Slenderise the new spiralise

At the start of the month, the European Poetry Festival Camarade was back in town, and it was completely sold out! Manchester Poetry Library was so full – packed in the stacks, you might say – it was actually warm in there for once. Fourteen poets took part, some of whom I'd collaborated with in the past (so lovely to see everyone), and this time I'd invited Manchester Multilingual Poet Nóra Blascsók to team up. 

We met up on a super-sunny day over the summer to gather our ideas, deciding to follow the theme of "meadows" with a vague thought of exploring erasure. We then each wrote a poem that was "meadow adjacent", swapping them over for experimentation. Anaesthetics were administered and the complicated, time-consuming operations ensued. We both applied three methods each to slenderise the original poems and create something new. 

With mine – a villanelle about a crow's eye view of the melt-revealed alpinous (not a word) spring – Nóra removed first the verbs, then the verbs and adjectives, then the verbs and adjectives and pronouns. It was like poetic Ker-plunk, removing the structure and seeing what held. A really interesting exercise, getting down to the bare bones, with lots of lovely repetition!

For Nóra's piece, which tells of an unhappy encounter with nettles, I looked up the Hungarian word for meadow, which is "rét", and I used combinations of the letters R and E and T to cut back – round one was removing all the words that didn't contain at least one of R or E or T, round two retained only words containing at least two of these letters, and the final round involved slashing all the words that didn't contain all three – this saw only three words standing: "encounters", "their" and "fillérekért". 

I'd asked Nóra to include some Hungarian, which of course I'm fluent in but I asked Google Translate to do the honours anyway, and it told me that its translation was "capturing the sharp, colloquial and slightly vengeful tone of the Hungarian text". Oof. Obviously, I had to read out the Hungarian, albeit subsequently stripped back, and the video (here) shows proof of Nóra laughing at my pronunciation.

Featuring Anna Luňáková and Sarah Dawson / Nóra Blascsók and Sarah-Clare Conlon / Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler / Martin Kratz and Julia Rose Lewis / Carolyn Hashimoto and Ayse Kongur / Thor Magnus Tangeras and Agata Maslowska / Lydia Unsworth and James Davies - more here.

Drought Thoughts, continued

Drought was declared in half of England on Wednesday 29 July, including London, from whence I escaped Tuesday night, and, on Thursday, the whole of Wales. They don't declare drought in Scotland; they couch it in terms of water scarcity. In Manchester, the "Rainy City", the Environment Agency says we're in "prolonged dry weather", but there has been a bit of precipitation this last week, which has been at least slightly refreshing. 

I've been reading Zoë Skoulding's A Revolutionary Calendar again and decided to see what tallies with 28 July in the French Republican calendar (in which saints get the heave-ho in favour of plants, animals, minerals and agricultural tools for the daily dedications), the day I was wandering on a cracked and yellowed Hampstead Heath over to Kenwood to see the Henry Moore sculpture, among other things – here I am pictured outside the garden-cum-book-shop. Anyway it's watering can, which seems pretty apt. The month right now is Thermidor, or summer heat.

Today, among other things, like actual work and returning to tai chi, I've nailed the fourth in the "desire lines" poems I've been working on. In a week's time, it's the Peter Barlow's Cigarette open mic poetry special, and I'd like some new stuff to perform, so this little side project, part of the bigger "Drought Thoughts", might be it. The "desire lines" are something Ella Frears was playing with as part of her Dartington residency and has been airing in recent readings I've been lucky enough to make it to. They are I suppose in essence a kind of contrapuntual, which can be read in various ways, and which I've been tinkering about with regularly ever since stepping firmly into the land of poetry. 

So with the "desire lines" there is a middle section made up of single words (or thereabouts) to form its own sentence. I like the form because visually this narrow part sitting between two chunkier parts looks like a crack or a gap, and I decided yesterday to call mine "Fire Breaks", because topical, plus the sequence I've been chipping away at groups together drought-tolerant plants which have fire-related links. They also share lightning mythology and have medicinal qualities and culinary uses, and I'm taking some of the plants mentioned in Derek Jarman's Modern Nature as a jumping-off point – so elder to begin with, then laurel and holly and, today, gorse. (Gorse is day 16 in the French Republican calendar month of Frimaire (frost), btw, which lands on 6 December.) Not sure whether I'll add to the four I've made so far, we'll see.

I've also been busy making adjustments to the title poem of the "Drought Thoughts" project, which features all the words I wrote down in my notebook that include the letters "ough" in that order. Each line in the poem opens with an "ough" word, with a few others (and a few sonic red herrings) thrown in.

I am now aiming on compiling the poems I've written so far. In my head, something like four poems remain: a winterbourne stream and its opposite, although this might end up being a combination of "dry channel" and "water pools", and two heliocentric concrete numbers, which might include inspiration from next week's solar eclipse, idk. I can't make the first two until I have finalised all the rest, so it feels like an exciting cliffhanger to my favourite series at the moment. Oh, and the last proper solar eclipse like this in Northern Europe, in August 1999, I drove my Renault Clio to a field in proper rural France so I could be on the line of totality. Like you do. It was pretty good. My boss went to the Lizard in Cornwall and then to Moorfields Eye Hospital. She's on the wireless quite a bit now, so it obviously didn't do her any harm.

Up in frames

I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time with picture frames. Yesterday was artwork drop-off day for the Didsbury Open, the second of its kind, and the second I've shown in. The exhibition is being hung this week to coincide with Didsbury Arts Festival getting underway on Saturday and this time round it takes place across multiple venues in the village: The Art of Tea, Smoak, Home café and Didsbury Library. 

So yesterday morning saw me busy printing and mounting and cleaning glass in order to get "Concrete Icons" ready for its close-up, and dusting down "Blue Magic 4" by David Gaffney to take along with it in the grasshopper-singing, searing heat. My Open piece last time round, "Rivers", was snapped up, so my fingers are crossed for "Concrete Icons", which I created in two sittings: one at the end of November, just before my op, and one in February, once my grey matter had started to thaw again after.

Visible/invisible is the theme for this year's Didsbury Arts Festival (running 27 June to 5 July), and "Concrete Icons" is a diptych comprising two concrete poems representing two iconic south Manchester buildings: the still visible Toast Rack, or Hollings Building, its letters creating a ‘beau présent’ anagrammatic poem, and the now invisible Owens Park Tower, with ‘Cosmos I’ mural by Didsbury artist Mitzi Cunliffe. (The pic is of Mitzi working in her studio, in the garage of her home on Cranmer Road, just up the way.)

Today and tomorrow, I'm prepping six smaller frames, to hold one of the "Drought Thoughts" poems I'll be premiering at my solo performance on Saturday. I spent yesterday afternoon – once I'd snuck back home sticking to the shade – reworking this number especially. So now it has a second life, even before it's aired, as a concrete poem, the form of which reflects the content, so it can be enjoyed both viewed and read, and will make a nice little addition to a wall, maybe your own? There will be six limited-edition framed prints available on Saturday – get your tickets to the event here.

Drought Thoughts

I recently had my first proper rural trip away since my hip op, staying in the Yorkshire Dales for a week. I mention it because it inadvertently tied into what I've been working on recently, writing wise.   

An erstwhile sailor and hydrologist, I often write about watery subjects, but recently I’ve capsized that to explore “drought thoughts” as a poetry project – researching and writing while adjusting to life with severe arthritis. Drought was officially declared in the “Rainy City” of Manchester where I live the same week that my name went on the waiting list for a hip replacement, so it seemed appropriate to tie in this personal experience of creaking, crunching bones with the driest summer since 1976, when I was growing up on the Wirral Peninsula, a kind of island. That was last May (a year ago!) and I’ve since really enjoyed researching “drought thoughts” – from “dry-bathing” in the UK’s only desert at Dungeness before I ground to a halt completely, to charting the progress of Haweswater’s lost villages flooded to supply Manchester’s drinking water slowly resurfacing as the reservoir dropped. I’ve been thinking about daylighted rivers and winterbourne waterways, limestone and sandstone, the moon and tides, and the sun, responding to the recent “Helios” installation at Victoria Baths, where I was writer-in-residence, and the “Phoebus” print commissioned by Liberty for the Festival of Britain from the sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe, who lived and worked down the road from me. 

(Here's me with "Phoebus" on my actual first trip involving stopping elsewhere than my own house – at the amazing Women In Print exhibition at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, and on until 21 June if you're in that neck of the woods; highly recommend.) 

Being Yorkshire born, of course the "Drought Thoughts" project led to me to giving a certain amount of time to dry stone walls, even getting in touch with the Dry Stone Wall Association (“lunky” was a particularly chewy word they proffered when I asked about terminology), so Yorkshire was top of my list for an escape t'country. I was rewarded with many delights including St George’s mushrooms and willow warblers warbling and bright yellow patches of cowslips and a robin singing from his spot atop an erratic and a wee hatched blue egg fallen from a hawthorn tree just coming into bloom and conversations with blackbirds and goldfinches and sightings of oystercatchers and buzzards and hearings of curlews and owls. I managed to go off road and my health app told me: “So far this year, you’re taking more steps a day than you did last year.” All good. I even managed to climb over a few dry stone walls, and I gave up on a few as well, but either way, it all fed an overall good disposition – as well as into some new poems. 

And how excited was I to go up a valley for other stuff (a craft brewery and an exhibition) and come back with a totally dry riverbed?!!!! The pebbles looked like potatoes scattered willy-nilly as if from a burst shopping bag, just dropped mid-flow as the waters of the River Skirfare disappeared underground, leaving a bright white scar, the likes of which I am all too familiar with. I'm so glad I shouted over to a farmer, despite a sign at his gate that clearly stated “No Idiots”. He told me it's because of a fault and that if there’s a sudden and sustained substantial rainfall, the river returns, bombing it down the dry channel like a tidal wave, or a bore. Quite the sight, he told me. I don’t think he thought I was an idiot as I excitedly explained my presence peering over his dry stone wall and apologising for interrupting while he fed the chucks. Then again, maybe he’s since replaced the sign at the gate with one that reads “No Poets”.

Anyway, "more water for the Wharfe, more words for the poets" as someone (me) once said, and I've just finished another poem, about this karstian wonder. It's another new poem for the upcoming performance slot I've secured at Didsbury Arts Festival later this month to premiere some of the new poems. I'm really looking forward to sharing some of the new work, and if you enjoyed my special DAF commission “Flight Patterns”, which fed into my most recent Wainwright Prize-nominated book “Wanderland”, or indeed if you liked my concrete poetry shown at last year’s inaugural Didsbury Open, then “Drought Thoughts” may well be up your street! Join me as I transform landscapes into soundscapes on Saturday 27 June, 5pm, Emmanuel Parish Centre (Upper Hall). Tickets on sale now here. (Thanks to James for the fabulous flyer!)

Constantin's Colonne and concrete constructs

Yesterday marked 150 years since Constantin Brancusi was born in a Romanian backwater; looking at Glearth, the same kind of ribbon settlement in which I was pulled over for speeding en route to a wedding in Transylvania. This was the final leg of a very-long-and-not-without-its-adventures drive from south Manchester to Sibiu, without a proper map. As you do.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Brancusi's work and should the Centre Pompidou reinstate his studio reconstruction upon reopening (scheduled 2030), I can highly recommend a visit. I was so taken with my first and subsequent trips that I often take it upon myself to create concrete poems in the shapes of his sculptures. Here's 'Colonne Sans Fin', from my pamphlet Using Language, which just came up as a FB memory – three years ago, lovely Invisible Hand Press editor James and I were finalising cover designs, garnering quotes and proofreading.

I've modelled 'Colonne Sans Fin' next to a photo in my Brancusi book of one of the Endless Columns in situ at the 8 Impasse Ronsin studio in Montparnasse (long gone, and replaced by a morgue; I've checked). Legend has it Brancusi twisted the arms of mates including Man Ray to help him lug a tree trunk back to Paris from the countryside so he could turn it into one of the columns – the next two slides show a column in the garden of a rich patron and some of the columns in the Pompidou show a couple of years back. That was a hot day – there's a selfie on my camera roll and I look like I've melted.

Anyway, bon anniversaire, Constantin, la multi ani! By coincidence, I've been working on some more concrete poems and sculpture-inspired pieces this week. The stars must've aligned.