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

Artistic Motivation - Heads of State

The Dissertation Series continues with an indoor and outdoor affair: Natural Artifice by Alice Maher at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Riverside - Nottingham, June 2007

Heads of state

The road sign says: No horse racing on the carriageway
A good job on that day - for you were well past racing
Your racing days were over
All your days were over

It was the first time that I had seen a glass and crystal coffin carriage
Horse drawn, groomed for the occasion
You would have liked the sign Road closed for a funeral procession
Hundreds, maybe thousands of well wishers
Stand back, make way, by notices they are instructed

The sun shone then as the sun shines now - outside the gallery
Inside, a casket: Lacrymatory - The Jerpoint kick-starts the memory
Of someone I never ever knew
Though I know now, my chasing days too are almost over
All of those days are almost over

Artistic Motivation - Enter

The dissertation Series continues, still in Belgium, now trying to reach my spiritual side, at the Lumière et Intériorité Exhibition featuring Pierre Deuse, in the Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule de Bruxelles, Brussels, May 2007...if only you could have heard the spine tingling singing during the blessing service

Enter

One more line, one more etched away corner
One more hour of darkness, one more morning to dawn
Take me to your dreamer, out of my imagination
Take me then redeemer, out beyond creation

One more - wait before the brushstroke
One more - wait before the breath
Take me as I seem
Take me freely, coming clean

Artistic Motivation - Beware

The Dissertation Series continues with a birthday celebration and a knife attack in the main square of Belgium's capital city; in and among the excitement a chance to take in and respond to the Ancient and Modern Exhibition featuring Various Artists at the Musee Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, May 2007


Beware

Dubois, perhaps of De Beauvoir
Shadows; encounters that play with light
Travellers of the world unite as fragments
In the underground concrete departments

Be aware
Meet my friend; he is the one with the knife
Who desires, due to the affair with his wife
To end your life

Sad to have descended
The evening's gaiety upended
Anger lies beside the selfless bonds of consolation
As we delve into your darker nation

Ambient explanations to still the ruffled mind
Silent conversations to view the uneasy interior
Hazily ordained deportations cram the adventurer

Less plain
The particular exploitations to hustle
The all alone, after dark street walker