to the Bees

BIRDS, a poem

materials: elderberries on metal manhole cover canvas

Penryn Campus, October 2015

Twitter Style Review of Patrick Keiller's London

London in Several Parts

London in the rain #poetry

2015 viewing of London. Nostalgia #missthenineties #missedthepoint

London at the edges #poetry

The TV camera shot quality of the film creates a warm sense of remembrance in itself #thamestelevision

London #poetry
The narrator returns to London and spends time with his ex-lover Robinson. They explore London by foot #psychoeography #queerinterest.

O, London #poetry

Robinson, as central character, is both entertaining and informative but his anger and confusion are central #alienation

Where have you gone? #poetry

We learn a great deal about London past and present through their wanderings #londonfringe

O, London #poetry

There are touches of humour in the use of the soundscape and visual. Gateposts, Peruvian buskers, spring time and all that sort of thing.

O, O, O, O #poetry

Londoners ignore the siege of the city. We are left unsettled, feeling that time is never experienced in full at the moment of happening.

You have vanished #poetry

A deep-mapping effect of writers, artists and philosophers who have lived in London #psychogeography #filmreview #keiller #London

Dancing with your confusion #poetry

Robinson’s character is reminiscent of Guy Burgess #trilbywanderings #sovietapartment

Caught looking back #poetry

The view from the hotel room/ Monet’s painting of the Thames/ dinner and something more with your alter-ego.

London under siege # poetry

The history and the future of London colliding to create the present #philosophyoftime #psychogeography
London in the rain #poetry. 

The Flannelled Flâneur #1

My voyage began in the afternoon...

 

dressed     for bed

a stroll to the desk

              and back

           to the desk
              and back

now to the window

litter the garden

leave the cat

curled hot

water bottle
 

and the clock
turned back
for day light
saving
follow

 

the wisp
into dusk

along field

partition 

down the valley
 

past the willows
ash and oak

                first  "shhh"

          shhh comes before
           the pheasant takes
                     off and flies
                              away
and over fence

and the breeze
of land agents
and haunted
houses above
the copse

the leaf face
jagged

and the whistle

 

of Tregeagle
emerging from

undergrowth

his tongue
in knots
of bindweed
his owner
calling him

 

 

 

through thicket
to where
the children
would swim

before
the world

was changed
in a single

viewing

 

the

pool half-found

in the
half-light...

http://flanneledflaneur.blogspot.co.uk/

The Wardrobe

Over the last six months I’ve been setting up an online project called The Wardrobe. It’s a pop-up magazine consisting of six online issues and, eventually, a printed anthology.
I’m really happy to announce that at the beginning of the month we published the first online issue of The Wardrobe. The first issue features poetry from Sarah James, Sara Nesbitt Gibbons and Anna Cathenka and a creative essay by Milla Prince.

Here's my editorial for the first issue:

Our first steps into The Wardrobe, the furs fondling our shoulders, and then the open plains. Here we must build our own fortresses. We hide and then find ourselves in clothes, using them to cover our nakedness. Gradually, over millennia we have emerged from the shadow of the forest, a wooden casket and we cover our nakedness, and that of the land, with clothes. Fallen leaves, remnants of the past flooding our identity.
In this first issue of The Wardrobe, insecurities jostle with mythical musings. Only in sickness, melancholy and the closeness of companionship do we allow our vulnerability to be expressed in flesh rather than the carefully constructed seams and panels of clothes. Whether it’s the jumble of the youth hostel washroom, the undressing of a lover, the nurture of a parent or grandparent or the protective seal of a red riding hood, clothes tell stories.

If you’re interested in contributing then have a look at the first issue and the submission/about pages to get an idea of what we like. We're also on twitter @wardrobelit.

Viking Ship Museum

Burial Mound

There has been a ship on the rim of the horizon all morning. The crowds have gathered; some moan, others stand silent. As the sun starts to drop towards the waterline, a group of men row out towards the bobbing wreck. There is disquiet among the spectators, the ship is in rags, wraith-like against the dying light. It will soon cross over.

Creative response to the Viking Ship Museum

Bygdøy Peninsular, Tuesday 28th October 2014

Last week I visited Oslo. It’s my third visit to Norway’s capital since a close friend took up residence there. One of the ways I justified taking time out of my university reading week was by visiting the Viking Ship Museum. Since reading the Prose Edda I have been absorbed by the sagas and the people who wrote them, so we trekked out to the pretty Bygdøy peninsular thumbing the Oslo Fjord. The ships are housed in a cruciform building. As you walk inside, you're taken aback by the immediacy and the enormity of the Oseberg burial ship. It looms over you as you buy your ticket.

The cross shape acts as four antechambers containing the three Viking burial ships (Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune) and much of the content discovered inside them.

Oseberg Ship 

The Oseberg ship is housed in the nave of the building and has an ornate bow and stern and images of sea-serpents carved into the main body. The Gokstad ship and the remains of the two larger vessels live in the north transept, the Tune ship and three smaller craft in the chancel, and the sledges, various textiles and other artefacts in the south transept. There are long galleries for people to see inside all three ships. The space has an acoustic, that invokes the song-like metre of the Norwegian language. 

The museum has preserved sledges, ornate bridals, boots, buckets for blueberries, troughs for rye flour and cooking equipment that were buried with the occupants of the ships. The peacock feathers and the boots were the most surprising and intriguing of the archaeological finds. 

The museum made no secret of the fact that many of the archaeological finds discovered in the Oseberg dig are endangered due to the original conservation method of using hot alum. They are finely varnished on the outside and rotting on the inside. There's an article on the Viking Ship Museum website if you're interested called Can the Oseberg Viking finds be Saved? It would be sad to see these last material links to Viking culture disintegrate. 

.

first five photographs by Ka Man Mak

A Shell to the Ear

I recently had the opportunity to go to the North Cornwall Book Festival as part of a group of journalists. There are a lot of book festivals springing up at the moment, this one is only in it's second year and subsequently has an intimate feel to it. I wrote my article in the children's play room, amid a chaos of toys and books. Throughout the day the family and their literary guests rambled in and out of the kitchen opposite the makeshift news room.  

I had the job of filing a report on a poetry reading by Lavinia Greenlaw. Greenlaw's book about William Morris's Icelandic journals is a much-loved volume called Questions of Travel. 

If you would like to read my contribution you can find it on the SWJFalmouth, North Cornwall Book Festival blog; Like Lime Through Feathers.