When I was a child I was ‘good at art’, and my friends would get me to draw them things, and people would watch me draw.  I would help the art teacher help other people.  This of course makes one feel kind of special.  When I left school I did a BTEC Foundation course in Art and Design – this was a two year course, and although I didn’t properly understand at the time, it was a very good foundation – they taught elements of design back then, colour theory and so on.  When I did this course, I quickly realised that actually I’m not that good at drawing.  Don’t get me wrong – if I drew you a horse, it would look like a horse.  I struggled with Observational Drawing, as it was called – even though I seemed to have had a knack for three dimensional design – I felt like a substandard art student as so much emphasis was placed on drawing, which was a magical power.

It has taken me  nearly twenty years to ‘find my voice’ as a visual artist, and even now I feel a little shy about calling myself one. And I don’t know how to categorise what I do – am I a collage artist, sculptor?  I just put things together in boxes.  I don’t think I would have found this ‘voice’, either if I hadn’t started writing poems.  To some extent, poems are collages because they consist of ready-mades, or words.  Each ready-made has its own set of meanings and connotations, and when arranged with other ready-mades and their own signifiers, everything changes. In the boxes I make, each object is a word or maybe a sentence, and as Vasko Popa says ‘Some words are already poems.’  It’s the same with objects as far as I can work out.  This is of course not original thinking and it probably sounds pretty scrambled, but it is a way for me to understand why it’s taken me this long to start getting my act together!

I have lately been whinging to all those who’ll listen (and to the backs of those who wouldn’t) about my marking hell.  Well, that’s done and very much dusted now praise be.  Also, I have finished judging a little poetry competition today, and this very hour proofed and sent off my judge’s comments.  Doubly dusted. And glory be to the Great Lord Chicken on high. (Mm..hmm…)  So, before I opened the whacking great envelope of poems (the first installment) from another comp this afternoon, I took myself for a magpie round the charity shops, secondhand lands, retro stores and  vintage boutiques of Norwich in search for objects trouves, junk, tat, call it what you will, to drag into my lair.

What I don’t fully understand is the shady territory between vintage and second hand.  I am guessing it’s in the packaging, in   the eye of the beholder and in the greedy eyes of the seller.  Who, for instance decided in the flea-market type shop that the (retro) jigsaw puzzle, unboxed, possibly half complete and unlabeled should cost eight pounds?  Eight pounds?!  Half a pre-enjoyed jigsaw puzzle, I ask you!  I left it behind sniffily, and picked up a puzzle for fifty pence in Oxfam.  But…it’s not the retro puzzle I wanted. The retro puzzle was cut from wood.  The retro puzzle had distinct sculptural possibilities.  I am imagining the shapes of the retro puzzle inside one of my box frames.  Ah, the desirable retro puzzle…..

I have stopped skulking around the house, sighing and lamenting about not being a poet etc……because….. I think I have kicked together something for the Child Catcher poem.  I say ‘kicked together’ because normally – when I am in the habit of writing, that is – my poems arrive quickly and nearly fully formed.  When I am a bit rusty, I need to throw a bit more at the canvas before I work out what to take away.

I remember the Child Catcher, from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as pretty terrifying and  watching him over the weekend, I find him every bit as creepy as I did as a child.   (click here here to see him).  I didn’t write the kind of poem I thought I was going to write, but then if I knew what I was going to write then I wouldn’t write.  Think I will go back to the Child Catcher and write something else though, part of my imagination is trapped in that cage of his, and I need to get it back.

So, having not written a poem for around two months, I am wondering whether I can still call myself a poet.  I can’t remember who said that you are only a poet when you are writing a poem, but it seems the sentiment has wedged deep in my heart.  Then I am reminded of the Miroslav Holub poem ‘Conversation with a Poet’ which goes:

Are you a poet?
Yes, I am.

How do you know?
I’ve written poems.

If you’ve written poems it means you were a poet. But now?
I’ll write a poem again one day.

In that case maybe you’ll be a poet again one day. But how will you know it is a poem?
It will be a poem just like the last one.

Then of course it won’t be a poem. A poem is only once and can never be the same a second time.
I believe it will be just as good.

How can you be sure? Even the quality of a poem is for once only and depends not on you but on circumstances.
I believe that circumstances will be the same too.

If you believe that then you won’t be a poet and never were a poet.
What then makes you think you are a poet?
Well – I don’t rightly know. And who are you?

And then I am tied in twisty turny knots.  Hope comes with the idea for a poem about The Childcatcher which I am going to be writing for a Red Squirrel Press anthology.  The deadline is in a couple of months, so hopefully I will be a poet again in time for that.

The saga of the marking I had to do over Christmas has gone on far too long.  You can’t just offer feedback these days, you must also fill in multiples of forms, ticking boxes and writing in vapid comments in pre-arranged phrases. (jaded, moi?)  I have only just received the forms, so I now need to fit my hand-written comments into these containers.  I guess these generic non-subject specific forms are just an extreme exercise in making sense of supposed chaos.  Hmmm…

And while I try to deal with the concept in a pseudo philosophical way, my notes and the forms are chattering amongst themselves.  The debate is becoming rather heated.  Perhaps if I shut them all in a drawer to get on with it, I won’t hear them any more.

Now my studio is looking like a studio, I have begun to collect clutter in earnest.  I am no longer just somebody who trawls the charity shops and so forth for bric-a-brac, in an abstract meaningless way –  I am an artist.  I have method to my searching, I have vision, I have an ineffable and driven purpose.  Except I don’t.  The things I make are always suggested to me by the materials and I only have the vaguest of ideas what I’m up to.  It feels somehow as if an invisible blueprint is in my head, and I have to carry on going, finding objects and moving them round till the blueprint appears in the flesh, so to speak.

What I know for certain is that I have got to get hold of some old jewelery boxes or similar receptacles, in order to create space- frames or mini-theatres.  Then I will see what the space thinks it wants.  I really can’t work until I know what the boundaries are.  This is similar to when I am writing a poem – I am thinking in terms of the shape and size of the page, and also the amount of ink introduced to the page in terms of density and the empty space within the frame.

I’ve been putting flat-pack cupboards together of late (my fingers are bloodied as I type) and thinking a lot about order and chaos.  I am sure it’s not the most original of thoughts, but it occurred to me that many (all?) human endeavors involve trying to keep order and make sense of the sheer variousness of life.  Cupboards do this, poems do this, and once I find all the little empty theatres, I will set about solving some more  puzzles.