Artistic Motivation - Disaffected

The Dissertation Series comes nearer home, into its third round, with the poets response to Looking at Self an exhibition featuring Lucy Jones at the Usher Gallery - Lincoln, January 2007

Disaffected

Troubled, bent double, creased up without laughter
Bubble, creosote and stubble, the strong sense of ones lost temper
If I sit a thousand hours will it mean anymore
If I touched your crumpled skin or smelt old piss

Why would I

Better to turn away, steer clear
Make for certain not to be affected
Fall back into my shallow ways
Turn down the lights
Turn away from the musing

Artistic Motivation - Postcard

The Dissertation Series continues, with the poets response, during the final visit of the second cycle, to the Poets in the Landscape exhibition featuring Various Artists, at the Pallant House Gallery - Chichester, May 2007

Postcard

Graham Sutherland on holiday with Peter Watson, John Craxton and Kathleen Sutherland

Three petals on white
Camouflage in shadow
Greens with blacks

Entrance to a lane
The picnic hamper is somewhere other
Of the gesture yawned at
By the overlapping seas
Waving in the settling sun

Who is to say
Let things come to rest
Or who is to say
Let things come otherwise

Artistic Motivation - Head of House

The Dissertation Series, in its second cycle returns with a poets response to Natural Artifice by Alice Maher at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Riverside- Nottingham, June 2007

Head of House

House without doors
House without windows
House with no one
Inside or out

House,
Made of thorns
A protection of sorts
Or a suggestion

That home
Is all we have to cling to
Or that home is all we have
In our struggle to get away

Artistic Motivation - To become a painter

The Dissertation Series continues in Belgium with a poets response to the Surreal and the Natural at the Ancient and Modern Exhibition with Various Artists from the Musee Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, May 2007

To become a painter

Angel du Nord
All over the papers
All over the skyline
The Blind Light of confusion
Drips from my brow

That these words
Are the headline story
Is your transient momentous reward

Nine years
Six alone in preparation
Watching the light
Through the seasons
Watching
Cows crossing the Lys

That these words
Caught the tearful story
Is your lasting posthumous reward

Artistic Motivation - Placement

The dissertation Series second cycle takes the poet back to Belgium to reflect on the spiritual works in Lumière et Intériorité by Pierre Deuse at the Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule de Bruxelles - Brussels, May 2007

Placement

Straight lines
Frames arranged in a semi-circle
Around stone pillars and prayer rooms
Under arches and overhead vapours

You take your light
Through stained glass windows
Eulogise, from about now
Until…

Well some say
'It will be sometime soon'
Although
For those of a deeper persuasion
A little while longer dwells the silent clock