one way to spend Saturday afternoon.
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"Basically I make things I like to look at, and I write things I like to read." (Tom Raworth)
That's the guiding principle.
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Today, boys and girls, we’re going to look at ‘Song of the Chinchilla’ by Lisa Jarnot*. I liked the poem immediately – and I’ve given it to ...
5 comments:
Wow. I like those, O Carpenter. Simple but extremely effective... They could work well as book covers, don't you think? Incidentally, what is the blue book cover you've mammocked in the name of art?
Walrus
Thanks.
Amazing what can suddenly come together after days of feeling irritable, blocked, dispersed - what, in these parts, comes under the general heading of 'un coup de cafard'.
The past few weeks I've been thinking of working word & images together - last week's visit to Posada was both an inspiration and a taunt: why buy it - you should be doing it!
What's for certain is that I feel a lot chirpier - so that, in itself, is a justification.
To let you in on a trade secret - that's not a book cover that I've "mammocked" (first time I've heard of that word!). All materials - save the words - come from posters advertising concerts opposite the Mediatheque where I go on a Saturday. I just pulled off fragments that were peeling away - a bit like picking blackberries off a hedge. 'Street Art' I suppose. The words come from some aborted cut-up of before Christmas.
What I enjoyed was actually letting the bits of torn paper suggest ideas - colours, transparencies, shapes, crackles etc. - and then the words arrived. It's a way of working & fun. So why not?
Needless to say, Singapore has nothing to do with it.
Anyway, I think I might pop some in the post to Luc Fierens by way of a thank you.
Ever heard of the Michael Garrick Trio? I've ordered some CDs - apparently a key 'missing' figure in UK jazz. I think you'd like the track I mentioned earlier - shades of Ellington/Evans (Bill, that is)/Miles.
Otherwise I'm mainlining on Rodefer. Seems to be the 'enfant terrible' of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. (And none the worse for that!).
Cheers
The C.
(Yes, book covers. Or 'interspersals' such as you used to get in Raworth's books? - I think I'm heading in that backwards direction to the 60s kind of poem plus art work volume. Low budget 'livres d'artistes'. Which is, or at least I'd like to think it is, what Rodefer means by we're Blakean. He set the example! )
"I warrant, how he mammocked it!"
One of my favourite words from one of my favourite plays -- Coriolanus.
You are extraordinary, O Carpenter. When you buzz, you buzz, and that last post buzzes.
You've persuaded me I really must get that Rodefer volume! (Haven't heard of the MG Trio, but will look into it...) My most recent purchase is Le Clezio's The Interrogation, reissued after Nobel Prize win and according to Deleuze a fictional eg of becoming-animal, etc.
But while you're revealing trade secrets, is that ordinary sticky tape you use to make the horizontal bars in your pictures -- do you let them pick up matter then stick them down? Just trying to puzzle it out... Looks v. good.
I dreamt last night that you invited me into your studio or office, where (while I waited for you to appear) I nosed around among the papers and hi-tech equipment (lots of white computers) and discovered that you were in the process of making an old-school, Disney-style animated cartoon about bunny rabbits (they looked remarkably like Thumper in Bambi)...
All the best,
W.
Hi
You, too, seem to be in front of the screen this Sunday p.m..
I've just printed off a set & devised a v. minimalist looking card wallet. Takes me back to the days of looking around the bookshop opposite the old British Musuem library which had loads of desireable (but bloody expensive) little volumes. Now I've cracked it - you just make your own!
No - everything is as ripped off (there's a phrase!). What was lovely was to find the bits of posters had this kind of semi-transparent stuff & were still sticky. All I did was add a bit of extra Pritt.
However ... washing the dishes this morning it occurred to me to use sellotape - or sticky-backed plastic as John Noakes used to say - as a technique: i.e. lay it down & then lift off. See what results. All sorts of discoveries await! Truly a 'rip-off' method! (The speciousness of origins & originality indeed). If I were Blake I'd claim the Angels told me.
re. dreams - I get fairly frequent ones about being in bookshops & finding AMAZING volumes of poetry with contributions by all my usual faves. I try to make a mental note in the dream to remember the words, the paper quality, the images ... but on waking ... zilch & Xanadu! I also had one during my correspondence with Lisa J. where Robert Creeley (recently dead) let me read one of his notebooks. Now, had I been able to remember what was written ...
Apologies for not arriving on (dream) time. However, the way things are going I think I'll be jacking in the computers & just surrounding myself with good old scissors & glue & piles of old rags. Shem the Penman or Waffle in The Ink Bottle?
Disney, eh?
Over & out!
The C.
P.S. ...
ooops! there's one for my students: I didn't spot the Coriolanus ref.
Detention!
Ackchewally ... the last time I read that play was for O level English. Didn't get much out of it aged 15 and a half. I liked the Picasso drawing on the cover, though (the old red Cambs. Shakespeare eds.). I will dig it out on your recommendation.
(Exit stage left, sobbing ...
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