All entries for Sunday 20 July 2008

Strid and Sessile 8

Writing about web page http://www.chrysalisarts.org.uk

Idea #10: The Valley of Desolation

This view of the Valley of Desolation is the end of the proposed art trail.

Rick nailed it when I asked him what kind of poem would suit the purpose here, what form of words would sum it up: 'Look at all this beauty. Please stop fucking it up'.

I think a little sign here would do the trick. And the summary from Rick will provide the perfect basis for the sentiment. Moreso I think than Wordsworth's 'White Doe of Rylestone'...

So: a simple sign. Straight text on wood? With a good deal of inspiration derived from why this area has such a haunting and bracingly gothic name.

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 17:26 |  Tags: Poetry The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Strid and Sessile 7

Idea #9: A Fallen Purlenta

I have no idea how I am going to 'build' this poem, but I know I can write it as I have a draft already.

I would like to throw a poem into the trees above the heads of the walkers in the woods, a poem that can only be read from below.

I want the poem to be written in a spiral or whorl, and for the letters to go forward and reverse on the purlenta or 'garland' as you move below it.

I suggest printing the poem on to muslin and then hanging it as best we can using natural fastenings - thorns, twigs, etc, then letting it rot in place or be taken by birds. I have a diagram of the poem which I cannot download here.

If you know my poem about Romany patrin, or natural markers, then you will 'get' the concept of this textual artwork!

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 17:06 |  Tags: Poetry The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Strid and Sessile 6

Idea #8: Ankle-Level Haiku

All the wonderfully half-lit paths through Strid Wood are lined with little plaques next to particular species of trees. If you look at the photograph on the left you will see one, like a Cubist Mushroom, to the middle left peeping through the undergrowth and underworld of the woodland.

These signs are very small; they are at ankle-level; and they bear the names in Latin and English of the tree species.

They are like shy and almost invisible haiku, yet they are prickly with verbal energy in the origins of language and the international language of biology and Linnaean classification - which is of course Latin, the lingua franca of botany and zoology.

Could we create the same simple plaques, maybe about eight to ten of them, and place haiku or small, concise poems on them - in English. I could also have them in English and Latin, like the tree plaques. My friend the poet Peter Davidson would help me with the Latin I hope!

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 16:54 |  Tags: Poetry The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Strid and Sessile 5

Idea# 7: View of a Landfill

The first thing that struck me when Rick was describing the Landfill Site visible from this point (in the photograph, right) was the manner in which the debris was placed in this yawning quarry. It sounded to me just like a gardener 'double digging' the earth, only a gardener of startling proportions and dubious eco-morals.

The viewpoint near here is a place of rest (there were bootless hikers cooling their heels).

The fact that one also overlooks a massive and active Landfill is an irony that I suspect is not lost on many visitors.

I'd like to place a poem here; and I think the best means for placing would be site it as a 'You Are Here' map of the landscape in text form - in poem form - and make the thing look like a parody of a municipal-style or National Trust guide-sign like the one below.

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 16:39 |  Tags: Poetry The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Strid and Sessile 4

Idea #6. Linears and Microbes

When I was a young scientist I used to work a great deal with agar gel. One would paint agar on a petri dish, cultivate it with micobes which would grow rapidly on the substrate. One studied the microbial growth through a microscope.

One can purchase agar in quantity as a paint, a kind of food-paint beloved of microbes, lichen and moss everywhere.

Now see the diagram to the right and the photos of the fences as they pass through Strid Wood - see 'Hide and Seek'. Are not those fence panels (and fallen trees) an ideal series of line-placements for three-line poems or for long linear poems that stretch through Strid Wood?

There are two ways forward with these fence panels (and possibly the fallen trees): (1) write the poems directly on to them as "linears" ["linears" are my own invention: they are single-line poems that go on for many metres. Example: I created a 55 metre long one-line poem cast in bronze in the centre of Coventry atop a wall next to a garden sculpture by Kate Whiteford]; and (2) write the poems as "tercets" or three-line poems utilising the three-line structure of the fence panels in Strid Wood.

There are also two ways forward with media: (1) write the poems in a good playful rushing font in non-carbon dark ink and/or (2) write the poems in the "invisible ink" of agar gel applied directly straight on to the wood. The agar-painted letters of the poem would provide an instant and nutritious habitat for the creation of, first, a microbe community indigenous to the woodland which would darken into life thus revealing the poem in black spores; second, a moss community would develop on the microbe community in symbiosis turning the poems green; and third (if we are lucky) a lichen community would engage the moss/mircobe communities and the poems would end up being 'written' in lichen. A poem in lichen is a poem of an idea. Gaia Principled and playful. And increasing species richness since many birds in Strid (especially those long-tailed tits I saw there) use moss and lichen for their nests. The long-tailed tits would "edit" the poems.

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 16:11 |  Tags: Poetry The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Strid and Sessile 3

Ideas #4 and #5: Hide and Seek

Strid Wood is a sessile oak woodland with a good deal of other species mixed in. It has a grand history to it which I've been reading about in various texts on the history and geography of the Bolton Abbey area.

Placing the poems that arise from this project is the point of these blog entries - testing ideas out on you and getting your feedback. So here is Idea #4 for the Hide (see picture right).

Area A: There are five visible planks on the right side of the hide entrance which are bisected in a third and two-thirds by a tree trunk.

Area B: To the left is the far inside wall of the viewing area.

Written text can be applied using white or black non-carbon paint and strong calligraphy to both these walls, and the poem must perform in three ways. (1) The poem on Area A must playfully adopt and adapt the tree trunk being part of the poem's text; (2) the Poem on Area B must be about viewing and seeing and hearing; and (c) seen as the distance and perspective of this photograph both poems must work with each other to create a new, third poem. Therefore the text on Area B must be larger than that on A to achieve this effect.

Idea #5: This picture to the right is the text outside the Hide (there are some rudimentary animal guide pictures inside the hide).

Could we play with these? Could we even place a poem on the subject of these information boards side by side so that readers gain both a scientific and an artistic interpretation of what it means to be standing here among the largest area of Sessile oak woodland in Yorkshire, native to the cooler, wetter, higher North West of Britain?

These could be 'shape poems' or poems adapted from field guides. There are a number of examples of these creations in my most recent book The Invisible Kings which I cannot reproduce here as text, but I include photographs of a shape poem below.

The poem is called 'Sycamore' and is written in sonnet form before being kinetically reinvented as a sycamore with leaves falling on the page.

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 15:36 |  Tags: The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Strid and Sessile 2

Ideas #2 and #3: Seeds of an Idea

I have been making various notes on how the Strid Wood poems could be set. We began with the first idea of Bard Boxes and Bad Boxes and I am now testing out a second idea in my back garden on the path leading to my writing studio - The Seeds of an Idea for a Poem.

Now the 'idea' here is to write the poems in edible seed, along the paths of Strid Wood; and to write them beautifully and lightly in various types of seed which will attract different species - and not just birds for that matter.

Night-visiting deer will also enjoy the poems. They will 'read' them with enthusiasm. With a night-spotting scope set in the hide we can film them as they 'read'.

We lay the seed by day, photograph the whole process, then place the resulting pictures of the poems in the visitor centre for Strid Wood and/or in The Hide (photo below).

The poems will obviously get eaten and will turn into new 'potential' or palimpsestic poems as the animals feast, a gradual process. As my neighbour, Phil, has this minute remarked you might get a whole flock of birds descending on the seed and then the birds themselves would spell out the words if captured (on film!) from above.

The immediate problem? Feed animals and they become creatures of habit. They will expect these 'poems' to turn up again. Advantages? Instant results and spectacular effect. Disadvantage? Gone in 24 hours.

The third idea is to plant seeds along the sides of the path patterned into letters of short one-line (linear) poems which will then grow in subsequent seasons.

Now this is rather like planting into the landscape along the lines of Ian Hamilton Finlay's notion of composition and gardening. It would be rather a long term project and if any of the seeds failed then you would end up with rather strange poems, full of holes and lacunae. In fact they could become postmodern almost by default. One bad storm, one frozen night, and the language would be bitten away as the plants died or etiolated.

The poems would therefore have to be specific to this possibility arising.

Back to the Seeds of an Idea experiment to the left - at the moment there are seven birds at work on them: two goldfinches, one blackbird and four spuggies (or fledgling house sparrows). 'The spuggies have fledged' wrote the Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting, and my spuggies are ripping into the letter M with a gusto borne of Midlands nesting sites in dusty attics between back-copies of Which? and What Car?

David Morley : 20 Jul 2008 15:09 |  Tags: Poetry The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem