NATURAL HYBRID

1 + 1 = 3

[karenmccarthywoolf-blog]

A second humument, in response to Sea Dragon's onboard Ceremony of Remembrance on 30 November commemorating lost and endangered marine fauna.

[karenmccarthywoolf-blog]

This is the first humument, named after Tom Philips' A Humument: a found form where a new poem is created from a pre-existing text. While Sea Dragon sails the Atlantic, I will write a humument for each member of the crew. A bit like a letter. Fourteen Letters for Fourteen Women At Sea. Going out to Lanzarote to meet them was something I knew I should do: now as I create the work, knowing them a little, having met them on the brink of a life changing experience, brings a depth I wouldn't have had access to otherwise. I've not decided whether to reveal the recipient, or to play with clues. The personal always floats to the surface in my work, in one way, shape or form. I'll also be keeping plastics, pollution and the sea in the picture as part of this endeavour is to work out how to write about ecological issues through hybrid poetic forms. So letter + humument + 14 = sonnet. Perhaps. My source text is The Science of Life a three volume encyclopaedia from circa the mid-1930s by H G Wells, Julian Huxley and GP Wells. Quite a wonderful book in its own right.

[karenmccarthywoolf-blog]

As part of my artistic response to Exxpedition.com, where 14 women are sailing across the Atlantic to monitor the impact of plastic pollution, micro-plastics and toxicity on marine life and women's health, I'm going to be posting my own response and notes on the plastic I encounter, avoid and consume. At a time when we need to drastically reduce our use of plastic there seems to be more of it than ever. 

[karenmccarthywoolf-blog]

Lost in Fathoms is a collaboration between artist Anais Tondeur and scientist and Laboratoire d'Hydrodynamique co-founder Jean-Marc Chomaz.  An exhibition that describes the demise of a disappeared island that vanishes at the moment when theorists categorise our current era as anthropocene. A work that plays with fact and fiction. Poets Ruth Padel and Declan Ryan wrote work in response. I discovered (from Padel's book The Mara Crossing) that the only animals not to have magnetites that link us to the earth's magnetic field are humans.