name, subtitled Women Artists and Surrealism.


The reason why Angels Of Anarchy have emailed me is because yesterday I couldn't resist the invitation on the exhibition's website to be surreal.

According to the site, "the surrealists had a lot of fun creating collaborative poetry and artworks", and now, "using Facebook, Twitter and our own website, people everywhere are writing a surreal line of poetry, without knowing what has come before, and what comes next...".

I contributed a line, which had to be 50 characters or less, hence: "Congratulations! Your Angels of Anarchy poem is finished and you are now officially a surrealist poet." Here's the result.

Poem 27, a collaborative work by
Juliet Vinçon, Clare Conlon, Joanne Finn, John Davison,
James Roome, Neil Coombs, Rachel Witkin, Barbara Byatt and Sean Diamond, 7 October 2009

Sleep parrot sleep, let this traveller fly
All her duck-egg dreams lay scrambled on the floor
You cut through me with your diamond gaze
Before the picnic, I was seeing too much of Flora
Speak 'concrete mixmagnanimous', deft, bent, whole
Through the Dark Windows he glimpsed his own face
Enveloped by the rich blanket of the night
Rage, ragged, & red as raw meat, swirled above her
As time went on, my fins became sore.