I have been planning and making for my mixed media workshop for months – now I have taught it – I didn’t have a project ……
I found a poem that I liked- I was drawn to the the physical look. It’s long and thin and called’ I am Scotland’ by Micheal Pedersen its published in SoGo Magazine in the AU15 issue.
They are in Facebook and Twitter but I can’t see a website
The illustration is by Timourous beasties
http://www.timorousbeasties.com/journal-post/sogo-magazine-cover#.VkCC-W9aiAU.facebook
I wanted to play with the words and the way cross hatching and redacting sections can affect the visual embodiment of the form , not the sound or the feelings – just how it looks –
I started blocking randomly , then systematically , Jon wants me to play with the words like in a found poem. I read out a couple , but it is all about how it looks when I attack it , for the moment.
I am very drawn to the line ‘I, too, forget such simple things’ – Thinking about dementia , I watched a very moving film by Beatrice Alligranti called ‘I can’t find myself ‘ . In her research Alligranti used experiences with dementia , repetitive movements, conversations and more research to choreograph a dance / exploration of the condition. It is haunting me
There are family issues around the illness.
Today I was tired and ill with my IBS and I couldn’t process stuff at work. It felt like parts of me were missing – I warmed up after a while but I remember sitting at my desk thinking, I know this , I don’t understand, I can’t find my way through , then I realised that the ‘powers that be’ had been renaming files – in a seemingly random way . I wasn’t going daft – yet ….
Blocking out the text of the poem – is a way of illustrating how I felt – interestingly this is observed in retrospect – the holes in my understanding , what I could and couldn’t read. I felt presented within something that kept shifting and changing so that I couldn’t comprehend the whole.
Another aspect that I have become aware of is that by coming at the poem this way – by only randomly picking words- I am still getting the meaning , but not in a linear way , words are locking them selves in my memory but not in the order they were presented – auburn , filigree ,shrieking seagulls. The section when the father talks in a Scottish dialect in italics – it’s about the shape and form – breaking up the text.
Some of the ways I attacked the poem
Just leaving the first words of a line visible
Picking out the 3rd or 4th words
Using a felt pen to redact sections
Random blocking
Choosing words
Trying to make a found poem
I hand made a journal with 3 folios – this felt like an achievement towards making my own book – the format fits the length and width of the poem and there are 26 double spreads – the possiblity of 52 versions of the poem or 26 with notes …….. I like it when I find something that could occupy me for a while
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