Something Else for the Weekend

Just a quick reminder of the free public events programme at UCL this weekend. Look for the building opposite Waterstones on Torrington Place and pop in through the black gates and the glass door to see some exhibitions (including our display of concrete poetry from Special Collections) and take part in activities from computer simulations and film screenings through to live tattooing.

Full programme here.

What I Live For

To celebrate the publication of her books under her new name, Satya Robyn is curating an online event today in which bloggers share “What I Live For”.

There are lots of things that I could describe in this way – family, friends, books – but given the date my choice was easy. It’s three months exactly until our wedding, so I thought I would post a poem about our upcoming marriage.

 

 

Bride
after Marcel Duchamp and Octavio Paz

Outside the station, you juggle gravity,
so when we step onto the platform
it opens out to rails made of matches
soaked in fresh green paint.

The train sets off as though shot
from a cannon. I hear its cogs and springs,
the clockwork straining to keep up
with our direction of travel; it’s been wound
beyond its litany’s pace and theme.

The centrifugal force of our meeting
rips my rain-mask from me. You
give me a glass skin
in which I cocoon myself
like a caterpillar noctuelle.

Your glass is the only thing strong enough
to withstand my tongue of solid flame.

Within my new epidermis, I slow life;
grow into a dusk-dusty mariée.

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Image: Us. Photo by my Mum. We were all laughing so hard about something or other that she couldn’t quite focus.

‘Bride’ was first published in The Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual 2012.

Previous blogsplashes for Satya’s books are filed under her former name, Fiona Robyn.

Get Your Hands on Poetry!

Following the well-attended pop-up exhibition in October, as part of the wider UCL Festival of the Arts, on Saturday there is a chance to see some different items from UCL’s collection of little magazines and alternative press publications. Slade Librarian Liz Lawes and Department of Information Studies PhD student Sara Wingate Gray have curated a selection of the concrete poetry, and Sara has also designed some bookmarks and an accompanying website, with support from a professional graphic designer.

From the event web-page:

Did you know that UCL Library holds over 12,000 small press poetry items?

As part of UCL Special Collections, the Poetry Store is a collection especially rich in visual, sound and concrete poetry: these forms of poetry are visually striking and innovative, questioning established forms and attitudes, all of which featured prominently in small press activity from the mid 60s onwards in Europe and America.

Come along to our hands-on exhibition to explore in more detail a specially-curated selection of these rare items, and learn more about their history from Liz Lawes (UCL Library Services), Anne Welsh and Sara Wingate Gray (UCL Department of Information Studies), who will help you explore these items on the day.

The Itinerant Poetry Library will also be opening for part of the afternoon and there is a wide range of other activities, all free, and almost all on a drop-in basis.

Poetry From Art, Poetry With Art

Photo by Pascale Petit of the Tate Modern group working from Ebrahim El-Salahi’s ‘Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams’. Used with permission

One of the reasons I was excited to take part in the Pistols and Pollinators Project was that I work a lot from Art and I saw this as an opportunity to work with an artist. I’ve been really fortunate in being paired with Hermione Allsopp, as we both had exactly the same reaction to the project brief – we wanted to produce something together that was specific to the site of the installation. There are lots of other valid ways to interpret the brief – so it’s lucky that we had a similar attitude.

Over the last few years, as well as reacting to Art in exhibitions and from the web, I’ve attended Pascale Petit’s workshops at Tate Modern. These are extraordinary courses which allow participants to see exhibits after hours in the gallery and to take part in games and exercises Pascale has devised to encourage writing. One of the important skills in writing from Art is to take the piece or a part of it as a jumping off point – the poems that work well access something in the writer’s experience that is triggered by the art. So the finished poem isn’t a description of the art, and doesn’t necessarily represent the ideas the artist intended to convey in their piece.

Poets can agonise over when they should use “after” and when they shouldn’t. When are the images, ideas or structure provided by the artist so integral to the poem that they should be attributed in this way? For me, typical librarian-come-academic, it’s important to cite, but it’s also important not to mislead a reader of a poem. So it’s absolutely vital that my poem ‘Mappa’ (Tate Online Anthology 2012) should be “after Alighiero Boetti” because so much of the imagery comes from his work and my experience viewing it for the first time. On the other hand, my poem ‘The Kiss’ (Envoi 160, November 2011, p. 34) contains nothing of Rodin’s artwork, but came out of a workshop exercise in which Pascale asked us to write about an important first kiss. 

Unsurprisingly, I see writing from Art as a kind of marginalia – the artist has created their work and the poet is responding to it, in much the same way that we respond to text in its margins … and then some of the marginalia grows into its own piece of writing, always owing something to its originating text. It’s a conversation in which the artist makes the opening statement and, unless the poem becomes very well-known, they may never be aware of the poet’s response.

In working with Hermione, the conversation is much more fluid and responsive. In the case of the particular piece on which we are working, sometimes one of us is “speaking” and sometimes the other, and we are listening and responding to each other, growing an artwork together. Right now, the work consists of structures in Hermione’s studio and drafts of text on my MacBook. The result will be a shared idea, poetry with Art, not poetry after it.

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Image: Tate Poetry group working from art. Photo by Pascale Petit, used with permission.

Materials at the Centre

Last Friday, Hermione Allsopp and I had the chance to take part in a workshop at the Institute of Making. Entitled Materials at the Centre, it allowed participants opportunities both to discuss the materials available at the research centre (Institute) and also to discuss how materials are at the centre of their own practice.

I have a long-standing research interest in the materials and, indeed, the materiality of the Book, and it was great to engage with other researchers with related interests and to hear about research centred around different materials. In particular, it was lovely to watch and hear Hermione’s reactions to some of the experiences we encountered, and I asked her if I could interview her for a blog article here.

AW: As a sculptor, what sorts of objects attract your attention to become materials for your artwork?

Field of Dreams. Image used with permission.

HA: I mostly use objects that I collect from charity shops, often in conjunction with materials from the built environment (materials from interior space), or materials that relate to the constructs of display -so lights, mirrors, display structures etc. The objects I find to work with are things like ornaments and furniture and lampshades (objects from the interior).  This is related to an interest in objects and how they operate in our homes and lives and the value we place on them. My making is a kind of thinking through objects, but I often select objects for their form or material quality.

AW: We took part in three hands-on sessions. What were your take-home ideas from these (so far)?

HA: I was interested in the 3D printing and how it can be used to make dissolvable structures to implant in the body to aid healing and tissue or bone regrowth. Its interesting to see how relatively new technologies start to create possibilities and developments in different areas.  It also opens up dialogues about different ways of making and what it means today.

AW: Did you find out about any new materials, either in the hands-on sessions, the talks, or just looking at the Materials Library?

HA: Yes, I was very interested in Sugru (a self setting rubber), which was mentioned rather than demonstrated. It is a material that has been designed to mend things, a substance that you can sculpt to replace a broken part or solve a problem by making, it has possibilities.

The talk on plastics and their use in art works was very interesting and relevant. I use expanding filler and foam so it was fascinating to see how these things degrade over time and the problems it causes with displaying works. The demo of polyurethane foam was also very exciting as it’s not something i’ve worked with in that form. It started as a gloopy liquid which was stirred vigorously and like the magic porridge pot of children’s stories it began to grown and foam into a lava like foaming mass that cured hard in minutes.

During our first visit to The Library of Materials we saw someone’s experiment with mylar, which we were told is sometimes called “the shiniest aluminium foil in the world” – it’s a polyester film.  As i am currently working with mirrored surfaces and exploring possibilities for our Pistols and Pollinators project installation this was inspiring – the results will be in our piece.

AW: In his summary comments, Philip Ball touched briefly on the difference that working with our hands makes to our understanding of the things we are making. As someone who works conceptually and through making, do you want to share some of your thoughts on this?

Cornucopia Cloud. Image used with permission

HA:Yes, the idea of thinking through things and thinking through making is very important in my work.  My work really develops through process.  The things I work with often have a kind of logical way they fit together. I work both with these logics and against them. The objects I use become elements for making. For example, in Field of Dreams many of the objects are stacked but in a piece like Cornucopia Cloud the objects are arranged and massed together with expanding filler, producing a form that is also a kind of anti-form.  But in both works the materials somewhat dictate the structures and having hands on contact with with the material is everything.  I also think that taking things apart and exposing materials or un-making and remaking is important. Getting your hands on stuff and making does aid understanding of things and the development of concepts or ideas often comes retrospectively.  When I work, I think I am having a kind of dialogue with objects and materials.

AW: Finally, is there anything else that struck you on Friday that you would like to share here?

HA: Just that it is amazing that there is somewhere you can go and find out about things, materials and their properties. The library is a really valuable resource.  I look forward to going to going to the public open events in the future.

The Benefits of Reading, According to Ms Dutton and Mr de la Mare

Here’s Ellen Dutton‘s latest Stop Motion animation, on the benefits of reading. I thought it would be nice to set this alongside some of the thoughts Walter de la Mare shared in his anthologies for young people. Here’s an extract from Come Hither, a book of poems and prose extracts he published for young people in 1923, which was republished again as recently as 1990:

That is one of the pleasures of reading – you may make any picture out of the words you can and will; and a poem may have as many different meanings as there are different minds. (p. xxv-xxvi).

And these are from the introduction he and Thomas Quayle gave to their Readings of 1927:

That is really what it comes to: there is not really time enough in our short lives, with so much to be done, to waste much of it or our minds on what will not prove of lasting joy and use and service to them. (p. xx).

One simply cannot pay too much attention to what we see around us and in particular to living and beautiful things. And more especially when we are young. If possible, then, when you read about anything in a book, see it as clearly as you can in your own mind; then do your best to find that thing in the world around; then compare it with what the writer has said about it. Make your own discoveries. Explore! (p. xx)

A good book, indeed, is the next best thing in this life to a true friend. It gives all it has to give solely for the asking – and wants nothing in return but just a thankful blessing on the man who wrote it. (p. xxi).

The methods of information literacy for young people may have changed, but the sentiments are very much the same. As de la Mare and Quayle put it, “To be able to read is to be able to explore – as far as we will and can – the World of Books.” (p. xvii). Capital ‘W’, capital ‘B’.

Material Connections

This week’s meetings with Hermione Allsopp (my partner in the Pistols and Pollinators project) took us to St Leonards, Eastbourne and London. We were able to visit each other in our private workspaces – Hermione’s studio and my UCL office – and also to explore one of the areas of artists’ practice in which we are both interested – the organisation of individual objects to form an artwork – as in Hermione’s piece ‘Field of Dreams‘, on show at the Towner in Eastbourne as part of the East Sussex Open 2013 (website banner above).

Accident & Emergence have been tweeting #artistswhousetext as part of #PandP and this is great in highlighting one aspect of the synergies between poets and artists. I’d suggest that work like ‘Field’ is at the nexus of poetry and art in a different way, as it works on the subliminal and subjective meanings of things – what they mean to the artist; what they mean in conjunction with each other; what they mean to each of us who view them. One of the signs that a poem is working well is that it communicates the emotion / ideas of the poet but invites the reader / audience in to tell their own stories. Arrangements like ‘Field’ perform in the same way, and to that extent are poetic – arguably material poems as well as art.

I’m interested in such arrangements as an extension of the cabinets of curiosity phenomenon. There’s a fantastic history of such arrangements, and one of the many half-written articles on my MacBook presents these as a form of extended mind – the concept that the mind is not entirely internal, but exists in the interaction between the human brain and the external world. We see this in the operation of marginalia and, I will argue one day soon in an academic journal, also in the physical arrangement of possessions in cabinets and, in the case of artists working in this area, in their artworks.

Such arrangements are one element of Hermione’s practice, as described publicly in her artist’s statement:

I make sculptural work by collecting objects and furniture and re-creating them into new forms or compositions.  My use of discarded domestic objects reflects on the interior, the past and memory.  Through the choice of objects, and the techniques I employ, I intend to explore the boundary between repulsion and attraction and ideas of taste.   As sculpture, these re-done, or un-done-up objects begin to exist as something else and raise questions about the value and material nature of every day objects through display.   It is also my intention to reflect on wider topics related to consumerism, psychological and physical interiors and notions of desire.

One of the ways in which Hermione and I are working together is looking at the arrangement of objects, and we have been fortunate enough to have a proposal accepted for the Institute of Making‘s workshop on Friday:

Material Connections and the Extended Mind

Over tea come and share some of the objects that have caught your attention with artist Hermione Allsopp and Lecturer in Information Studies Anne Welsh. Grab a maximum of 5 objects from the shelves and share your story about why you are drawn to them and how you would like to arrange and rearrange them together.

Members of the Institute are drawn from all over UCL and we are really excited to see what some of them make from the objects in the Materials Library. Our meeting with the Institute this week was wonderful, sharing with us stories behind their collections of tuning forks and spoons; the reasons why a cube of material gives more points of comparison than a traditional swatch; and the way in which a lead bell can be made to ring when frozen. We’re looking forward to hearing stories from workshop participants on Friday.

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Image: East Sussex Open banner from Towner website, with Hermione Allsopp’s ‘Field of Dreams’ in foreground right.