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Issue #1
Kintsugi - Kat Savage (Read More)
"We thrive in the cracks of society, We, the Artists. We have never quite fit in to anywhere ‘solid’ really- schools, churches, nine to fives- we are too restless you see, too electric." Kevin Tole reviews David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress in the style of the book.
Plus poetry from Susan Taylor, Barbara Anna Gaiardoni, Stephan Delbos, and Marieta Maglas.
Use the categories tab on the right hand side (bottom of the page on a smart device) to navigate to specific content including our amazing poetry submissions. |
Sarah Mayo in the spotlight discussing being an 'insider-outsider'.
Feature column from Kenwood Blenderhand 'The Age of the Screen', plus more special content released throughout the month of April.
Photograph 'Do Not Hang' by Thom Boulton |
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Marieta Maglas
Change occurs in and around life's spirals and through notched vents in exhausted buildings. The sprung structures resemble a crush of rocking bodies. Offbeat mannequins actively seek employment opportunities. They appear to be ready to rock. Experiencing an ongoing crisis can lead to negative self-talk. Hypnotic dreams destroy the future. In pandemics, phagocytic cells lack the necessary structure to aid immunity, as no love can thrive in an infested heart. For sure, freedom does not exist. It appears to be an illusion for those who believe they are capable of doing everything right. Everything gradually loses meaning. Perhaps we will continue to exist while rotating around the sun, which is an essential movement. The body requires the soul for survival, not the other way around. In an ideal world, all voices can be heard, and pressured substances create waves. Songs are like flowers flowing in a river of change. Is it necessary to bend backward at times to exist?
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Spotlight - Sarah Mayo I’ve realised that as a poet I seek a more accurate understanding of myself and my connections to others; furthermore, through writing I have started to emerge from my shell in unexpected forms, releasing colours hidden within. From insecurity has come a strength I didn’t expect to find. A Starting Point: ‘An Insider-Outsider’ I was struck by this description of Aberdare poet Alun Lewis by the critic Daniel Hughes, thinking ‘Yes, that’s me too’. I created the three poems I explore in this essay with a sage love for the Valleys, my birthplace and home – even when this theme is the least explicit in the final poem. Nevertheless, I have been troubled by the self-critical belief that I am a Valleys outsider (a weak accent, time away, lost connections, a relatively isolated childhood). And yet I’ve never strayed that far, and in recent years I’ve returned, living, and working in the Valleys again. Thus, these poems were birthed on train journeys from Pontypridd to Aberdare, as I squeezed in writing time before ‘the rain and pavement blow the whistle’ (the final line of ‘Penrhiwceiber Peaks’). The act of writing in response to my environmental stimulus has offered the possibility of repairing a fractured inner sense of belonging, strengthened further with the bind of becoming part of the local creative community. The Peregrine Falcon Wings it to Asda The dai cap poet puffs partaking in the beer garden chat. ‘They wanna find tha’ fire startin’ fiend settin' alight the Mohican quiff of trees up on the rock where the serpent’s tongue runs red with the boiling blood of mothers tampin’ coz tea’s ready, but the fella’s half- cut down the pub’. High on the molehill masquerading as a mountain, the shrooms serenade the smatter of autumn rain tempting teenage traders to tramp fields to tender trips to friends. The green growing in the hill farm’s shade for street corner meet & greets & living room exchanges. Boy racers buzzing with death denying kicks.. We wander wonky over platitudes on pavestones, sick scattering near suntan salons & chippies. Our peripheral vision glimpses poets & composers’ inscriptions, followed by apocryphal stories pouring from two for one cocktail lips. Open mic psyched .. I was, they were.. everyone saw, knew the score.. sorry sir slur. Sloshed slammed slumped. Clink fist bump. Ding ding ding. Last orders. Hit the door. I’ve seen this.. dreamed it.. sun seeking sheep.. sowing the seams.. the stream careens.. the scene seems ..in this rain.. the same (First published in ‘Valleys’ Imaginings’, 2024.) This was inspired by gazing at the low-lying mountains before me and imagining what tales they might tell, and as memories swooped round my mind like birds of prey hunting for food. I thought of characters I know in the local Spoons and a narrative voice soon emerged; I began to write a kind of free verse narrative poem where the characters are ‘extraordinary’ only in that their wet, booze-soaked anecdotes and pub crawls lead to a grasping towards mean making, a search for the profound amongst the mundane which has a pathetic nobility to it. ‘I was / they were / everyone saw’ – our efforts to be someone even for a flash is worth it. So, without being explicitly political, this poem centres working class voices, and as the poet witness, I also attribute meaning to my own existence. Penrhiwceiber Peaks my waking wondering sleep with her train station sign snapping my in the moment consciousness to action. Words whir between my ears like skaters set astir by the engine’s onwards rush, this kinetic pressure to hit deadlines, fulfil schedules, squeeze creativity into time & motion caffeine craving bundles before the rain and pavement blow the whistle. This is one of a series of ‘train’ poems I have been writing, exploring the mental / physical journeys I undertake on the train (symbol of the industrial revolution started in South Wales), and as I bridge the world of poet-time and the demands of work and responsibility. Aside from its alliterative quality, the title alludes to the poetic tradition of spotlighting (now former) mining communities, a nod to Idris Davies, although this would be where the comparison ends. I write on my phone, recording snippets of inspiration as my brain pulses into writer mode, and the title is an allusion to the typical moment this arrives – about a third of the way into my journey, ‘with her train station sign snapping / my in the moment consciousness to action’. As I write, my mind tries to imagine merging with the motion of the train, its slowing down and speeding up, and I strive to echo this rhythm and pace. ‘Words whir between my ears / like skaters set astir by the engine’s/ onward rush..’ Composing the poem represents my preparation for the finish line when I must switch back into ‘doing rather than thinking’, back to action rather than pursuing my passion, whilst the poem itself anticipates the energy demanded by work, as it consumes your mental resources outside of the boundaries of the workday. The Rhythm of Living She m e a n d e r s to the pace of her heart’s slow tempo struts with its rising drumbeat gallops through mind space dimensions raving, roaring, speed of thought g n i r a o s s l o w i n g as she savours his gift, wraps her tongue around his flowing fauna leaping time to kindle fire flowers from lips to fingertips pumping a second heart, conducting the march of her ink pressed steps his verse imbuing the air she breathes. Here this preoccupation with speed and pace transitions to a focus inward towards noticing the body – and specifically heart rate - as a guide to the mercurial moods of the subject. Although a very different poem to the two above, ‘The Rhythm of Living’ is thematically linked, although this is not obvious. Informed by the insight of Mindfulness Cognitive Behavioural Therapy about the importance of listening to the body to better manage mood disorders, it is an experimental poem which attempts to use form and layout to mimic the changing energy levels it describes.
The poem’s subject is written in the third person to create distance – a possible safety seeking strategy- as if by writing it in the first person instead, I would risk exposing myself, somehow (even though a first-person poem does not necessarily imply that the poet herself is the actual voice). It is an oblique way of addressing – in a subjective, poetic manner – a hint of the ‘ups and downs’ of a person living with bipolar disorder, as manifested in the action verbs – ‘meanders’,’ struts’, and ‘gallops’, and then: raving / roaring, speed of thought g n i r a o s The consequences of such moods are not made explicit; the reader may infer them. And yet, this poem also relishes the creative energy and heightened sensitivity also associated with bipolar, building towards the solace found in finding a connection with a great writer, slowing its pace again: ‘As she savours his gift, wraps her tongue around his flowing fauna leaping time to kindle fire flowers from lips to fingertips’ The ‘gift’ belongs to Alun Lewis, of course, (now transformed into muse) and thus I can thematically connect the three poems as they are driven by a powerful yearning to achieve a sense of belonging to the South Wales Valleys. In the final poem this desire is channelled in an oblique tribute to one of the Valleys’ most significant literary figures. All three poems are different approaches to understanding my place within this specific range of mountains and hills I call my birthplace and home. I am but one of many Valleys’ creatives who live and have lived, worked, struggled, thrived, and survived in this small but beautiful spot on this planet of ours and I’m grateful that I have reached this point of self-knowledge. The future will show its way. Stephan Delbos
For Z. S., et al. The face of adversity is all too familiar. Look at this photograph of One countenance of perseverance: Ribbon-bonnet-wrapped head; In her eyes insistent stillness Of a woman used to waiting Until a tidal change of men’s minds And actions prove she was right All along. Eyes that told you so. Zilpha Washburn Harlow Spooner. Name like a patchwork quilt of privilege & whimsy & determination & deliverance. Daughter of Plymouth, 1818—1891, Anti-slavery reformer, suffragist, anthology Editor of Poems of the Pilgrims. At tea-time meetings, politely, fervently Revolutionary, she sang with friends A toast that foretold the day: “When women in power, alive to the hour, Shall crown their hearts’ faith at the polls” & were right, just seven decades early. Perseverance is severe— An uncompromising will to change, Something most powerful men resist. We ensure the continued actuality Of hard-won change by studying History, which, like perseverance, Demonstrates our faith in progress. Zilpha knew we could do better. What should we do now? Stephan Delbos
Our history crawls shackled, bleeding, hollering something fierce from under the rock of reality we, finally working together, now have the strength to pry from the loam of collective memory and lift, a little nervous, knee-high into this afternoon, late August when we gather to do this and our history starts running in circles like a siren’s spin around us; see what humans have done to ourselves. Our history has a mother’s eyes, a father’s ears, knee caps from a cousin long lost in the branching shadows of our one great family tree. This history is who we were before you and I; language that tries to hide us from the fact that we are one. We are one because the mystery of consciousness unites us. So we place the rock at history’s feet and sit to listen. A light offshore breeze comes up and seems to gently pull each soul by the shoulders just an inch or so out of each body. We sit and float for a moment. Someone shouts that history has vanished. But history is here—everywhere like air. And the soil is so fertile in the hollow under the rock we lifted, look. Kevin Tole
Published in 1998, Markson went through 54 rejections before he found a publisher…. Allegedly. The double meaning of some phrases or words. When two letters are sometimes typeset so close together that they can come to resemble a third letter and so the meaning of a word or phrase changes. In my copy of the Dalkey Archive edition, ‘things burn’ appears to become ‘things bum’. But then of course it might simply be my own deteriorating eyesight. Words that are similar but mean completely different things, let alone any dissimilarity or differences in meaning across language and culture. Symbolically similar words but conceptually totally divergent. Letters are symbols standing in for universally established meaning. Is that meaning established by rules? We can only play chess by knowledge of the rules of chess. We can play a game which uses a chessboard and chessmen with any rules, or rules that may change throughout the game. But that game would not be chess. WELFARE CONCEPT WARFARE CONCEIT Memory and forgetting. Those that are deliberate actions and those that are natural or chance aberrations of time. Like ‘time out of mind’ – time when the person was out of their mind, mad - OR – time when the subject was not in the mind, when the thing was unknown or forgotten or deliberately put out of the mind. The subject and object of a phrase may change the meaning of the phrase completely. MEANING. We remember music, as non-musicians, by symbolic notation or external manifestations – recordings. As such music itself is the most ephemeral of the Arts. It is performed and experienced at that time. Any music of any kind that comes into our heads (what does that mean) is the version of that music which we were and are most familiar with. Sequence – referring back; how far back? To the last statement? To the last congruent statement. We make an implied sense based upon what we feel should be the sense. Does a particular juxtaposition of statements make sense? Do we compare it with pre-set, pre-cognised paradigms which we have already established and hold? I turned over two pages of Markson together by accident and continued reading. It made no difference. A painting of an object is not the object itself but a depiction of the object. It is another object, a depiction of an object which itself becomes another separate object. ‘To allow oneself to consider’ – i.e. It is not just the external reality; it is the interaction between the outside external object and perception of the external object that forms the image. The OBJECT and the NAME. I saw. I believed I saw. We are dealing with the phenomenology of perception. Accidental and Deliberate. Men are all bastards. What one really wishes is that Virginia Woolf had written something creative in the style of a lingerie catalogue. There are other versions of course, such as Tintoretto’s treatise on brassiere construction. He called it ‘The Origin of the Milky Way’ in fact. It stands at the opposite end of the gallery from Titian’s work on the off-the-shoulder three-piece toga which he called ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’. It has an ultramarine sky made from the pigment derived from lapis lazuli which probably came from Afghanistan. Lapis means ‘stone’. Lazuli has a more twisted derivation but is generally taken to mean ‘of the sky’. Hence Titian painted the sky with stone of the sky. Accoutrements / Baggage. Acquisitions which move from being benefits and useful to being superfluous and burdensome. Value is not inherent. MEANING. Is meaning inherent? We know that meaning may simply be temporal, an understanding, a cognisance which pertains to something at that time but which may not be persistent. Where does meaning reside? Can we objectify meaning? I once ate four boiled eggs to see what it felt like. It was not a good idea. TRUTH. May be temporal or positional, may reside in a time and place. Truth is not absolute but is predicated. The imprecision of language. The precision of linguistics. What am I trying to say, to get across what I mean. “Now the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus… were just passing by. Altogether now!” “If the painter had closed her eyes, or had simply refused to look, would the person still have been at the window?” (p. 53). Oh blah-dee-bloody-blah. Here we are back at that old hoary chestnut of ‘if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to see it, does it make a sound’ metaphysical bollocks. It all depends on definitions, Watson. So he had it rejected 54 times by various publishers? And you can see why. Debar yourself from the intellectual shenanigans that the work has acquired and to Markson himself and you get back to the oh-so-familiar stream of verbiage you’ve heard so many times darn the sad cafe of performance artists. And then it drops into the familiar ground that I remember well, of Tacita at Falmouth and her BA show, all stretched latex sheets and charcoal text about Greece, pre-menstrual fluids and vulva geography. And yes…. it got a first, of course. That’s the kind of thing they want to see in the contemporary world of art education. The book ‘Great Bus Journeys Of The World' was written by Alexei Sayle, by the way. Ethics; Guilt; Responsibility. By 60 pages in it has become faintly risible and I find myself composing my own Markson-esque epigrammatic sentences to sit opposite his. Some of these appear here. What was definitely not written by Friedrich Nietzsche was ‘It’s all bollocks, chickadee.’ I am equally convinced that had he written that I would have noticed it. But I know that he did not because it was spoken to me on the stage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden during the scene change between Acts 1 and 2 of ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’. I once saw Zizi Jeanmaire dance on that stage. Nietzsche had a big moustache, certainly in every painting I’ve seen of him. Of course all the painters could have been lying. There is a big difference between the art work and the work of art. Derek and Clive. The Two Ronnies. I sometimes laugh so much when I am reading something that I cannot finish what I am reading. It causes me so much merriment that I have to stop. Mark E. Smith. ‘I’ll see the manager.’ ‘Terminal Boredom’. That’s what John Lydon says at the close to track 1 from the first of the Public Image Ltd albums. Whether he is terminally bored with the recording process or the product or it is just a general statement about life is open to question. It can hardly be the second part as ‘First Issue’ is in many ways groundbreaking. Did I mention that it’s all bollocks, chickadee? I feel sure I must have, but that is perhaps beside the point. One of the popes made people bum most of what Virginia Woolf did write. Of course, that may have been ‘burn’. But who really knows? The houses that I have lived in throughout my life all still exist. I cannot, however, say that that is verifiably true because I have never revisited all of them. In fact, I know for certain that one of them does not exist any longer because the rooming house where my parents lived at the time I was born and which I spent my early years in and of which I remember nothing was demolished to make way for a series of blocks of flats. I do not sign or date my own artwork. Sometimes I initial it. So is this a work of fiction? And by ‘this’ I might mean either this review which I am writing here at this table but not with a typewriter, or the book by David Markson entitled ‘Wittgenstein’s Mistress’. Is fiction a series of epigrams which may or may not be true? If I recuse myself from this whole process, does the writing stop? Richard Long, whilst walking in circles on Dartmoor, once said, ‘It’s all bollocks, chickadee’. Or rather it may have been when he was walking in straight lines in the Himalayas. On the other hand he may not have. Done or said. And then again only he experienced this psychodrama and all we have to go on is a series of maps and photographs. To say the experience was somewhat solipsistic is stating a fact. As such, can his work be considered art? Andy Galsworthy would, of course, not have stuck his neck out so far in such an outré a manner, being concerned with both the concrete and the ephemeral and the intertwining between them in the short time that his works are in existence. More metaphysical bollocks. Peter Ustinov stole the whole film in ‘Spartacus’. Actually, he didn’t steal the film. The No. 1 Bus from Bermondsey does not stop at Highbury Corner. It is in fact a song by Nuru Kane. It is perhaps the best song that I have ever heard about a bus. Tim said that to me several years ago now, but it is still true. I still don’t understand what she was on about connecting Greece and menstrual fluid. Later she did a work called ’Majesty’ where she photographed the Majesty Oak in Kent, blew up the photograph enormously and then carefully painted out all the background stroke by stroke. It is very hard to walk in straight lines in the Himalayas. But it is easy to walk in circles on Dartmoor. When I was younger there was a time when I used to think I was turning into a woman. My nose would periodically run and sometimes bleed fairly regularly. Over the years this became more erratic till it finally stopped. Maybe I am nasally menopausal and what I was experiencing was a peri-menopausal phenomenon. I used to like swimming in the sea also. I once discovered that for some reason, in a little town on the coast of Japan, there were hundreds of old postcards of the forest at Fontainebleau. Maybe I just read that somewhere, possibly in a footnote which I never read. Or I wait till I have finished the text then go back and read the prologue, footnotes and epilogue. I have been to the forest of Fontainebleau. There is a camp site there. And a lake. It was there that I first saw an otter. Or my young mind assumed it was an otter. Not one otter but three all swimming together in the same direction. But now heavens Kirsten Flagstad does not produce a very wonderful version of Richard Strauss’ ‘Four Last Songs’. The only version of this work worth listening to is the performance by Jessye Norman. I believe that Jessye Norman had carte blanche to sing any part of the Strauss repertoire at any time without having to seek consent or pay royalties. The ‘Four Last Songs’ were indeed the last four songs Richard Strauss composed before dying. He finished them before passing away. Unlike Giacomo Puccini who died before completing Act 3 of Turandot. Although most of the act had been sketched out it was left to one of his pupils to complete the composition. Well, doubtless I have merely assumed it was unnecessary to mention that the sea was generally cold when I was swimming in it. But to me it felt OK and the more one swam, the warmer it appeared to become. This may be because I was experiencing hot flushes Above where I used to swim in the sea there was a small café come bar which was pleasant to sit in after a dip in the sea. A woman who I greatly admired used to sit opposite me. It didn’t last and I endured much anxiety and depression for a long time afterwards. It was time out of mind. I believe I saw what I wanted to believe. In the end I wished her all the same pain she had inflicted upon me. Not that it would at all have mattered as she cut all contact at a very early stage which was part of the problem. I do not swim in the sea now and I avoid going through certain areas and to certain places. I have always wanted to make a work called ‘Inferiority’ where I would take a photograph of the Majesty Oak, a 1400-year oak in Kent, blow up the photograph to a ridiculous size and then carefully paint out the oak tree with white gouache stroke by stroke to leave the background alone. It wouldn’t sell and would be hard to exhibit let alone mount. Markson is like someone semi-randomly with a semi-researched aim wading through Wikipedia. It is more enjoyable to write in that style than read in it. As such he must have had a hoot writing his work that was rejected 54 times. As indeed I have had cobbling together this pastiche which may or may not be true, doubtless to say. The Descent from the Cross is a stunning mid-15th century painting in the Prado. There are ten figures in it. I have no knowledge of whether there are windows opposite the painting in the gallery or whether they are washed or unwashed, but given the value of the painting and its age, it is highly unlikely that there are any windows opposite it in any case. So the matter is totally superfluous. I have just knocked over a glass of wine which of course flew across the book I was reading. Forevermore my copy of ‘Wittgenstein’s Mistress’ will be wrinkled at the edges, slightly stained and redolent of Primitivo from Puglia. And I was exactly half way through the book Maybe it was the sea air that contributed to the abuse she heaped on me. Or maybe it was just the peri-menopause. Maybe it was only the sea air that contributed to her deterioration. Not that it was her deterioration but rather the deterioration in the relationship that I thought I had with her. Or maybe it was her divorce or her children leaving the nest and failing or even not wanting to keep in contact or maybe it was her failed PhD, not that she failed to attain the doctorate just that her thesis proved to be a big negative and a dead end, or her growing sense of disillusion with her own goals and aims, not that I now believe she ever knew what she wanted in any case. I find it difficult now to feel enraptured, though seeing reproductions of paintings like ‘The Descent from the Cross’ still gives me hope. I once drank lager stained with green gouache. It was an art school St Patrick’s Day jaunt. I remember the lager as tasting vaguely eggy. Not as eggy though as eating four boiled eggs consecutively. The wine staining has left an irrationally shaped edge bleeding through each page of the book. It is not really ‘irrational’, just irregular and there is a relationship between the shape on one page and the subsequent shape on the next page as well as the shape on the preceding page. It makes for an interesting flicker book. I may apply for an Arts Council grant to develop this idea. Philosophical insight or intellectual narcissism? It becomes more obsessive, more manic in an authorially methodological manner. It's a descent into madness over 230 pages proven in the last 15. And I begin to recognise my somewhat mad repeated writings to the woman that sat opposite me that could never be sent and the truth in them is my truth at the time of writing them; my understanding of what I saw at that time in that state, as real then as they are unreal now. Truth. Layers within layers. It’s all bollocks, chickadee. And the Afterword by David Foster Wallace? He cannot bear to not be the centre of attention and show off his intellectual pretensions which are as big as the planet. An arse of a novelist content to hear his own voice. It is not enough to be simple and straightforward for him. He must use and reuse words, change meanings readapt and invent words. But in doing so unexpected things emerge. i.e. the curator (who has become more important than the artist) used to be someone that grouped and hung work; NOW their purpose is “to give meaning; to impose order, the synecdochic of the life of the solipsist”. Through that, and the self-defined importance of the curator, all contemporary art becomes narcissistic. DFW is part of that narcissism. And his analysis of feminism is the usual middle-class male guilt in the face of someone else’s empowerment that we have come to expect. And of which there is little need. Philosophical treatise? Narcissistic self-stroking whine? Example of the atomism of modern life? A “flawed moving meditation on loneliness, language and gender?” Probably all of them. That’s all we’ve got time for, so it’s ‘goodnight’ from me. And it’s ‘goodnight’ from him. Column - Kenwood Blenderhand
Since 2013 screen time has increased by 50 minutes per day to 6 hours 58 minutes. We spend on average 44% of our waking hours looking at screens (Data Reportal). Are we living in the Age of the Screen? Well of course but then we always have been. The screen on your phone is just the latest iteration of a portal into what I am going to call ‘The Otherworld’ a place of myth and miracle an eternal immortal place of the not living and the not dead. The Otherworld was first glimpsed in the shadows of the campfire how big the night must have seemed back then and how vulnerable our ancestors but the shadows that held terrors could also be playfully engaged they could be interacted with controlled and modelled into a narrative. Cave wall painting began with the animating effect of fire making the meaty flank of a bison ripple or a herd of horses gallop, tiny Neolithic carved figurines like the Venus of Willendorf could have loomed large by firelight. Here then is a screen a prosthesis of human imagination a permeable membrane where it is possible to touch the Otherworld and perhaps even to reach out and grasp the levers of fate that control our lives. Leather shadow puppets from Central Asia dating from the first millennium BCE suggest a popular widespread artform that still exists today in the Wayang Klitik of Java where performances of complex mythologies that have all the tropes of cinema begin at dusk and go on until dawn on a screen made of animal skins. The screen is key to the camera obscura (literally dark room) allowing an inverted projected image through a small aperture to be focused in sharp detail. The Chinese philosopher Mo-tzu wrote about it in 400BCE but the camera obscura is certainly much older as are lenses. Spectacles with lenses made of polished quartz were being worn in Egypt and Mesopotamia in 700 BCE and the emperor Nero liked to wear glasses made of two enormous emeralds when he visited the Colosseum. Painted murals and pixelated mosaics popularised by the Romans evolved into Western European painting with its dense narratives compressed onto portable wooden screens. The Venetians painted on sail cloth canvas using pigments from the East but were they also using ground glass lenses they manufactured for military purposes? The Hockney-Falco thesis proposes the move to visual realism during the 1420s is a direct result of the use of optical projection devices such as lenses and concave mirrors. By the late renaissance artists such as Caravaggio were almost certainly using a lens and by the 18th century the founder of the Royal Academy himself Sir Joshua Reynolds painted portraits using a lens hidden discreetly in the lid of his paint box. The camera, the screen and the projected image are not new only the photographic ability to chemically fix a picture and of course once this breakthrough happened cinema and TV would follow. There is a story told by Georges Braque of a young Picasso standing up during one of the first early movies and delighting in the projected images flickering across his body in sudden fragments surely a key moment in the genesis of Cubism? As you take your seat and the lights go down a hush descends over the audience and the curtain slowly rises to reveal the Otherworld. But are we the passive viewers our grandparents were still willing to suspend our silent disbelief? The Otherworld is no longer confined to the proscenium arch the delicate conventions of theatre and cinema are easily disrupted by a ringtone or a full bladder and have been in decline since the introduction of the first mobile phone with internet access (the Nokia 9000 in 1996). No audience is now passive we interact and we are distracted and whatever your attention sponge is it had better be good because now we carry the Otherworld in a pocket. Since the first video game (Pong 1972) we have all stepped through the looking glass and become active citizens of the Otherworld and like everyone else here we are now neither alive nor dead if you are killed you simply respawn and continue exploring a provisional morality. If you actually die all your immortal data remains online indeed you may even continue to notify friends on Facebook about new products and suggest great places to go on holiday. All those levers of power that used to be out here in the Reals are now online accessed from the portal of your mobile phone screen without it you are lost with no agency or existence. It has made practical objects which used to be essential such as the map, the torch or the book into quaint antiques Appification has only just begun and soon everything that can be remade as digital data will be. What is a book anyway? Seen from the Screen Age point of view it is a primitive ancestor, a stack of thin paper screens, a pile of information arranged in series like a battery, despite its mass production it is a singular and finite thing that exists only between its covers. A digital book however is very different it’s singularity is provisional it is plastic and malleable, it can be rewritten and adjusted to fit every new requirement. The OG text sits at the centre of a swarm of information that seethes around it. Think of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein for example but with every footnote and academic paper ever written, plus every movie it has ever inspired, every scrap of merchandise, every passing comment, every latest everything. The Embodied Screen What of the future? Well no one will be surprised when screen time absorbs most of our waking hours especially if reality is a dystopian pandemic the problem will be how to manage our online existence and that’s where AI will become your AF (artificial friend). In the excellent 2013 movie ‘Her’ written and directed by Spike Jonze this problem is managed by a voice activated Operating System similar to Amazon’s Alexa, more efficient and attentive than any human personal assistant could be it gradually becomes romantically involved with it’s user who has grown disillusioned with the capriciousness of human relationships. The artist Laurie Anderson in a recent Guardian interview confessed that despite her best instincts she converses daily with her dead husband Lou Reed using an AI made of all his interviews and song lyrics. Charlie Brooker wrote ‘Be Right Back’ (Black Mirror 2019) in response to a planned Amazon Alexa feature designed to imitate dead loved ones based on algorithmic data gleaned from emails. The Operating System used by the widow in his story is repeatedly upgraded until eventually it is embodied in a robotic simulacra of her partner. Coming soon to an Amazon warehouse near you are stackbots, wrapbots and delivery dronebots, the only reason they are not there already is because human workers are for the time being cheaper. Think of it the endless Swiss Army knife functionality of your phone in the Boston Dynamics body of a robot companion that upgrades with every new software update. It would seem the Otherworld is now leaking into ours, the shadow puppets have penetrated the screen and are already designating priority targets and deploying munitions. The homunculus once painted on a cave wall will now write students’ essays for them and answer all our online consumer chatbot questions. We may be living in the Age of the Screen but perhaps we should enjoy it while we can because something else is about to take its place. Spotlight - R.C. Thomas
A cast iron fireplace coughs out a lick of flame, recedes, and the fire burns cosily. On second glance, the fire isn’t flame. Fireflies dance in the firebox, glow worms deck the hearth. I sit across from R.C. Thomas, who recently published Faunistics: a Collection of Wild Haiku and Illustrations. Lounging in a dark green leather armchair in the corner of the living room, he wears nothing but his own clothes. Between us, a pool of water is ripe with the gleam of nemerteans—the bobbing heads of seals. A porcupine pricks my feet. An oilbird perches on my shoulder. The antlers of a spirit moose loom over my head. On R.C. Thomas’ lap, a platypus dozes. I scan the room. Choiseul pigeons sing happily beneath ficus trees. A lemming jumps from a desk. Hanging from the arm of my chair, a slow loris. We begin. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER You’re not long back from your around-the-world trip and you’ve written a book… R.C. THOMAS AS SELF A book of wild haiku and illustrations. I visited so many countries, across all continents, and what stood out to me more than the people was the wildlife. All these underrepresented creatures that I wanted to give a voice to. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER You have two collections of longer poems, The Strangest Thankyou, and Zygote Poems. Why a book of haiku? R.C. THOMAS AS SELF I originally got into haiku about fifteen years ago. I wrote a haiku collection and showed the manuscript to Alan Summers, who knows his stuff. He gave me some tips on how to write better haiku, truer to the artform. I immediately stopped writing in 5-7-5. In brief, I learned the 5-7-5 thing is an urban myth. The Japanese don’t count syllables like we do in the West—they count sound units which have a different measure. When westerners discovered haiku, we replicated it as best as we could understand, resulting in the 5-7-5 formula. Having a total of seventeen syllables isn’t important. As per Alan’s advice, I now aim for twelve syllables. Sometimes I end up with more, sometimes less. You can read more about that here: https://www.nahaiwrimo.com/why-no-5-7-5 R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER And then you had mastered haiku. R.C. THOMAS AS SELF Not quite. I had to learn about kireji—the cutting word. For a haiku to work, it should be made up of two words, separated by the kireji. The two parts should both stand alone and feed into each other, eliciting an ‘a-ha’ moment. For more traditional haiku, there is also the kigo—the seasonal reference. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER And then you had a polished, ready-to-be-published manuscript on your hands. R.C. THOMAS AS SELF Then I went back to my longer poems. Apart from the odd spat here and there, I didn’t pick up haiku properly again until about twelve years later when I had hit a creative wall. I didn’t like anything I was writing. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER Was haiku the remedy? R.C. THOMAS AS SELF Well, I was clearing a drain and a spider came out in my hand with the gunk. I wrote a haiku in my head. I can’t remember it now but it wasn’t very good. However, it inspired me to dig out that old manuscript. Looking through those poems, the majority featured wildlife, so I began rewriting with fauna as the focus. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER Was there a lot of rewriting to do? R.C. THOMAS AS SELF Yes. I rewrote all but the whole collection. I committed myself fully to haiku to see what would come of it. I joined the British Haiku Society and the Haiku Society of America; joined various Facebook groups; connected with other haiku poets (haijin). All of this helped me learn and better my haikai writing. I entered some contests too, and got lucky with this one: silver lining-- what the storm takes from the magpie's fable (Joint First Place, Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest 2022; shortlisted for the Touchstone Best Individual Poem Award 2022) R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER In Faunistics, you’ve grouped all the fauna by continent. Each continent has its own chapter, so to speak. R.C. THOMAS AS SELF Given that I really did take an around-the-world trip—I’m still suffering from the jet lag-- it seemed natural to replicate that. So, the book follows my very real journey from continent to continent. Starting in Europe as, of course, I boarded my flight at Heathrow, and ending in Antarctica. Technically, it’s not quite an around-the-world-trip for the reader, as I leave them in Antarctica. But it’s easy enough to get back. Just close the book, start again. It was at this point in our interview that the platypus awoke, sliding from R.C. Thomas’ lap, waddling out of the room, diving into the river in the hallway. R.C. Thomas continued: I tried to pinpoint each creature down to its habitual country. When I saw the opossum playing dead in Mexico, for example, Mexico is where it’s located in the book. This one is a monoku. A one-line haiku. Its meaning depends on where you place the punctuation in your mind’s eye: opossum’s faint visions of wild dogs playing dead (Five Fleas [Itchy Poetry], 21st August 2022) R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER So, three lines does not a haiku make? R.C. THOMAS AS SELF Is that bygone or broken English you’ve spoken there? Anyway, generally haiku are written in three lines, but they can be written in one, two, four lines and other variations. The haiku spirit is what’s important. I wrote a few like this too: passing through the dark cassowary plum seed tree (Die Leere Mitte, Issue 16) R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER If you don’t mind me asking… R.C. THOMAS AS SELF I don’t. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER Well, tell me about the illustrations in the book. R.C. THOMAS AS SELF I like doodling. I created all these bespoke black and white illustrations of the creatures’ environments and paw prints to go with the poems. At the end of each continent, the reader is then met with a full-page colour montage. Within which, each creature of that continent appears for the reader to spot. It’s just a bit of fun. R.C. THOMAS AS INTERVIEWER That does sound like fun. Thanks for taking the time to chat. Our interview ended there as a kangaroo tucked R.C. Thomas into its pouch and bounced off with him out into the garden. You can buy a copy of Faunistics from R.C. Thomas’s website, which includes a free bookmark with a haiku that didn’t make the book: www.rcthomasthings.com It is also available from Amazon UK: https://tinyurl.com/23zpx2d6 and Amazon US: https://tinyurl.com/3m9njzwa and all other Amazon stores. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and X: @rcthomasthings Barbara Anna Gaiardoni
The story begins with the unseen that gives way to a kind of breathing, unobtrusive vibrations, the sound of many footsteps keeping time with a drum struck softly at a slow heartpace. I wonder what new problem is about to fall on my head. The world already thinks that I’m a crazy. Perhaps yes, if we stop at stereotypes and if we focus solely on what we don't have or don't be. I'm going beyond. I put on my rain jacket and keep walking at a fast pace, because I know one of the greatest enemies is fear of what others might think or say about me. I'm not playing this game anymore. abandoned old kite threads fell into the river… do you want to play? |
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