Somewhere, there in Mslexia

My photo-poem 'Somewhere, there' was recently published in Mslexia 88 in their 'Eyeverse' section. I really appreciate the fact that this publication has a space specifically for text-image poetry submissions. I often find it challenging to fit in my photo-poems into existing publication formats; whether that is an editorial decision to include only text, use images alone or as illustration only, or due to the constraints of the format, i.e. print costs. So thank you Mslexia for this opportunity. 

 

Confirmation

Who are you?

When I get home, I don't know what to talk to you about. 

Who are you?

Confirmation 

..and I just asked about the scones, 

you know,

and I just wanted confirmation

you know?

Outside

Ich werde mich nach Draußen sitzen
 - I'm going to sit outside
A most profound conclusion
So full of meaning and weight
when said in German by a man,
with a voice like stone, gravel and sand
as if to say,
there is nothing temperate about this place
humidity wraps around his words
the air, though heavy, is put in its place
cloying and sweet, his voice dry and deep
There is no equilibrium between the man and this place
yet he is so mild and agreeable
as he leaves his wife in the temperate house

Photos in the Temperate Lands greenhouse which is free to enter at the Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh.

Poems based on conversations overhead in the Botanical Gardens and during the Edinburgh Festival. 

Pocket-sized Peninsula

My new artist book, "To the Peninsula, my Friends" is out now! It is a poem with photographs taken on a walk along the Greenwich Peninsula in London, currently undergoing massive development. Having grown up in Greenwich, since childhood I have often walked eastwards along the river and witnessed the many changes to the landscape and use. On this occasion, I spotted a very unassuming building called 'The Ernest Shackleton Lodge', tucked amongst the newer higher-rise flats. Intrigued by the contrast and possible connection between Shackleton and the newly developed Peninsula, I decided to combine the quotes of the polar explorer with the sales language of the Greenwich Peninsula PR. Though one hundred years apart, these two sources seem to be steeped in the same hubris, pioneering new territories but for whom? 

The book is A6 format in an edition of 50. It is signed and hand-stitched and costs just £7.50 including post and packaging to the UK and the EU. If you would like to have one, please email me at: cathmarshall@googlemail.com. 

Many thanks to Julia Stone for design and production of the book. 

To Die For

After about a year of indecision I bought a new printer. It was only when I got home that I noticed the name, HP ENVY. I wondered why I had bought a printer with such a negative sounding name, and anyway, why name your brand after one of the seven deadly sins? Once I let Envy into my home office though, everything just went downhill from there, with some few broken commandments finishing off my home office look.

To Die For

My printer's name is Envy
My computer's brand is Greed
My smart phone is called Lust
And my headphones Gluttony

I have some pens called Foolish Pride
They come in several shades
Of Hubris and Pomposity
Self-regard and Vanity

And Sloth is my hole-punch
(It's teeth make quite a mess)
And Anger is my number cruncher
I just call him 'Ken'*

My desk is from HabiHate 
The chair from I-Sneer
My shelf is from Primevil
And my lamp from John Leer

My walls are painted Poison Green™
My carpet Sicknote Beige®
My curtains Rancid Banana©
And the stationary Scarlet Rage♻︎

My friend's pad has a better flair
Decked out in Marxist Spinster ware
Envy's just the start of sin
I'd kill to have her paper bin

So now that Envy's entered in
I'm done with virtue signalling**
I've a printer to die for, all should be well
but for the fact this could all lead to hell.



*Apologies to Kenneth Anger (filmmaker)
** Virtue signalling is the expression or promotion of viewpoints that are especially valued within a social group, especially when this is done to enhance the social standing of the speaker (Wikipedia.)

Gisela, by the way

Gisela, by the way*

I am just a goods train

You are just a shack

Whenever I go past you

I'm longing to look back

By night I blow you kisses

That whistle o'er the track

By day my windows wink and smile 

The sun towards your back

On grey days when the light is flat

I lend you shadows with my lamps

to make your contours crisp and clear

and help you see your worth, my dear

And by the way, it's destiny

To love someone so stationary

To share her with the platform

The ticket booth and masonry

When passers by, pass you by

And life itself does the same

Just remember that this old train

Loves Gisela, by the way

*I photographed this abandoned kiosk/shop from a train window in Germany. The name 'Gisela, by the way' sounded like unintentional poetry to me.

CS3

Oh Cyclesuperhighway3.
Deliver us by bike (once we have crossed the foot tunnel to the Isle of Dogs)
into the cold heart of the City, 
from Greenwich, via Tower Gateway
past cranes, housing estates, murals, skyscrapers, wharfs
ungated communities, Spindrifts and big spenders

Let us ride your cold blue artery
over the quiet of a New Year's Day
Forests of Boris' bikes, where scaffolding holds up real trees
No one needs the countryside
where an erased corporate identity
forms a landscape in black, white and silver behind glass.

(A good tip for Boris' Bikes. The hire is 2 pounds for 24 hours, and the first 30 mins free. If you swap the bike at another station within half an hour you can hire another and ride the next half hour free, and so on. Otherwise it is 2 pounds for each further 30 mins. )

I Wish This Place

Sand has formed itself to shell

Impossibility within which to dwell

Good luck, fair weather, another year

For the place that stays on here

My wish is more selfish than that

I want to take it, wrap it up

I pick up the corners of loose bricks

And fold them slowly, light as air

I slip the windows into my bag

And into my pocket goes the door

I find a compass of zigzag tracks

A ballet of heavy machinery

Scaffolding falls into a telescope

Now thin lines are holding up the sky

I wish this place well, and I wish it ill

But it takes off alone, and I haven’t the will

Poet's Pub

This post is a speculative application to the current Falskkiosk Information Service of the Borås International Sculpture Biennial 2014 as an unpaid and absent intern.

This is a portrait of the famous Scottish Modernist Poet, Edwina Nacht, which hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. You may be forgiven for asking, well, where is she? I can't even see her?

Alexandra Tuffat, the artist, says she deliberately painted Nacht as a seemingly insignificant background figure:

‘You can hardly see her at first. I instinctively felt she belonged in the doorway on the right hand side of the picture. She is rather small in the frame, its true. I did this because in her poetry she always put marginal figures, such as male prostitutes, in the foreground of her work, just as I have done in this painting.’

The nine figures in the foreground of the painting are based on Nacht's prose portraits of well-known male prostitutes who frequented her favourite pub, which was in fact an amalgamation of all the pubs in Edinburgh.

As Tuffat recounts: ‘I remember evenings would end with a dog-fight breaking out amongst the men. I felt though I wanted to capture the dignity of the prostitutes in my painting, just like Nacht did in her poems. We both become personally affected by their stories; they were obviously past it.’

Alexandra Tuffat also wanted to capture Nacht’s working process:

‘To help her get into the zone of writing poetry, Nacht liked to slide down slopes in black patent leather heels. Hers is an intense watchful gaze, here she is clearly fascinated by the colourful clothes and colourful language of the male prostitutes. I remember it as if it was yesterday’

 

Sliding down slopes helped creative process    Detail 

This painting has serious implications for Edinburgh society of the '80s. Men, it seems, were often forced to socialise together in groups, drinking together, and had to discuss things intensely for hours. Women, however, could be on their own, were not forced to form any groups and didn’t have to discuss anything at all. This was one of the themes elaborated on time and again in Nacht’s work.

Alexandra Tuffat: ‘She was an amazing creative force, always encouraging men to isolate themselves, although it was not at all fashionable or acceptable at the time. Such outspoken views meant total inclusion for Nacht into artistic society; she would be included in absolutely everything, which just makes me feel so sad now to think of it, how much she suffered for her art, for her beliefs.’

A key to the 'Gents of the night', numbered from 1 to 9

More information about the painting is available here on the Scottish National Portrait Gallery website.