Kuma Kuma

A major work of philosophy masquerading as a little children's book about a bear.

Required reading.

Voice & Notley & Mayer

I'm becoming a big fan of Alice Notley. 'Grave of Light' - her New & Selected Poems 1970-2005 - has led me to her essays collected in 'Coming After'. I used to spend hours reading & re-reading Ted Berrigan's Lectures. I wish I'd also been reading her poetic theory, too.

"the point will be to locate division, variation, play within the line, and to further investigate it. For there are infinite ways to stop and play, not just to segment and articulate a line, but to be in it and enjoy the space, as if that were the whole point."

I'm also becoming a big fan of Bernadette Mayer. This poem is as good as any to get the flavour:


CORN

corn is a small hard seed

corn from Delft
is good for elves

white corn, yellow, Indian

is this kernel a kernel of corn?

the corn they sought
was sown by night

The Corn Islands are two small islands,
Little Corn Island & Great Corn Island,
on an interoceanic canal route.

any of several
insects that bore in maize is a corn borer.

...

I'm going to spend a week around this poem next term.

As Alice Notley says, "there's so much sound around in the world to play with, really."

Danielle-Marie Chanut

The outstanding moment of the holidays? Well, that depends. However, seeing again - this time in a gallery context - these 'detourned' books by Danielle-Marie Chanut was something special. France's answer to Joseph Cornell? Well, when I spoke to her some six years ago in her dingy 'shop' in Noyers, she denied knowing of his existence. It's possible - after all, the Brothers Quay discovered Jan Svankmajer well into their career.

Who cares? It's terrific work.

If you're in Auxerre, go and visit the exhibition:

http://www.auxerre.com/fr/rubriques-racines/evenements/couleurs-de-l-ete/expositions/index.html

En vacances ...

... as of tomorrow and the delightful sound of the church bells every quarter of an hour ...

Today

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Back home

Phew! Given we arrived in London on Friday to find our lunch rendezvous right at the centre of the latest bomb outrage and Hamleys sealed off by police - well, the relative calm of Brussels has its appeal.

While we were in the UK, The Independent ran an article on Edmund de Waal - and we like not just the pots (which are very fine) but his whole subversive aesthetic. A cultivated ceramic terrorism, of sorts ...