15 March 2015
It’s been a whole month since I told you about the exhibition at Anteros and I’m sure we’ve all been pretty busy since then. I for one sold some work there, took that exhibition down, made a couple more pieces, then installed some work in another space. It’s the Forum in Norwich, and will come back home on the evening of the 20th March. As you will see from the photograph, I have a whatnot, though you probably can’t see what’s on it from my photo. Martin’s been taking pictures of all my word & image assemblages, and scans of my collage poems. I’d like to update the Artwork pages of this website soon, and also I am working towards a comic-book scale collection of these pieces which The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press have shown an interest in.
It’s very exciting to see my visual and poetry practices coming together in this way, but to be honest it actually seems like the most obvious thing in the world. Heaven knows why it’s taken so long to happen. I guess this is what is called one’s development as an artist or poet, or whatever, and whatnot.
7 February 2015
I am currently getting ready for [drum roll] my first solo exhibition, and this is the boxed and unboxed chaos in the room that I work in. I am installing the work next weekend in The Front Room at the Anteros Art Foundation on Fye Bridge Street, Norwich.
We are having a public, Private View on 20th February starting at 7pm, and from 8pm there will be poetry readings from George Szirtes and myself, new prose from Ian Nettleton and music from Paul Finlay of Das Fenster and the Alibis, and Girl du Bois. The exhibition will run till 7th March, and as it’s right in the window it might be hard to avoid if you are walking past!
I was delighted when Flik Hemmant who is the new Director of Anteros invited me to exhibit there. I may start calling myself an ‘artist’ very soon. I’ve only just tentatively started calling myself a ‘poet.’ I like Gwyneth Lewis’s quote: ‘In England, if you say you’re a poet, it’s as if you have a personal hygiene problem.’ But mostly, I think it’s because where I come from, it’s like giving yourself airs and graces. But I do write poems, so I must be a poet. If I call myself an ‘assemblage artist’ this takes the pressure off the second word and leaves me with something I can maybe live with.
22 May 2014
I’ve just begun to work on a collaborative Tarot project with the wonderful artist Tom de Freston. Like me, Tom has always loved the archetypes and the symbolism of the Tarot and we decided to work together on a pack. We are not entirely certain of the outcome of the project but I am very much looking forward to the journey. This is a (pretty amazing!) first draft of my Moon poem. I’m still going to be making my own collages and assemblages for the poems, but this particular pack might grow a lot faster with both of us working on it!
18 May 2014
I’ve been busy honest! Here is one of my latest Tarot poems. This one is The Star and as you’ll see I am branching out into the three dimensional…
3 December 2013
The plan is to make a whole pack of collage poems based on Tarot cards. This is as far as I have got with the collage part, though I have written twelve poems. I thought it was time to bring the visual art and the poem writing aspects of my practice together and it will give me something to work on project-wise now Bluebeard is (hopefully!) roaming the bookshelves.
The idea is still very much on the cutting mat as this picture demonstrates. The scalpel to the left is the one I bought when I began my Foundation Art and Design course when I was 19. I’ve changed the blade more than a few times of course, as needs must.
20 September 2013
I haven’t been told officially yet, but it’s been in the Eastern Daily Press, and shared about on Twitter and Facebook, that Waiting for Bluebeard has been shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Award this year, along with Rebecca Goss (Her Birth) and George Szirtes (Bad Machine), so it must be true. I am of course extremely pleased to be in such company! I don’t expect to win, but I’ve never been on any kind of shortlist before, so to say ‘I already feel like a winner’, while reaching for the schmalz-cliche-sick-bucket, is an actual state of fact.
Because Bluebeard is such a personal book, I was taking quite a risk (as risky as you can get with poetry!) by putting it out into the world: Here is my life: please be kind. So far, I have had some wonderful online reviews, and there are some paper ones coming up too. People have emailed me and facebooked me and tweeted me with lovely comments and lots of women have come to me with their own Bluebeard stories and I feel so blessed that the book has not gone unnoticed. The word ‘blessed’ here, has me reaching for my aforementioned bucket. I do not use that word in everyday parlance, but somehow it’s what I arrived upon here.
(Dear reader, if you have just happened on this site and don’t have a Scooby Doo what I’m talking about when I say the book is so personal, follow this link to something I wrote about the writing of Waiting for Bluebeard for Michelle McGrane’s Peony Moon)
Back to my thread, if I had one…oh yes, I was getting all gushy…So, to conclude: I am enormously pleased that the book has been recognized in the world of prizes. It took twenty years to make and five years to write. More than half my life. It’s probably the best book I will ever write. *looks wistfully into the middle-distance*. Coffee time!
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