explorer

found poem, London, winter 2014

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I like my town

Art is a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Back to basics.
Douceur d’enfance.

Today is a good day.
Live what you love.

She acts like summer
and walks like rain.

Art for all.
Discovery.

Let’s fill this town with artists.
Art is nothing without the gift

‘I love William Morris
as I love most artists who manage
to make their lives and work
completely part of each other.’

When William Morris lay dying in 1896,
one of his doctors diagnosed his fatal illness
as ‘simply being William Morris,
and having done more work than most ten men’.

Love is enough.

Own a masterpiece.

Welcome.

No peeking.

Skate.

He is like a tree planted beside the streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season,
whose leaves do not fade,
in all that he does he prospers.

‘Dying is as natural
as being born’.

The secret is out.

You are here.

Step into the adventure.

Thou God seest me.

A little patience won’t hurt you.

Notes on locations:  sign in Loft store, shirt in Loft, product in Loft, candle in Loft, art in Loft, art in Loft, Duke St Emporium, DSE, Landrover showroom, name of shop, sign in same shop, Anarchy and Beauty, National Portrait Gallery, cushion in NPG shop, sign in NPG, Jigsaw store window, Somerset House sign, engraving of Proverbs 1 in Somerset House monument, quotation attributed to Cecily Saunders, Kings College London, wording on a van, street map, advert on bus, wording above St Clements Danes church, sign on Tube.

at the barre

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I take my place
in Degas,
one knee bent, to
slide my foot into pink leather.
I wish I had ribbons and a tutu.

I walk over to the barre,
stand in a line with
Pauline, Petrova and Posy,
but the self I face in the mirror,
is a grown-up woman.

My head turns into
Coppelia, a line traced
through generations.
My toes point with
Bull and Bussell,
Pavlova, and Guillem,
almost.

I plié and rise,
and I am in a
pirouette of dancing
bliss.  The landing is askew;
I am alight.

‘And one and two
and three and four’
echoes all around
me and all around the
world.  A hundred little girls
and companies of swans and mice
and courtiers and peasants.

Did someone just call me a
ballerina?  Oh!

things I want to tell my children but might forget – Introduction

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To try to make myself feel a little bit at home, I’m going to use some writing that I’ve already done, as well as some things that I will write new when I have a moment of inspiration or recognition.

This is the Introduction to a book I am trying out:

things I want to tell my children but might forget

Introduction

Well, children, I don’t know whether you will ever read this.  When will you be born?  Will you be born at all, and if you are, will you want to sit down and read things that your mother thought and wrote in the existence she had before you were alive.

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that the other mothers I know are very often busy.  They are looking after people and if I ever have the luminous delight of having children of my own, of having you arrive in my life, it is likely that I will be busy too.  I will be brushing your teeth, and telling you stories, and finding you water.  Or perhaps driving you from place to place.  And for sure I will be weaving this in between other projects too.  Things that you might not understand until you’re bigger, but you will know that mummy is at work.

So I want to tell you all my favourite things about the world.  Some you will understand straight away, some you won’t understand until afterwards.  We can’t always recognise things coming up ahead, but sometimes we recognise them with hindsight.  What I am hoping is that you will find it reassuring to know that there is always someone who has gone ahead of you, but also find exciting that you are the first you to have ever lived.  You are unique, you have wonderful company.

I’ve wanted to write this for a long time, but now that I have started, I suddenly felt a hesitation of not knowing where to start.  The world is a big place.  So what I would like you to do is to put on your explorer hat and we are going to travel through a day, but also through time and space, to childhood, to adulthood, to literature, to real life, and everywhere we will discover treasures and everywhere you will have a memento to bring home with you, and maybe to put in box or pin on a wall and know that you belong to everywhere, and everywhere you put your feet belongs to you alone, and to everyone.  We have all been here and none of us have been there.