old post

windstream whittled

boundary lines surrendered

sculpture on the way

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Stravaigin’ the scrow

How long is the scroll?

Telling Time

Watch a video excerpt from IC-98’s piece ‘Abendland’

It’s been quite a long time since I first read a poem to a ‘live’ audience. A few years in fact. Last week I got around to standing up in front of a small group of people in a (fairly) public space again.  The occasion was an ‘echo’ event at DCA where people were responding to an exhibition of the unusual slow animations of the artists IC-98. My poem tries to do it’s own explaining, so, I think I’ll just let it…

In response to an exhibition of work by IC-98. Dundee, January 2016.

White heart

This poem was written after I saw a picture of a ‘ghost heart’. This is a kind of ‘protein scaffold’ in researchers hope to be able use to grow a new human heart which will not have problems with rejection by the recipient’s immune system. It’s a remarkable image, I found it at once beautiful, hopeful, and troubling. (more about ‘ghost hearts’…)

rejection

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Delicate snowball cradled in latex,

Grotesque confectionary beauty,

Like a glass seed distilled from haar frost,

A harvested death, still unprimed for life.

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Wrapped in an eastern widow’s veil,

A bridal chalice engraved with loss,

Gently cupped with gloved competence,

A denatured vessel etched in air.

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Reborn, bloody, swollen and restarted,

Will this pale ornament seem quite so fine?

Bonny is as bonny dances, pressing

By hot and ruddy, stealing heat from stone.

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The image cusps our movement in-between,

Risky hopes drawn from disembodied flesh.

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Vigiles

A short poem at Visual Verse…

“Pose set, yet as yet not unbalanced,
A mill swung pivot hinting coy.”

…you can read the whole poem (and others from the same prompt) here…

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