Here’s another thing.  The hands are cast in resin plaster which is a deeper white and more dense than the non-resin type.  The eye should be inside a doll’s head.  One of those creepy ‘First Born’ things which really really look like babies.   I think the poetry in this (if poetry is to be found) is the play between words and image.  If I were to write some kind of manifesto for the entire series I’ve been working on, it  would extrapolate on that idea.  This piece was also made under the influence of Michael Donaghy’s poem ‘Machines’ http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=151

I am going to be making some postcards of some of these images, and also some prints.  Some people have expressed the desire to buy them, which is very flattering.  I am also going to be registering for the Open Studios thing we have here in Norfolk.  Like a proper artist.  Yowser! (said the poet) Poet? (said the Helen).

I tend to think of these boxes as shadow theatres, so imagine my delight when I came across instructions on how to make one in the Mee Encyclopedia.  It didn’t say to do this, of course – it was more involved with card and paper cut-out shapes.  I am struck here by what Charles Simic wrote in Dime- Store Alchemy, his gorgeous ekphrastic book on Joseph Cornell: “In my childhood, toy shops sold miniature theatres made of cardboard…My own theatre did not come from a store.  It consisted of a few broken toy soldiers made of clay..and other objects…my stage was a table…there was little to do but imagine.’

Here’s another one of the ‘landscape on its head’ canvas shapes, which should probably be called called ‘portrait’.  It’s too long and skinny for me to think of it as a ‘portrait’ though.  If I were a practical person, the clock would be ticking in this image, and I could sell it as a practical kitschy object.  But I am not.  The time is stuck at the turn of the day, thus working ironically with the ‘quickening’ the title suggests. Indeed. And so it came to pass. Whatever it was.

Adding moths to the eyes of this head were essentially a problem-solving exercise.  You have a doll with holes for eyes, which looks too spooky.  You try to add some actual dolls eyes, and then she looks too normal.  So you light on the idea of moths for eyes, rifle through Arthur Mee’s Encyclopedia, and Bob’s your uncle.  See how I add romance to my art with these little commentaries….

At long last I have found a body for my magpie wings!  Not just any body – it’s the doll formerly known an Evil Maria from Metropolis. She has weighted eyes, so she can flutter her eyelashes, and appear to be sleeping if you lay the canvas down. She is being held up by a cast resin hand, with a moth embedded inside it.  I am thinking her middle name now, is probably Azrael.  The Angel of Death is male according to Wiki, but you try arguing with a doll with magpie wings.

The wings are from ebay and I’ve had them a little while.  They came with the assurance that the bird’s death was accidental.  I couldn’t use murdered creatures in my work.

We have been back exactly a week today.  Having missed out on summer, I have grown obsessed with weather, which is just as well because we seem to be having quite a lot of it.  From Saturday’s heatwave, to today’s underwater weather; yes, there is plenty to think about.  We had Martin’s daughter to stay at the weekend and we took her to see the sights in Great Yarmouth during the heatwave.  The sights consisted of, between fairground rides, a vast quantity of food in a varying array of unnatural colours.  Amy’s current obsession is with Firemen Sam, so most of her choices revolve around the colours blue and yellow to match his uniform: a yellow milkshake (banana), a blue ice cream (bubble gum), a blue Slush Puppy (heaven knows).

*shuffles sheepishly up to the screen* Ok, this is all very well, but I have nothing to report on the poem front. Not since the beginning of June, which is probably the longest I haven’t written since I’ve been writing.  I have just been editing all of the Bluebeard poems (nineteen altogether), in order to a) edit them of course, making them better and shinier; b) get back into what I was doing in the hope I might one day, do it again; and c) it’s much easier to write something on something which has already be written without the frank gaze of the Blank Page assessing your wherewithall and finding it wanting.

So I tell you what Mr Blank Page, I’m going to make myself a coffee and then I am going to darn well write me a poem this morning.  It may not be the best poem I’ve ever written, and it is unlikely to change the face of British poetry, but it will be my poem from inside my own dingy skull.  For some reason now, I am reminded of this poem by  Stephen Crane:

Heart

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.

I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”