Artistic Motivation - Shadow Machine

The Dissertation Series continues its second cycle of a poets instant responses to art at the Abstraction - Extracting from the World Exhibition, Millennium Gallery - Sheffield, February 2007

Shadow Machine

Tick tock - stop
Please everybody slow down
Let's begin with a whisper
Tip - top, slow-down, stop

A pin point balance, rocking to and fro
The metronome swings towards home
Its shade travels ever so slight behind
For now it is the afterglow

Artistic Motivation - Aged

The Dissertation series second cycle responds to the Sojourn Exhibition featuring Derek Sprawson at the Bend in the River Gallery - Gainsborough, February 2007

Aged

Emeritus, older than fortune, older than tomorrow
Before faith
Deity

Columbine, twisted contortion, further than forever
Beyond hope
Sight

Kingdom of creation, taste of red wine, blue blood
Always with or without
Divinity

Beauties, moods, bittersweet emotions
Exiled by the hostility, lately
Of doubt or light

Artistic Motivation - Line Drawing

The 2nd cycle of the Dissertation Series continues with a response to the Delineate Exhibition featuring Matthew Shelton at Dean Clough Gallery - Halifax, February 2007

Line drawing

Dark and once satanic
Yorkshire art in Yorkshire space
The derelict carpet canvasses rung out
Fettled back into a new loom of life

Not a time to make sense
I too missed my five minutes of fame
It needs more room
Clutter amongst clutter becomes cluttered

Art gallery
Insurance company headquarters
Utilitarian hotel

The exhibition
It will soon be about
Being settled, back here

Art
In place of life

Artistic Motivation - Awkward but Useful

The Dissertation Series begins its 2nd cycle by responding to the Looking at Self Exhibiton featuring Lucy Jones at the Usher Gallery - Lincoln, January 2007

Awkward but Useful

Untouched by human hand
Kept at bay, always at a distance

Abused by aficionados
Held up on high, for paraplegic parasites
Pillars of establishment
With crooked views on impaired expectations
Sour water
I have drunk from the black bottomless well

Unmoved by human voice, held off
Always some for instance

Down I sink, deeper into the dungeon
Abducted for an exhibition with a catalogue
I am bound with words and pictures
Opened at random
Go away why don't you
Or else move in

Move in much closer
Don't stand, unmoved, at a distance

Artistic Motivation - Landscape 1941, 1942, 1943

The Dissertation Series concludes its first round of a poets response to art, at the Poets in the Landscape Exhibition, featuring Various Artists, in the Pallant House Gallery - Chichester, May 2007

Landscape 1941, 1942, 1943

Wilder curves, smaller moons engulfed by flora and fauna
What with the pleurisy and reading Rimbaud & Blake
No longer now composing
No longer now with pen in hand
Moonlit in the ruins, the serpent of a tree
Archway to a brighter place, with a bird catcher and a poet

They stand guard, in tight leggings and slippers, it is a complicated pose
More time now to ponder, though still to wear the hat
All thoughts for the mind to wander
It's here they're fair isle flew

A mountain range, a far away vision
Still the leggings and the slipper style of shoe
The whiteness in the eyes, mindful or insane
Either way it is back along
Far and away beyond my view