Old Papers and New Poems

I’m pretty excited to have finished my new set of ‘Random Poetry’ this week. I started them way back in October last year, so they’ve been a long time in the making. They are a bit of a departure from the first set, with a simpler colour palette – most of the images are black and white – and some incorporate pen and ink wash drawings. All of them use antique papers, postcards or envelopes for backgrounds.

Most of these papers I have bought either here at home in Melbourne, or online at Etsy. The ones I love most are the 1860s and 70s receipts formerly belonging to one James Bell; those were bought in a fantastic secondhand books and curios shop in a Melbourne neighbourhood I once lived in. The copperplate script on these handwritten receipts is beautiful – how long did it take a clerk to fill them out?

There is even one sheet of yellowed foolscap that belonged to me as a child – I found it in one of my books in my parents’ garage. My dad discovered me a few months ago buried in an old storage cupboard and rummaging around. “What on earth are you looking for?” he asked, bemused. “Stuff,” I muttered in reply. I didn’t know what I would find. One of the things I uncovered was a 20-year-old love letter my sister had composed to her husband, then boyfriend. I very politely refrained from reading it and passed it on to her. (Later I asked her what it had contained, and she told me it was horrifyingly soppy.)

I’m really pleased with this new look to my collages that I developed. I find the stark black and white images have much more impact, and the casually scribbled drawings have the freshness of doodles. As a whole they are much more satisfying as pieces of art. One of them even rhymes! I was impressed I was able to create a semblance of meter from word scraps. The poems are about looking back and looking forward, passing through love and loss, transience and hope; some are sweet, some sharp, and some are bittersweet. Some of them are even lighthearted!

I hope you have as much pleasure in reading them as I did in the making. Click here to view Gallery Two of the random poems.

The Dark Star

This is a new piece from my second collection of random poetry. It combines antique paper (a receipt from 1866), blue ink, and images cut or torn from magazines.

When I assembled the poem, the words ‘dark star’ stood out, and I knew exactly what I wanted to depict: a desolate planet lost in the darkness of the starless abyss – a terrifying place; and a giant door magically opening onto home, seemingly the only hope and source of light.

Only a few though will not take the easy road home.

But in the deadly new worlds drastic millions head for the hills
and take the door that will open
the only way home from the dark star
But nothing will move on those who hope
Tomorrow’s triumph is our future.

Visual Poetry

Now in slightly old news I’d like to announce that my ‘random poems’ have been featured in an online magazine, Tip of the Knife, in their most recent issue. The magazine celebrates visual poetry in all its forms, and it was an honour to be asked to contribute.

What is visual poetry? It is a poetry and art hybrid in which words or letterforms are used to create an image. Both words and image combine to create meaning, that may or may not make sense in the common parlance of poetry. It is related to concrete poetry, and was heavily influenced by Fluxus. It is also known as ‘vispo’ – a horrible abbreviation, ironically unpoetic, that you will never read here again.

My own influence came from the Dadaists, although I had to do a project on concrete poetry when I was in my first year of art college. I recall creating an image using strips of words cut from magazines, but that piece has long gone to the recycling plant and been turned into cardboard boxes or something.

Check out Issue 12 of Tip of the Knife here. You can also view a gallery of my random poems. I’ve been working for the past few months on a new series that is quite different stylistically, so keep your eyes peeled for that! 

She Was of the Moment

This random poem was one that I wrote years and years ago, when I first started creating these word collages. It’s been through several incarnations while I have been distilling this new style, but the words had not changed, and the picture of the woman is still the same too.

This time I took an envelope from 1952 – front and back – and split the poem into two. I love the imagery of the words: ‘a traveller’s letter will away in the ocean’, which drove the pen and ink scribble of a rainy port, and also the words ‘it’s like wearing a rare enchanted dream’ – the tailor’s mannequin here echoes the hourglass shape of the nude in the first collage.

It’s fascinating to wonder where this envelope carried someone’s words – over oceans perhaps.

She was of the moment
a sweet summer’s legend
stories of inspiration
written until the end of time.

It is wrapped like a flower
where the warm waters
come to a rainy port
and a traveller’s letter
will away in the ocean.

What a charming heavenly quirk
of the season’s essence
it’s like wearing a rare enchanted dream
since you imagine the end.

We Spent Years Up Late

Here’s one I prepared earlier …

No really, it’s 8.37pm on Wednesday as I write this and schedule it to publish at an aptly late hour tonight. For right now I am tucked up sound asleep (I hope) as I must rise at 4.30am in order to make a 6.35am flight to Sydney.

But what it is that usually keeps me up so late? Forever trying to cram things into the day, it’s usually art-making that keeps me up late at night. And so often even after I finish up for the evening I need to wind down, and end up window-shopping researching on Etsy, or playing a few games of solitaire. Whenever I stumble into bed exhausted, I think of those Warren Zevon lyrics, I’ll sleep when I’m dead … and think with satisfaction about all I’ve accomplished for the day.