I have been eating poetry

[arthur-writes]

birthday cake

pale laminate faux-wood tabletop in sheer pink but, blink; the riveted metal on the ceiling

i love it when things look clean are dreamed up in computer graphics and then the grime of the extractor fan soaring over us like a sky.

the pipes, the small pipes! where as a wristbone peeking from a glove they reveal their innards - bundles of wires - for just a centimetre.

the pockmarks! the broken lamps hanging impotently like shrivelled fruit! left on the vine!

isn't it best when that clingfilm beauty gives you the knife to split its own self? the cut to the divine.

happy birthday.

[arthur-writes]

[arthur-writes]

"bare was the body and blak to the bone, al biclagged in clay uncomly cladde hit waried, hit wayment as a woman, but in hide ne on huew no heling it had"

Marsh-woman. Body-woman. The girl that happens when the skin is gone.

Physical host of the trapped air inside the reeds. The ghost has left. It was never here.

She is eaten up bones and they are metastatising. Reaching out. Her hand is mud.

Sinews strain. Corpse of clay. A sculpture made by unmaking. Call her Earth-mother, Nature-mother, what you like - it doesn't matter. She has no more children. She is no-one's child.

She is the sediment that will crush you when you sleep.

My poem inspired by a section of the medieval poem the Awntyrs off Arthure. There's a lot more to the poem than just this, but one of the moments it is famous for is when a female ghost - which we then find out is Guinevere's mother - arises from the landscape to give warnings of the fall of Arthur's kingdom.

I was trying to lean into ideas about bodies, nature and femininity and edited some photos I took of trees reflected in a lake for a backdrop. Not sure how, uh, legible it is though...

Read the Awntyrs off Arthure here!

[arthur-writes]

TELLING DAEDALUS ABOUT THE DEATH DRIVE:

a bird's an unformed creature on a wing a sack drawn taut by the pulling of the wind that drop like stones that scream through what they sing but fail to hit the ground.

He drips the wax amongst his feathers hopes it'll harden- what could it weather, otherwise? The sun's dried up cold air brings the brittle cast of reason.

But be ecstatic when the membrane melts and freezes, melts and freezes- when the bird-skin, tight, releases when the sun shines and we plunge into the sea.

[arthur-writes]

When will it be summer again? I’d count the days but she sends me visions of the whole earth frozen over- an ice age, the night- dark skies ahead.

When will my skin smile in the sun? When will my eyes scent the warm wind? It has to happen. The year rolls on inevitably, but the shape in the mud, the skies - dark skies ahead!

My body knows it will not be warm. My circulation is shrinking deeper and slower. My mind goes inward. I can come up with a first line but I never know where it ends. When will it be summer again?

[arthur-writes]

From 'Hexameters', Samuel Tayler Coleridge

William, my head and my heart! dear William and dear Dorothea! You have all in each other; but I am lonely, and want you!

[arthur-writes]

as if it sits at your doorstep waiting for you like a dog or a dream you can walk in- as if it's real when you lay your eyes right on the grass, on the sun, you tune out the cars and the trains for the birds as you look out past the garden fence and above to bare branches, near gold breathe in the air that's suffused with exhaust from the road, with the scent of cat piss and the bird that they killed it's been here for weeks don't you know that it's body is always there rotting? When you go back inside the feathers will stay for months on the lawn.

[arthur-writes]

[arthur-writes]

There is no safety net!

The threads that wove you together were never there. You're just flesh.

Your body's, maybe, a selection of atoms that are different to the atoms next to it.

And does that even matter? You're free!

Jubilant the cry as you leap from buildings, fall, fall, land hard on the concrete and doesn't it feel good?

Don't you long for the impact that hasn't come? Yet. What better purpose will you find than that final shape you make when you're in pieces on the floor? But for now-

nothing. You can't be stopped as you burst through empty air.

Again! Again! Again!

[arthur-writes]

Another image inspired by Thomas Hoccleve's 'Complaint' - thinking about scrutiny, a reflection and masking.

[arthur-writes]

And in my chamber at home, when there I was, alone, by myself, I would proceed straight to my mirror, my glass, To look at the way that my face seemed If it were any other than it should be Eagerly would I, if it had not been right Amended it with all my ability and might.

My amateur translation of a stanza from Hoccleve's 'Complaint', trying to preserve the original rhyme scheme. Informed by this prose translation from Hoccleve Society.

I've flipped the photo so this is the inverse of my previous post - a reflection or mirror perhaps ;) I chose the motif of scrunched bedsheets because it makes me think privacy/private selves. Practicing who you are around everyone else alone in your bedroom.

[arthur-writes]

And in my chaumbre at home whanne pat I was Mysilfe aloone I in bis wise wrou3t. I streite vnto my mirrour and my glas, To loke howe pat me of my chere pou3t, If any othir were it than it ou3t, For fain wolde I, if it not had bene ri3t, Amendid it to my kunnynge and my3t.

Thomas Hoccleve, 'Complaint'.

Hoccleve was a medieval poet who wrote the first recorded reflection on mental health in the English language. In his complaint, he recollects how he experienced a period of 'madness'. Although remarkable throughout, I found this stanza particulaly meaningful - Hoccleve describes returning to his room and looking into a mirror to analyse his facial expressions, making sure he appears sane.

His repetition of personal pronouns - 'my', 'I', 'mysilfe aloone I' - is not typical for medieval poetry. This frantic returning to himself is like his exruciating self focus, constantly checking to make sure he appears socially typical.

I think this is one of the best and most honest depictions of masking in language.

[arthur-writes]

One of the favourite photos I've taken. These are my mum's gloves hanging to dry in her greenhouse. They look like they're poised in the middle of a gesture.

[arthur-writes]

She used to haunt this house but now she sits there. Stuck. It sticks with you: the way she used to walk, pace each boundary line, each wall and now? She’s fixed in that chair. She stares. Each day she stills a little more.

A poem about feeling trapped. Wrote this one a while ago - I think I'd write this one differently now.

[arthur-writes]

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up. Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep. She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

'Eating Poetry', Mark Strand

Where I got the title of my blog from! Thought I'd reuse an old graphic for it.

[arthur-writes]

Give everything an appearance wants to take a name for himself the night that dwells the beautiful black sea here a young woman turns unrecognisable core this heart consume history the production of blooded to visionary existence now is near to life

a poem I wrote exclusively using words cut out from a review of Nosferatu!

Was thinking about the "do you ever feel like you're not a person?" line. Why are vampires appealling? The relief in losing your self to another? Your body/physicality/proof of existence - that burden -being drained away?

also this was such a pain to cut out jesus christ lol

[arthur-writes]

"Do you ever feel at times as if you were not- as if you were not a person? What I wish to say is that you are not truly present nor alive. As if you were at the whim of another like a doll. Someone or something had the power to breathe life into you, to move you-"