In other news  

Monday, December 27, 2010

This week's collage assembled from tweets and experiences has the theme of transience; occupying space between rejection and replacement.

Museums are time machines
we step and wander in
transience questioning.
The hands hang in hunched
hooks of hasty hindrances.
Words expelled;
exhausted.

Lake is iced slush;
a pupitive space
not yet frozen over.
Blue bucket swirls in brackish bareness;
gathering debris and duplicity
of occupying two territories
and none at all.

Recalling topography of
forbidden location,
flamboyant flourishes
of graphology,
each scattered leaf.

Rejected from tree.

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Silence #2  

Wednesday, December 22, 2010


I'm still thinking of silence. John Cage's Silence isn't really a new idea. Shackleton wrote about it in his diary and many writers before him used the connotations of silence within their work. What would radio be without silence? Silence plays an important part in art and poetry. I wrote a dissertation about snow and its connotations of silence. In my delirium of solitude I was associating his silence and all the snow in some sort of pathetic fallacy. Snow - a blank field - is both empty and full of promise. Silence carries the same duality. Perhaps his silence means he's trying to forgive me? Perhaps it means he wants to punish me? Maybe he hasn't given it a thought? How can people say silence is nothing, when its so full of options? I'm filling my time with music and making, reading and writing because it detracts from the over-possible-ness of silence. Similarly, Cage experimented with sounds - claiming that any sound constitutes music. Sometimes when there's too much sound I need to empty my head, and like Jenny Diski; seek refuge in ice and snow to escape from it all. It's interesting how, prior to this recent Arctic blast, we connote snow in such a way. People's attitudes towards silence and snow are changing out of some necessity for them to do so. We'll see if 'Cage against the machine' make it to christmas number one this week...

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Sunday collage  

Saturday, December 11, 2010

My new idea for pushing my poetry into different directions is to make collage poetry sprinboarded from the news I've read and tweeted. This is an arrangement of words telling the news as I see it!

Sunday Collage

flightless fly
defined by transfinite recursion
wanders in
representations of cardinality
and fractured fissure.

Suture of silences
anguish languish in language
and mocking my clattering ejectives.

delphic aleph emphasises
phatic legacy;
prophetic epiphany
connotes rainbow.

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Silence  

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Two of my friends wrote a poignant song last week. They're both musicians I've respected for some time, but this new track did something different. Once I'd heard it I haven't been able to stop listening to it. It inspired me. In the one line 'It took silence to talk you round' I have started a WIP of a whole poem exploring the juxtaposition of my previous relationship. He was born into silence and believes in non-verbal communication. I was born into a thunderstorm ad have always fought to be heard. Words are my everything. Click to listen to silence

Here is the beginning of my Silence

It’s your silence that speaks to me,
Pragmatic necessity.
In all those unsaid words
Lie lessons you made me learn.

But your quiet can’t break me down.

You were inaudible when you were born;
Didn’t speak til you felt worn.
Didn’t need words to be in the room.

In your silence I glean bits,
Understand what you think fits.
In your silence I hear a sound.

It’s your words I never trusted
Artificial sounds
and their message.
It takes more than words
to make me hear.

Diegetic duplicity;
Your spirit lost but your soul free.
You entered earth in a thunderstorm
fought with noise since you were born -

It is silence that creates sound...

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Ssons and Dottirs  

Wednesday, December 1, 2010








Ssons and Dóttirs

I have this disease that mimics love. I can recognise it in you. Synchronicity brought me here. Well I've certainly been in worse places. Holding my passport, tickets, mobile and a second hand copy of Diski's Skating to Antarctica, I shuffle my bag forward with my feet and secure my place one mini step ahead in the queue for flight FL105 to Reykjavík. Like Diski; I am seeking some sort of refuge in ice; clinical whiteness, isolation, clarity.

All day I've followed the trajectory of my 'luxury express' coach as it's wended its way along from Falmouth to Heathrow. Interesting use of the word 'Express'. Nine hours reminds me more of the chicken buses I travelled Guatemala in. The journey has provided time for reflection. First the familiar country roads of Cornwall littered with their plethora of memories and events from my twenty-nine years of living and sometimes just existing there. From Falmouth to Penryn we followed the river upstream passing the decaying form of Integrity the sunken Brixham trawler as she wallows in river mud. Something I did more than my fair share of when living aboard The Black Pig. Fingers up to the system: gathering water, collecting wood, shitting in a bucket; hardly the romantic dream, but a time in which I met many of the interesting characters I now call friends. I contemplated the sinking of my own integrity, silently wondering if it can ever be dragged up from the mud?

'While you are away/ my heart comes undone/ slowly unravels/ in a ball of yarn' sang Björk, which brings me round to remembering my mother's disappointed email from Portugal; 'Why Iceland?'. Well Björk is of course only a contributing factor, but why not Iceland? Northern lights, glaciers, geothermal spas and eternal night; sounds like exactly what I need right now. I have some preconceptions of this country largely gathered from my listening to Icelandic music; Sigur Rós, GusGus, FM Belfast, Emiliana Torrini, múm, Seabear and of course Björk make regular appearances on my playlist. I have arrived at the conclusion, through listening to them and having looked at other text, that the country moves at a slow pace; the landscape is dramatic, slow, empty, stark and dark, but with twinkles of light. Rather fitting for what I hope to experience.

The bus shuddered me awake upon reaching the Truro depot. I recalled my college years in the mid-nineties when we'd spend hours wandering about this city stoned. I was probably listening to Björk then. We gathered, among others here, a beautiful voluptuous woman who carries echoes of Nys in Miller's Quiet Days in Clichy. At St. Austell I watched the winter sun low in the sky and shrouded in cloud like the sun that stays late in the night in the Northern summer. Rows of pines point upwards framing the village of St. Blazey. Here I recall the Czech border and the endless security checks myself and my be-dreadlocked boyfriend had when inter railing from Amsterdam in 2001. My first proper failed love affair; we were good at playing house, but too young to negotiate our differences. I wondered what Chris would be doing right now? Still living the dream in New Zealand?

As the bus neared Heathrow I recognised the suburbia I lived in for six years before my parents split up and my mother moved us to Cornwall. The sprawling cityscape with its scattered reservoirs reminded me of trips back and forth to visit various relatives. Gasometers always make me chuckle as I recall my Dad telling me it was one of the first words I said as a child. First sentence; 'Daddy... Those sheep! They're moving'. Proclaimed on the way to Cornwall. I'd seemingly only seen pictures of still sheep prior to this revelation. During my acid years I'd developed this obsession with sheep moving when I came to the realisation that 'if we act like them, they'll think we're one of them' at a party on Exmoor. I've no idea how long Mel and I were crawling along on our hands and knees making sheep noises but have always wondered if a young child in the hot-air-balloon that passed overhead may have said 'Daddy... Those sheep look like people' or similar.

The Icelandair plane is spacious, efficient and boasts extensive in-flight entertainment as well as some Christmas goodies left for us by Stekkjastaur the first of the jólasveinarnir, or Icelandic Yuletide men. Icelandic folklore would have it that the children are not just visited by one jolly fat man at Christmas, but thirteen mischievous imps from the hills. Like the seven dwarfs, each has a name that discloses something about them, though rather than simply a personality trait, their names indicate their particular modus operandi. Stekkjastaur translates as sheepskin wearer, and he is the imp who harasses sheep trying to steal their coats. Each of the jólasveinarnir leave small gifts on the first night they visit if the children have been good. Otherwise they can expect potatoes left in their shoes! I am impressed with my hot chocolate and cinammon cookies and decide that I think I am going to like these yule lads.

I settle back, selecting Juno from the list of movies to watch. Excellent soundtrack and acid-tongued dialogue. I've seen it before; a quirky film about a teenager who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. I rub my stomach protectively and contemplate. The headrest displays advice on speaking Icelandic correctly. I usefully have 'elska is the verb 'to love' when addressing people, thus 'I love you' is Ég elska þú rather than Ég ást þú as is commonly thought.' Elska means to love. It's a pretty sounding name.

It is after midnight when we arrive at Keflavík airport amid some drizzle and nothing exciting to report in the sky. I'd had secret hopes to fly through a light show if the Aurora Borealis was playing ball. Sadly this is not to be. Nor is the land a blanket of white as I had hoped and actually I'm feeling a bit suffocated in my long coat, hat, scarf and gloves with sheepskin boots toasting my legs. I board the 'flybus' which is conveniently waiting for my flight and am slightly concerned to be moving at Iceberg pace throughout the “forty-minute” journey to my hotel. Something like two hours later I am deposited into the night with what could have been any city to my right. The ever present umlaut my only clue that we are perhaps not in Kansas anymore, in this darkness it is hard to make anything else out; except for the fact that the Icelanders love Christmas lights. Disappointed that I cannot see my reflection in the snow covered hills, but with Stevie's voice ringing in my head, 'well I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I've built my life around you...', I swing my rucksack onto my back and breathe in the cold sea air before checking-in to Hótel Cabin at Borgartúni.

I am given the key to room 520 – on the fifth floor – and take the lift to my sanctuary. The flight to Iceland only takes 3 hours, but what with the added journey from Cornwall and waiting around; I get to bed some 20 hours after getting up the previous morning. My twin room offers me two beds in which to sleep. One quickly becomes my wardrobe before I slide between the crisp white sheets of the other one and give a thought to Diski and her yearning for clinical purity. At last Iceland has delivered. I am surprised to find that despite it being mid-December I can sleep with the window open.

Around ten the next morning I am jerked awake by a low metallic grinding that wouldn't be out of place in a The Knife track. The Swedish dark electro duo are what started my obsession with Scandanavia and its rich music scene and so it seems rather apt that I should think of them on my first day in Reykjavík. 'I was looking for you/ When I'm glad I found me/ A special kind of personality'. I'm luckily in time for my free buffet breakfast and head downstairs to help myself to toast, coffee and cereal. Skyr is a kind of Icelandic natural yoghurt, which I add in mountainous peaks to my cereal and study some tourist information booklets I swiped from the reception desk.

At around 10.30 dawn is breaking as I walk along the bay towards the city. It is only as I am crossing the busy road from the hotel that I notice the large mountains in the background and see what a wonderful view I must have from room 520. There's snow in them there hills too and an icy wind blowing across the bay. It stings me into addressing this reality and my hands flutter across my tummy again as I pause to take a macro shot of the igneous rock with its tiny worlds inside it. Winter is everywhere on the twisted branches that grab at the sky, intercrossing each other with the same complexity as the bus map I tried to understand.

Nabokov says 'You can get nearer and nearer to reality; but you can never get near enough, because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable.' For this reason I try to avoid making plans when I travel, preferring to be carried where I'm carried and avoiding disappointment by searching for someone else's reality. That said I do want to visit the Blue Lagoon – one of Iceland's Geothermal Spas – and to go on a Northern Lights hunt, which I manage to book through Iceland Excursions; a sister company of the 'flybus' operators. I am travelling with a very limited budget and each of these trips costs 5-6000 kroner (about £25-30), which means I have very little left for anything else. So I spend this day getting a feel for Reykjavík; and taking quirky photos of trees and colourful houses. At 2pm I realise I am shivering almost permenantly when I walk and decide to stop for coffee in a bakery. I pay around £8 for a biscuit and a coffee and find myself marvelling at how people ever came to visit here before their economy crashed. “More coffee? Always more coffee.” Drawls the counter assistant gesturing towards the machine. I am relieved to discover I have paid for endless refills and stay a little longer allowing the warmth return to my bones.

The sun is sinking again as I get to Hallgrímskirkja, a modern church that resembles an organ to me, with its stepped sides reaching up to a pinnacle. It was designed by the architect Guðjón Samúelsson, who was inspired by the basalt columns of Iceland's geology. It provides many good photo opportunities inside and out – at 75m high it stands proudly over the city – and is the perfect place to watch the day wither into night at only 4pm. I begin my lonely walk back to Borgartúni; Reykjavík's centre of commerce. It is now dubbed Reykjavík's own Wall Street, which I hardly find surprising when I pass another busted neon sign and vacant office blocks surrounded by empty parking lots. There is a feel of desolation and starkness, even here in the city, which resonates with my mood.

Returning to room 520 I want to feel warm and this time get into the other bed. If I have to pay extra as a single occupant then I might as well get as much use out of the room as I can, right? I take the duvet from the unmade bed I slept in the previous night and snuggle up to watch some American cartoons. I have not had a TV in over five years and have come to associate it with hotel rooms. I am transported back to the town of Tenosique on the Mexico/Guatemala border where after a narrow escape from Cockroach Hotel I watched films on cable for the first time in the luxury of my air-conditioned room. The two scenes couldn't have been more different, and yet it strikes me how they inform one another. If landscape itself is text, then this is a form of intertextuality.

It's an early start the next morning in order to get to the Blue Lagoon. I want to see the sun rise over the volcanic landscape. I am the only passenger on the bus, although there are plenty of other vehicles on the road. Leaving Borgartúni and central Reykjavík we pass busy office blocks with glass fronts, calling to mind a Gursky exhibition I saw at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm last year. Floors upon floors of people, each in their neat little box. The bottom floor with its gym; each individual running their own gauntlet. When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see. As we crawl across the lava fields dawn's not so much creeping in fresh and rosy fingered as rather seeping cooly round the edges; like the time my tent was flooded at Glastonbury. Mist rises across the lunar landscape, silhouettes emerge from the rocks and I congratulate myself on a good decision to get up early and experience this with a degree of solitude. The sight of warm steam hitting frost, revealing small islands from the milky waters, the crunch of frosty moss-covered lava underfoot and the vicissitudes in the colour of the sky combine to make this a magical morning and I've not yet got into the pool.



The water is a wonderful temperature and l feel privileged and relaxed to be one of the very few people at the spa so early. My belly feels weightless, and the water nourishing as I push my mental battle under the rug again and try to enjoy this treat. There are crates of silica mud positioned around the pool, so I treat my skin to a couple of full applications of this, and feel glowing for some time afterwards. Iceland has the biggest Geothermal system in the world and the water heats many homes as well as protecting the two main shopping streets in Reykjavík from ice. Protect their consumerism, keep people spending money; that's the Icelandic Government, I cynically think. After a couple of hours of luxuriating in the pool, sauna and steam room I get out and get dressed with the intention of walking down to nearby Grindavík to explore. It is absolutely freezing outside and the surrounding area is so beautiful now that the sun has properly come up and illuminated the land, I instead spend some time photographing the lava fields with their teletubby land hills and taking macro shots of ice crystals.

I am tired when I return to room 520 and crawl back into the alternate bed, with extra duvet again to watch more mindnumbing television. I pick up a few words of Icelandic by reading the translation, also noting that in Icelandic surnames are passed from the father to their child, including son or dóttir. Sóley Stefánsdóttir is Sóley, Stefán's daughter, Kjartan Bragi Bjarnason is Kjartan Bragi, Bjarn's son. Elskan means loved one or darling. Will I have enough love to be the only parent to this bunch of cells created under the wrong circumstances? I can't help but laugh at the irony in the fact that the man I love is named Edmondson, but this unborn child cruelly is not his son. Or dóttir.

That night I am booked for my Northern Lights tour. It largely depends on weather conditions and the tour won't operate unless the company feel there is a fair chance of seeing some activity. I wear all the clothes I have brought in my little rucksack and take a seat next to the window. I am later joined by a friendly Polish Jew en route from Boston to Germany for Christmas. She reminds me of Anja, Spiegelman's mother in Maus with her mild unassuming manner and delicate mousey features. We arrive into a forest in the middle of Iceland lined with firs. Icelanders seem to find their trees the source of much amusement. I'd read somewhere that the Christmas Tree outside the Town Hall was donated by Norway because the Icelandic ones were too small, and tonight 'Hussy' our tour guide cracked the joke 'If you ever find yourself lost in an Icelandic forest, just stand up and you'll be able to find your way out.' It was 11.30, it was very dark and the temperature was at least -5ºC and Hussy was urging us to be excited about the constellations. Don't get me wrong, Orion was looking stronger than ever and I could make out my little pisces kite above us, but I haven't paid £30 to freeze my ass off in a forest just to look at the stars. I grumble and sit back in the bus lamenting the GusGus and FM Belfast gig I turned down in favour of this tour.

The bus pulls into a different location for people to use the bathroom. I'm catatonic with cold and staring blankly ahead as a young couple shush their crying child by taking turns to walk the floor of the bus. Everyone is subdued with the disappointment of not having seen the Aurora Borealis and hostile eyes curse the parents. We are getting ready for the journey back into Reykjavík when an Australian voice pipes up “Is that it?”. How rude, the English are thinking. Hussy is not to blame if we can't see the lights, it's hardly as if the government can put a tax on them! “Over there... I mean is that it?” She points across to a green cloud. Everybody starts shouting to open the doors and turn off the lights and Hussy begins to get extremely excited. We all pile off the bus, and in our new, even more exposed, location shiver as we watch the sky do the same. The green cloud moves in ripples and undulates around the glittering stars; so crisp and beautiful in the night sky.

I was searching for answers in snow, in ice in solitude, but that night my decision came to me from those stars and I travelled back to England two days later with a heavy heart preparing to face the hardest decision of my life; alone. He takes his time like a Northern winter night. The darkest hour happens before it dawns. His eyes hold constellations, his heart a kaleidescope. Broken particles alone won't make pretty patterns.

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Intertextuality  

Monday, November 15, 2010

We are intertextual.
Decisions I make have links to your pages.
Your brow and its furrows,
your ebb and my flow.

My narrative informs yours
and even if never we speak again
we're reacting to our intertextuality.

Your landscape of ice
laden lava fields are woven
by my fire that seared under
over
through
and still bubbles
underneath. The
flaws, he says,
provide context
for the bits you like.

So each cherry has a stone.

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Lost futures  

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I had to break off a very new relationship recently. Considering what an abortion I have made of situations such as this in the past I approached the situation with logic. I did the honourable thing for one of the first times in my life; finished it early because it just wasn’t going to work. Watching the lines in his face crease up and hide his pain was hard, but won’t leave months of scarring and sleepless nights for me. He held his pain pretty well, and accepted my offer of dinner, which we ate in stilted silence. Why discuss feelings when they can be turned into facial topography? Who needs words when how we feel can be conveyed by passive aggressive slamming and avoidance of eye contact?

It occurred to me that at the end of a relationship the thing we mourn the most is the lost future; something which never really existed. It was constructed from words (those duplicitous bastards), hopes, and dreams. It was never tangible, and yet leaves a void that causes a physical pain. In short relationships these futures are almost exclusively made solely by the dumpee. The delusion of how well things are going informs their future.

In longer relationships the pain’s harder to bear as the lost future was shared in some way. The foundations were the shared hopes and dreams. The cement is the words spoken. Sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted, but always shared; even conflated. And the bricks were the shared experiences that began to mount up and make the future seem more real. For me, in the last year, the bricks have deconstructed the false future as they’ve fallen on my head; teaching me lessons as they tumble.
And some of the lessons I have learnt have been from mistakes I have made more than once. Hell, some of them I’ve made for 30 years, but finishing something that just wasn’t going to work in a mature way is the product of having learnt one of these lessons. The rest of my life is something of a derelict building site. There are days when excavations are revealing and days when the wind whistles through everything, whipping up a flurry of autumnal leaves which pirouette, curtsy and settle again around me; obscuring my way.

Sometimes we have to get lost to find ourselves.

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Travis and Fripp  

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

I was fortunate enough to be taken on a rare and wonderful date the other night to see Robert Fripp (King Crimson’s guitarist) and Theo Travis (Piper at the gates of...amongst others Porcupine Tree) play soundscapes in a church just around the corner from my new house. It’s uncommon for me to set foot in one of these places, much less enjoy the experience. I was scrawling whilst I was there...

Fingers weave journeys
as tired eyes are hypnotised by angels carved on the eyes.
Mitres point to music’s alphabet;
inscribed in arches.
Ribs of oak are framed by minarets
and I saw shadows waging war
with pirouetting ripples.
Flickering flames, conflate sinister and sane;
chorales decay in rich cascades.
His strings emulate seagulls
as they pick through
the bones of yesterday’s life.

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Self fulfilling prophecies explained  

Monday, November 1, 2010

I have a pain in my fingers. My skin is mottled under the crush of my cheap heavy wool knit cardigan. My thumb throbs from being temporarily squished under my anxious pressing. My joints are stiff and my eyes are wet. This evening I've been looking after my family; my sister and her girls. And I thank my uselessness at relationships, my fuck-ups and my pain for equipping me with the skills I need to offer her insight. I make mistakes so you don't have to...

She is falling apart. Her eyes are red and hollow, her throat crackling like the fire we used to polish brass beside when Mum was hysterical over a break-up with some unsuitable stepfather type. The children draw pictures of hearts ripped in two. They shouldn’t understand this pain at such a young age. Only... Well, only it prepares them for the world, right? They’ll know that nothing works out how you want it to. People leave and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no point in trusting people when people only let you down.

We were brought up believing this: Men will leave you. They will let you down. And we saw example after example of unsuitable characters making their grand exit. Leaving our mother depressed and in tears. We all sat by the fire and wrote poems of loss in an attempt to win affection from our broken mother. In her attempt to win them back with words: ‘Without you the stars are black’, ‘Without you dawn won’t rise’, ‘Without you I’m nothing.’

We became well versed at self-fulfilling prophecies because if the affirmation ‘they will leave you’ is repeated enough, it becomes the only way of life. A fissure so deeply carved into our own landscape that nothing can smooth it over.

So when someone comes and tries to love you wholly, see you for who you are and still stick around, the prophecy isn’t working. The fissure is hidden under a deep and complex ocean. And we panic. Everything we have ever known is beginning to come undone. We must stop this madness. So we push, and push them away until they must leave. They’d be stupid to stay. After all now we are breaking their heart. We have to; for their own protection. When they leave, the circle is complete. ‘They will leave you’ has become ‘they have left’ like it did so many times before and the only equilibrium we know is restored.

My only advice, then, is to try and break the cycle...

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If you love something set it free...  

Thursday, October 28, 2010

A new chapter has started in my life and I have Billie-cat back. My sister sent me this link about women and their cats. I've had a deep obsession with my pets since I was a kid. It was borderline sinsister how I would hug them so tight, and lock them in cupboards for fear they'd leave me...

I incurred a square shaped scar on my right knee in an attempt to deter Gizmo's escape when I was 6 years old. He was agile enough to miss the smouldering hob ring as he bounded for the window in a bid for freedom. I, fixated on his escape route, managed to overlook it until my knee began searing with white heat and resembled an over-toasted marshmallow.

I still bear the scars now at 30; perhaps rightly so.

I know that if you love something you're supposed to set it free, but what if it loses its way?

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Quito  

Monday, August 23, 2010

I landed on San Cristòbal having flown through clouds piled on top of each other like mashed potato sculptures. If you've never sculpted mashed potato I recommend giving it a try. If you mash sweet potato or other root vegetables you can make a variety of colours with which to sculpt. The peaks of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo – Ecuador's two tallest volcanoes – interrupted the windless skyline. All the way from Quito to Guayaquil the clouds made shadow pictures across the hills, which rippled like oceanic clefts and hid Andean stories in the belching belly of the earth. And then Guayaquil across the pacific buried these volcanic archipelago under a trampoline of white clouds through which I caught glimpses of randomly placed lumps of rock and thousands of outlines of sea creatures.

On first arriving in Ecuador I was tired after all the travelling and had a small chuchaqui from drinking beers watching the world cup final with Mr. Hot Doctor in Miami. It was dark, humid, late and pregnant with promise. I struggled to find a cash machine to accept my card which sent small beads of panic down my mochila-clad shoulders. I got into a taxi anyway and asked that en-route to Nucapacha, my hostel, we could stop at a bank. I tried three. Nowhere seemed familiar with my visa debit card. I ended up paying the cab driver with a five pound note; explaining that when he changed it he'd find it worth about twice as much as the original fare. Luckily he seemed to believe me. Further along in my trip I have found most Ecuadorians to be similarly trusting and really friendly.


The hostel was locked up with wrought iron gates and a dog who guarded the front entrance. Everything in Guayaquil was unsettlingly safeguarded by broken glass, barbed wire and iron gates, but I was too tired to notice or care. The hostel was clean, had a fan and a place I could charge my phone. And best of all; the $10 included breakfast. I slept comfortably under the rotating blades. When I awoke the new day was just around the corner and I realised the unforgiving heat and relentless bag carrying had transformed my hair into one big sweaty slug, which desperately required cleaning. I ended up being distracted downstairs by my breakfast of scrambled egg on toast with sweet tomato juice before venturing into the city to try once more to obtain money. With the new day arrived a new confidence and I found banRED, which ably distributed the funds I needed for the day. All I had to do was to get to the Estacion de autobuses and I could get my boleta outta here.

Luck, fate or maybe just good old Ecuadorian friendliness would have it that I met Roy Aguilar. He was taking the same bus from Guayaquil to Quito and we started our conversation in Spanish, of which mine was broken and pretty terrible. In the rush to get the bus, which was luckily running late, I asked Roy what he was doing in Guayaquil or in Quito? He replied that we had 8 hours to get to know each other so there was no rush, which gave me comfort and a few rising butterflies.

The journey through coastal towns and the incline to Quito passed me by in a hot haze of laughter, secrets and shared experiences. Roy was the same age as me, vegetarian and refused to define his sexuality on account of finding labels restricting. He thought that the term 'bi-sexual' signified too much that a person enjoys relations with 'both' genders at the same time, which he decidedly negated by saying that when he loved his girlfriend he loved only her, and when he loved his boyfriend he only had eyes for him. He went on to say the term leaves little room for transgender relationships, with which I am in agreement. Roy had met some LGBT co-ordinators on a project in the Amazon and surprised me with his open mind. That's not to say that I had specific expectations of Ecuadorians, but I hadn't thought I'd meet such a like-minded person on this 8 hour bus journey. Added to similar views on sexuality, meat and travelling we also shared interests in loads of films, music and books and I found talking with Roy made the journey pass by so quickly I'm not sure I really had the chance to watch the landscape change from coast to mountain or the day turn into night, or the intense sunshine recede into lashings of cold rain.

Roy let me use his phone to call the project co-ordinators in Quito and ascertain where I was staying. He said Avenida Eloy Alfaro, named after a president who led the country's independence, wasn't far from where he lived and we could, therefore, split a taxi. It took some more phone calls and Roy running around in the rain to finally locate my place at the cross section of Luis Coremo where Cèsar was waiting for my arrival and I said an exhausted and extremely grateful farewell to my new buddy. All streets in Quito are referenced by the streets they bi-sect with, which makes them a lot easier to find once you know a few of the bigger ones.

Cèsar showed me into my room, which I was sharing with a guy from England; if I'd have known he was from Solihull I'd have maybe requested a room change, but then I would've missed out on having the funniest room mate of my trip. Duncan was sleeping when I arrived, but he soon woke up when he heard me crashing in. He was relieved to hear an English accent as his Spanish wasn't very strong and he'd been in the house for a few weeks, with mostly Spanish speaking people staying. He wittered on about the buses to school, and the Mariscal and having had his camera 'half-inched' and how he'd just come to Ecuador straight after being in South Africa for the World Cup...

I woke up the next morning having to get ready to go to school, but still feeling as though my feet hadn't really touched Ecuadorian soil. Duncan informed me that I'd asked him about the World Cup in Africa and promptly started snoring. Immediately our brother/sister relationship formed and he would continually rip me for being dizzy and gullible and teach me rhyming slang. He was teaching in the daytime and I was attending a language school. To say I was learning any Spanish would be something of a romantic exaggeration as I was very disappointed by the deliverance of my lessons, but poco a poco I was gaining confidence and also was taken on some interesting trips around Quito. Of an evening we would cook something and quite often watch dubbed TV shows and laugh with Cèsar in Spanglish with wild gesticulations.

One night we went out for dinner, but somehow our plans for all three of us got lost in translation and César went to do some work. Duncan and I talked loads about our respective relationship worries and he gave me some good advice concerning things with Mark. I was quite blown away by how much he seemed to be in love with Tasha – his girlfriend – and his reactions to her neediness reminded me of how Mark had once been with me, and how I completely misjudged it at the time. I hope this girl has more sense than I did. Having recently re-read deBotton´s Essays in Love I was remembering the part in which love in its initial stages can be likened to Marxism gone wrong. I never wanted to be part of any club that´d have me as a member. If you haven´t read this book stop reading this crap and buy it immediately.

Duncan told me he'd heard that Baños, four hours south of Quito, was worth a visit and asked if I wanted to come with him at the weekend. I had been chatting with Alex, an Austrian girl, at school so she came along too. It was grey and oppressive on the Friday when we left for Quitumbe bus station in the south of the city. We found a bus leaving for Baños within half an hour, and it was well lit and really comfortable – as had been the bus from Guayaquil to Quito with Roy – and only cost $3.75, which equated to about $1 per hour. It was still raining when we arrived in Baños, but we found a cheap hotel with 3 beds in one room for $6 each a night right by the bus stop, so we unloaded our stuff and went straight out into the damp night to find something to eat and drink.

We naively went into the first place we found in which we managed to get a caña based cocktail for $2 each, which is as yet unrivalled, but the food was overpriced and nothing special. The worst news, however, came after we ordered. There was a $2 EACH cover charge for the music. This might have been acceptable should the music have resembled, well music, but instead it was 'traditional' Ecuadorian panpipes. Perhaps these still are traditional in some places; there's definitely a time I would've considered it 'quaint' or 'authentic', but it felt like a cash cow and reminded me too much of the South Park episode 'Pandemic'. We paid the bill leaving only $2 in total, and feeling ripped off at that. Maybe it was the citrus overload in my cocktail, but the evening left something of a bitter taste in my mouth.

The weather hadn't really improved the next morning, but we took a chiva tour for $4 round the waterfalls and caught a cable car that passed right over two of them. A chiva is a tourist bus that seats around 30 people inside and another few up top. It wasn't difficult to make the association with the chicken buses of Central America, although chivas had moderately more room, but the ride was definitely no less hairy when we rounded mountain corners with the thing hugging the road using only two wheels. Later we had the chance to follow a waterfall through a jungle for 50 centavos. At the bottom the force of the water provided a much needed breeze whilst weaving a beautiful arco iris throughout the Ambato jungle. Duncan paid $5 to do a zip wire across the jungle, which looked amazing. I didn't join him on his venture, but stood at the side marvelling at the mariposas fluttering soundlessly through the palette of fecund greens and watching large clouds forming and effortlessly precipitating in a parody of geography classes at school. As hard as I looked Mr. Tucker's blue anorak was nowhere to be seen.

The journey back to Quito rivalled its predecessor due to the ever changing weather and landscape. This time I was less distracted by conversation and more so by vendors hopping on and selling their wares. For 50 cents I bought delicious steaming banana bread with raisins and spices from a man with a gruff stubbly face you could climb up. Its crags and boulders mimicking those of the Andes rising around pueblos in the distance. To relieve my parched throat as the weather improved another 50 centavos bought me a small bag filled with coconut water, rich in potassium and irrigating the root of my thirst. There was a small slither of young coconut meat to chew on, which guarded against travel sickness.

In Ambato two men joined the crowded middle aisle. One mumbled buena' dia', whistling through his gapped teeth and ratty moustache. He had a bottle of aguardiente ensconced in his dirty jacket tied on with bailer twine, and took advantage of the first available space to nestle his head into the bristly seat cover. The other man preached how dulce his chocoballs were; likening them the bread of Christ at one point and requesting only 10 centavitos for each 3 balls of artifice. I rejected his holy orbs in favour of chatting with my neighbour about the lake at Cotopaxi and the perpetual rainbow thrown into the sky from it. Duncan interjected to inform me that the rainbow was the 'straightest one he'd ever seen'. I replied that was because we were inside the rainbow and couldn't see all of it, which linked synaesthetically that moment and its imagery with Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' album; soft chorales and glitchy syncopations that seemed to match perfectly the reflections to date of my time in Ecuador.

Returning to Quitumbe, darkness had seeped in from the edges turning the sky black and the cityscape into a grid of LEDs framing faster moving lights with the erratic motion of phosphorescence. The surrounding hills disappeared; surrendering the landscape to the imagination and changing the narrative of the city. We decided to save some money by catching the Trolébus back to Colon in the centre and then splitting off our separate ways to return to our respective establishments. The Trolébus is incredibly cheap – like all transport in mainland Ecuador – at only 25 cents to get from anywhere within the city to any other place on the many routes. Even from one side to another it's possible to pay just two and half dimes for an hour and a half's travel. Like London's tubes; the buses can get crowded and therefore a hotspot for thieves. Duncan fell victim to the loss of both his wallet and camera on two separate occasions and I've heard other tales of similar incidents. My advice, then, is not to be complacent and always keep things on the inside pockets or out of reach.

This evening we were not bothered in that respect, but unfortunately after getting near-ish to our destination on one bus, we all had to disembark due to its termination and were on another bus for an almost equal amount of time before realising that we'd gone back on ourselves and were nearly at Quitumbe once again. We were tired, it was late and still raining so we split a cab back for only $8 wondering why we hadn't just done that in the first place.

On our way back to Eloy Alfaro, Duncan and I stopped off in Supermaxi to get some filthily cheap pre-mixed Sangria and I forget what equally cheap and cheerful food. We had a drunken night of playing cards, listening to tunes on youtube and imbibing oversweet, but fairly potent sangria and planned to visit the botanic gardens the next day. Luckily Sunday delivered some equator sunshine and before getting the bus into the centro I was able to do a load of washing by hand up on the roof and hang it out to dry under the same sun that dries the rivers of San Cristóbal causing the mud to crack; etching maps and pictures on the shores. It was on the roof, overlooking the city of Quito, the favelas rising into the surrounding ring of mountains, that I was really aware of how close the planes fly to the houses and city. Without concentrating on the hills in the background it's similar to watching action replays of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, each time fearing some houses in the hillside will meet the same fate. This year a new airport is opening in Quito, some 10km from the city, which is set to be safer, although it's still going to be built in a ring of mountains...

The botanical gardens were not easy to find, although the park in which they are set takes up a fair space in the city. I think we may have circumnavigated it at least once before finally locating our target of the said gardens, but by this point we'd come across several food stalls predominantly boasting ceviche de chocho or salchipapas for only $1. We both decided to try the ceviche de chocho, which is basically corn, tomatoes and onions marinated in lime juice, with roasted corn kernels and banana chips on the side. I thought it was delicious and very healthy, but Duncan was less keen. I've no idea really why he didn't go for salchipapas, comprised of sliced chorizo deep fried with chips. I was relieved that not eating meat didn't seem to be difficult here and impressed with how cheap food was in Quito. The gardens were also affordable at only $3 entry fee and it was great foraging around in giant gunnera plants and peering into the slightly yonic triffid-like head of a banana plant. A pond had a little bridge across in a pastiche of Monet's lilies and was home to a school of large koi carp.

We walked back to Eloy Alfaro, relishing the hot weather and realising it only took about 15 minutes. OK we'd only made a saving of $0.25, but walking put the city into a neat little box and instantly diminished the size of it. A small chuchaqui made its presence known to me upon return, so I decided to catch up on some seemingly long overdue sleep. It had been pretty much non stop since I'd left Cornwall 9 days before and my ageing bones felt the burn. When I got back up Duncan was looking extremely pale and soon was ejecting the ceviche from the park. Luck would have it that when César returned he brought Samuel (pronounced Sam-well in Spanish) with him. He spoke softly as he prepared a herbal remedy; picked that morning around his home in Cotopaxi. He told me the father of the place he was staying at was teaching him about native plants and their uses, so he couldn't translate their names for me. He said the tea would help with Duncan's sickness and would be good for internal cleansing and for the mind. I was really interested in the preparation of the herbs, and tried to memorise their appearance should I come across them in future; especially when they seemed to work and Duncan felt a lot better, and wasn't sick again.

Samuel was volunteering in Ponce, a small community in rural Cotopaxi. He said it was very cold there because of the altitude. He was from Texas, but would be living in Ponce for 6 months teaching at a small school. It was very inspirational meeting Sam and it was a shame we didn't get to spend more time together. His was one of the most moving stories I have encountered, and I have much respect for his attitude. When he was about 7 years old Sam was found roaming the Andes in Peru, where he had left the care home he'd ended up in after his birth parents had abandoned him. He was found by a couple who were both teachers from Texas who decided they wanted to adopt him. This was some years ago now so the adoption process was not as laborious as it would be now; and the only information the boy had to give was his name Samuel. The judge therefore had to award the boy an age and a birthday so he guessed at 6 years, barely even casting his eyes over Sam. The adoption went through and Sam spoke very fondly of his mother and father, who had provided for him, and his sister – an adoptee from Guatemala – very well. When he was '12' he went for a bone-scan, which revealed that he was in fact 13.5 years old and illuminated the judge's error. He said this didn't really affect him because age wasn't important to identity; a conclusion it has taken me 30 years and an English degree to agree with.

What had brought Sam to Ecuador to volunteer, then, was to feel closer to his people, perhaps in a search for identity. But much deeper was his want to contribute; he felt fortunate to have been given the life he was, and wanted to give something back to those mountains that had raised him. Once he became involved in the community of Ponce, he was quickly spending his spare time helping with other projects in the area, and had, rather nobly, written to the wealthy parents of people from his school to request donations for the projects. He explained that not much money was used in Ponce, it worked, rather, on a system of exchange. The people grew crops and exchanged what they didn't have with those who did. They also made their own clothes, so they had no need to buy clothing, and what money they did make was from taking their produce to markets to sell. Whereas this in part sounded idyllic, it was not without its problems as Sam said that most children didn't make school past the age of eight because they were needed to tend the farms and help sustain the community. With the help of volunteers, their education could be improved and money raised to help the community. I was full of admiration for him when Sam said that he'd requested he be placed somewhere that the people most needed it and it sounded as though in Ponce he had discovered a lot. He said several times that he'd like to have his family in the Andes, rather than in the US.

Back at home in Texas Sam was a student of sculpture and even his approach to this was unique. He'd been looking into ecologically beneficial sculpture, where an installation may be put into areas, for example, where the water is polluted. The use of certain plants could not only counteract the pollution, but provide the aesthetic pleasure of sculpture at the same time. He mentioned his interest in Andy Goldsworthy, a favourite nature sculptor of mine, and also mentioned Nils Udo, one of the pioneers of econatural sculpture. Having encountered the miconia plant in Galápagos, which has water cleansing properties I understand Sam's work more and am interested to see where this takes him.

The next morning Duncan was absolutely fine after his episode the day before, and so the two of us, and César shared a taxi into the centre. It cost about $1.50. I met Monica, one of my teachers, at the school and we set out to visit Mitad del Mundo; the middle of the world. It was only $0.40 to catch the bus there and we arrived on a dusty road surrounded by mountains. Even this short distance from Quito there were more flowers and other species of interest growing in the gardens of the Intiñan museum at latitude 00°,00',00''. Inside the grounds of the outdoor museum was the line dividing north and south and as well as demonstrating the flow of water on, and to both north and south of the line, the staff showed how the magnetic pull affected personal strength and resistance. It was proper tourist stuff, but it would have been ludicrous to have come this far and not visited, and it was another cloudless sunny day.

Upon returning back to Quito Monica first showed me around the markets as I wanted to buy an Ecuadorian hat. There was everything from handmade alpaca sweaters and rugs to earrings and ponchos and many stalls selling the hats for $12-15. Later that afternoon I returned and bartered a hat down to $8. After looking round the markets Monica and I went to a cocina to get some lunch. For $1.50 each we had a set almuerzo, consisting of a delicious verde soup with yucca and fresh tuna. The main base of the soup was made with muddled green plantains, hence the name verde. The main course was a ceviche de camarones which was served with rice and popcorn, and included was also a glass of fresh tree tomato juice. This juice is commonly included in set menus and comes from the sweet tree tomatoes, which contain antioxidants and more vitamin C than oranges.

For my last night in Quito we went to a casino situated downstairs in the hotel. Duncan and I had each decided to spend only $5 each, but to just have fun. When we arrived initially we were refused entry until we'd gone back to the apartment to get our passports. Upon re-entering we were sad to see we couldn't play the tables at all since the minimum bet was $10, but César said that he only played the 'one-arm-bandits' and always came away with good money. We were disappointed to see that a law had recently passed banning casinos from serving alcohol, so we had a soft drink and let the battle commence. Reminiscent of my time and my Dad's money wasted when I was a youth on Brighton pier, my $5 lasted me very little time at all and with few significant wins, but it was still fun. Duncan doubled his money, but decided to pocket it rather than up the pace and gamble on the big tables and César called it quits when he'd made $50, so a bit chirpier we all returned to the house and went to bed; César awaiting the arrival of a visitor coming from Spain. I made sure most of my packing was done so I could just get up and go to the airport in the morning; ready to spend 6 weeks on San Cristóbal island...

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In Wings Unflown  

Sunday, June 6, 2010

You forget
to remember
the quickening,
stiffening,
sickening
palpitations
and respirations
as you inhale
a memory.
Your cheeks burn
in anticipation
of the bobbing
head of the
coo cooing
at the pavement;
the margins between
you
and those before you
growing ever thin.
Thoughtful sidestep
avoiding the collide
of wing and face.
Her hair is moving
poetry. Like love
it won't be still.
It can't be tamed
and will never
behave.
It'll spit out on the tongues
of waves
and lift up into the
chorales of winds.
Unfettered
and alive.

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Thoughts of words and snows  

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Words are like snow. Duplicitous. Empty and uncarved, so, paradoxically full of possibility. Arbitrary and laden with meaning. He sees me as nothing more than a scrambled dictionary. An assemblage of words; lacking coherence, not harnessing verbs. I'd think about arranging myself linearly or in an alphabetical order if I thought i'd make more sense. But maybe I just am who I am. A woman made from words. They've become my identity, my ice barrier, even my shibboleth.

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My Body: A Love Story  

Thursday, May 27, 2010

I wrote love on my arms
to honour my feelings.
There were nights
I awoke
to traces on
my pillow
and creases on my
cheek that
mimic the
clefts tearing
the ocean bed.
Love spiralled through
the choir's song
echoing the
patterns dawn's rosy
fingers traced
creeping across the sky.
And scratching at my voice box
as it raked over my skin.

I felt love in my bones
on quiet days when I looked
at the river.
You could pick over
them like a carcass;
each one you
felt holding a story.
The clavicle he bit;
searing a bruise I'd not forget.
The clouds of weed smoke
danced tendrils in my olfactory hallucinations
and still conjure his broken eyes.

I slew love into my skin
The scratch of razor blades
atop the ulna
spoke of the one
who taught me the most
and cut me deepest.
He smelled of his mother's laundry
and grapefruit;
his fingers
tapped out rhythms as
he practised music
and shaped my future.

I gouged love in my eyes
trying to veil away my pain.
The scars of dirty needles
and a youth so misspent I can't even play pool.
The cigarettes he ground into my cheekbone
just below my eye socket.
His vitriolic words burnt a small hole in my heart
and left behind the scent of ash and blackened spoons.
He gave me stolen gold and blood stained sheets
but taught me forgiveness.

I smuggled love into prison.
Tasted salty blood in the back of my throat
with broken incisors and
cracked ribs. When I smell washing up liquid
and talcum powder it's him I see.
Scrubbing my skin red raw
and trying to turn his white.

I never wanted that trade.

I toured love around Europe.
We slept on railway platforms
and bathed in heavy rain.
I shattered my calcaneus
and he carried me;
never complaining
about his metallic navicular.
He learnt to dance with fire and
smelled of petrol and sawdust.
Our shattered ankles echoed
our fragile hearts and he taught me loss.

I etched love in the sand;
our angry walks on windy
days when the sea spelt out words
and in pathetic fallacy; raged against the rocks.
She has an infectious smile
and every word she says
is crafted like poetry
in the gentlest voice.

I tore love away from my soul.
He massaged my sore jaw bone
and watched me cry in pain
whilst he masked his under our blanket of lies.
My heart still fissured from
his emancipation
I tried to learn
life
and adulthood
and bled from my womb
whilst I wept into his tears
of Elska not being our baby,
but the cells of cracked hedonism
and delusion. I broke his heart
and he still fixed my broken body.
I saw a bright horizon,
I saw a northern sky
in the darkest depth of winter
in a country laden with larva and ice.
I missed the shattered tibula
and massaging his skull.
He filled me up with chorales
and facts about the universe.
I hoped that he'd forgive me
and I hoped he'd want to
try. But his love
meant more to me than
summertime
and I knew that for all the bones I've injured
I'd break a thousand more
to save his heart.
His face is etched in concrete
in chalky crumbling shores
in every time I pass the rhyme
of tides. In the whistle of the wind.
In every worn pebble of Serpentine
the scent of gorse on the cliff,
The chasing of dragonflies,
and all the words I write.

I stole love from myself
in the hope that he'd find his.

I committed my love to the sea
when the water was my shibboleth.
I chose to hide behind words
and he knew which ones would bruise me.
Sometimes on quiet days
by the river
I smell the woodsmoke
and diesel
and find those words in the mud.
Resting in the suture
where Integrity used to be.

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Parts of the Heart  

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I wanted to crawl into your aorta
seek refuge there; sipping on vena cava
whilst gripping my pulmonary vein
which traverses time and distance.

Atrium lilies grow at the side of
ventricle lake.
I once made some out of paper napkins
blotting them with my words
and mopping up your bleeding
head when you fell off the wall.

My bicuspid valve was tied in strings
like the ones I bought for your guitar
when they were the only ones attached
to our relationship.

Now, in my upper chamber
your image is a beat
of butterflies wings
underneath my ribcage.

Our arteries play archery
and I'm close to cardiac arrest.

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'Ear is you...  

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Surfing along your auditory canal I can
bring you notes. Though mine
will always be
more Proust than Strauss.

I hover around your vestibule;
an irritating buzz of feedback
like that old punk club in London.

My heart's beating like a hammer
dipping my quill into your incus,
I then stirrup or stir up with
the mellifluous sounds of metronome
echoing through your cochlea.
Your robust fingers picking out chords
and aurally feeding my oratory.


You create a humming inside my auricle;
it growls into my being and holds me still;
a forced silence.


You are sibilance and music;
a smouldering underground jazz club
somewhere sexy like Paris.


I am the poet's corner of a café
too many awkward chinking
coffee spoons clanking
choking on ejectives.

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Summoned  

Monday, May 24, 2010

The sun may have woken me first,
but I'd had a night of fitful gasping.
Operosely orectic I'd been persuing 'O's
and wrestling with wonderous workable 'W's.
So it seemed the dictionary had called me to wake.
I was teetering on the edge of the book;
poised and ready for exploration.
All I had to do was jump
and I could find myself
cleansed under words and their powers.
Sibilant sounds of swishing as I search
the pages for suppletives and suffixes;
their fricatives tiny hooks tugging
on my hair like a little boy in the
playground.
My rubiginous freckles resting on the riparian
banks of 'R's and all their purring glory.
Transpicuous water tumbling over my inept toes
I rise to the surface only to see
that it's cold up there and I bit my
tongue in the arc of conversation.
I dive back in. Rippling through ribbons
of rudimentary 'roonerspisms', which always make
me giggle and deliver a blushing crow.
As I turn fathoms to leagues
my stories are collected;
drawing into me other worlds with their
metonymy and morphology
and showing up through my skin like veins.
Each carrying a tale.

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Word-a-flies  

Saturday, May 22, 2010


This project was a poetry installation I created in my home town. Its message was to illustrate the existence of poetry as an ever evolving entity. To demonstrate the fluidity of language and its ultimate ubiquity.

I took words from a selection of poems and wrote them on the wings of wind-up butterflies, which were then placed onto the leaves of a Budlea bush in an open space in Falmouth; my home town.

The idea of the butterflies being an installation was that as time went on people, the wind, weather and possibly the birds and other wildlife would begin to take their place as poets: rearranging, removing and reshuffling my words. The further the words managed to be spread the more successful the project since its nature was to demonstrate the evolution of poetry and language.

Below are two word-a-flies poems that could have been created at first. I liked that this would change as time went on.

Word-a-flies #1


Umlaut
misplaced
echo
chasm
rhyme
Zugunruhe
distilled
rifts
cleft
fathoms
carve
unscathed
silence
violence
magnitude
mimic
instability
with
oscillation
orange
fantastic
universal
binary
rippling
precipitation
muscles
reluctantly
responding
bitter
reply
lure
opens
suture
scattered
leaves
circling
bound
shibboleth
ribbons






claimed
osmotic
chaos
allelomimesis
metronome
incision
under
over
through
capsules
energy
wings
duck
monarch
bee
chance
play
aphasia
synaesthete
linctus
scribble
hieroglyphics
sand
hurling
cries
velvet
moon
compass
orientation
east
integrity
aching
solitude
feathers
pirouette
gibbous
necrophilia
sentinel
listless
specious





capacious
unrecognisable
swollen
truth
tumult
electrify
me
you
it
freckle
quietly
ejects
utterances
past
undulations
collecting
tendrils
dancing
as
checking
altitudes
indicated
sibilance
asunder
parodies
sky
flavour
framing
spirals
fragility
hidden
particles
sunfire
matter
landslide
whisper
rattles
permeating
gravity
bones
laden

Word-a-flies #2

violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly distilled rifts cleft fathoms carve unscathed silence unrecognisable swollen truth tumult electrify me you it freckle quietly ejects utterances past undulations collecting tendrils dancing as checking altitudes indicated sibilance asunder parodies sky flavour framing spirals fragility hidden particles sunfire matter landslide whisper rattles permeating gravity bones laden leaves circling bound shibboleth ribbons claimed osmotic chaos allelomimesis metronome incision Umlaut misplaced echo chasm rhyme Zugunruhe moon compass orientation east integrity aching solitude feathers pirouette violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly distilled rifts cleft fathoms carve unscathed silence responding bitter violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly reply lure opens suture scattered leaves circling bound shibboleth ribbons claimed osmotic chaos allelomimesis metronome incision moon compass orientation east integrity aching solitude feathers pirouette gibbous necrophilia sentinel listless specious capacious Umlaut misplaced echo chasm rhyme Zugunruhe distilled rifts cleft fathoms carve unscathed silence violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly responding bitter reply lure opens suture scattered responding bitter reply lure opens suture scattered through capsules energy wings duck monarch bee chance play aphasia synaesthete linctus scribble hieroglyphics sand hurling cries velvet gibbous necrophilia sentinel listless specious capacious unrecognisable swollen truth tumult electrify me you it freckle quietly ejects utterances past undulations collecting tendrils dancing as checking altitudes indicated sibilance asunder parodies sky flavour framing spirals fragility hidden particles sunfire matter landslide whisper rattles permeating gravity Umlaut misplaced echo chasm rhyme Zugunruhe violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly leaves circling bound shibboleth ribbons claimed osmotic chaos allelomimesis metronome incision through capsules energy wings duck monarch bee chance play aphasia synaesthete linctus scribble hieroglyphics sand hurling cries velvet moon compass orientation east integrity aching solitude feathers pirouette.

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Circles - For Khalid Jarrar  

Tuesday, May 4, 2010


he told me how you get pairs
of stars
who are forever in orbit
how circles make up the
base
of any relation[ship].
he likes how secrets are
like melons
whose insides can be sweet
and pink
and juicy
or dried stringy
white
and the many more circles you collect
the less pressure
each one has.
And when he pulled me closer
he made my circles unravel
creating fragile spirals
half a world away.

I have been talking to a good friend who helps me understand things in a different and more innocent way sometimes. This one's for you :)

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Ssons and Dóttirs  

Thursday, April 15, 2010

I have this disease that mimics love. I can recognise it in you. Synchronicity, I reflect, is what's landed me in this situation; every situation that counts towards my being here. Here? Well I've certainly been in worse places. Holding my passport, tickets, mobile and a second hand copy of Diski's Skating to Antarctica, I shuffle my bag forward with my feet and secure my place one mini step ahead in the queue for flight FL105 to Reykjavík. Like Diski I am seeking some sort of refuge in ice; clinical whiteness, isolation, clarity.

All day I've followed the trajectory of my 'luxury express' coach as it's wended its way along from Falmouth to Heathrow. Interesting use of the word 'Express'. Nine hours reminds me more of the chicken buses I travelled Guatemala in. The journey has provided time for reflection. First the familiar country roads of Cornwall littered with their plethora of memories and events from my twenty-nine years of living and sometimes just existing there. From Falmouth to Penryn we followed the river upstream passing the decaying form of Integrity the sunken Brixham trawler as she wallows in river mud. Something I did more than my fair share of when living aboard The Black Pig. Fingers up to the system – gathering water, collecting wood, shitting in a bucket – hardly the romantic dream, but a time in which I met many of the interesting characters I now call friends. I contemplated the sinking of my own integrity, silently wondering if it can ever be dragged up from the mud?

'While you are away/ my heart comes undone/ slowly unravels/ in a ball of yarn' sang Björk, which brings me round to remembering my mother's disappointed email from Portugal; 'Why Iceland?'. Well Björk is of course only a contributing factor, but why not Iceland? Northern lights, glaciers, geothermal spas and eternal night; sounds like exactly what I need right now. I have some preconceptions of this country largely gathered from my listening to Icelandic music; Sigur Rós, GusGus, FM Belfast, Emiliana Torrini, múm, Seabear and of course Björk make regular appearances on my playlist. I have arrived at the conclusion, through listening to them and having looked at other text, that the country moves at a slow pace; the landscape is dramatic, slow, empty, stark and dark, but with twinkles of light. Rather fitting for what I hope to experience.

The bus shuddered me awake upon reaching the Truro depot. I recalled my college years in the mid-nineties when we'd spend hours wandering about this city stoned. I was probably listening to Björk then. We gathered, among others here, a beautiful voluptuous woman who carries echoes of Nys in Miller's Quiet Days in Clichy. At St. Austell I watched the winter sun low in the sky and shrouded in cloud like the sun that stays late in the night in the Northern summer. Rows of pines point upwards framing the village of St. Blazey. Here I recall the Czech border and the endless security checks myself and my be-dreadlocked boyfriend had when inter railing from Amsterdam in 2001. My first proper failed love affair; we were good at playing house, but too young to negotiate our differences. I wondered what Chris would be doing right now? Still living the dream in New Zealand?

As the bus neared Heathrow I recognised the suburbia I lived in for six years before my parents split up and my mother moved us to Cornwall. The sprawling cityscape with its scattered reservoirs reminded me of trips back and forth to visit various relatives. Gasometers always make me chuckle as I recall my Dad telling me it was one of the first words I said as a child. First sentence; 'Daddy... Those sheep! They're moving'. Proclaimed on the way to Cornwall. I'd seemingly only seen pictures of still sheep prior to this revelation. During my acid years I'd developed this obsession with sheep moving when I came to the realisation that 'if we act like them, they'll think we're one of them' at a party on Exmoor. I've no idea how long Mel and I were crawling along on our hands and knees making sheep noises but have always wondered if a young child in the hot-air-balloon that passed overhead may have said 'Daddy... Those sheep look like people' or similar.

The Icelandair plane is spacious, efficient and boasts extensive in-flight entertainment as well as some Christmas goodies left for us by Stekkjastaur the first of the jólasveinarnir, or Icelandic Yuletide men. Icelandic folklore would have it that the children are not just visited by one jolly fat man at Christmas, but thirteen mischievous imps from the hills. Like the seven dwarfs, each has a name that discloses something about them, though rather than simply a personality trait, their names indicate their particular modus operandi. Stekkjastaur translates as sheepskin wearer, and he is the imp who harasses sheep trying to steal their coats. Each of the jólasveinarnir leave small gifts on the first night they visit if the children have been good. Otherwise they can expect potatoes left in their shoes! I am impressed with my hot chocolate and cinammon cookies and decide that I think I am going to like these yule lads.

I settle back, selecting Juno from the list of movies to watch. Excellent soundtrack and acid-tongued dialogue. I've seen it before; a quirky film about a teenager who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. I rub my stomach protectively and contemplate. The headrest displays advice on speaking Icelandic correctly. I usefully have 'elska is the verb 'to love' when addressing people, thus 'I love you' is Ég elska þú rather than Ég ást þú as is commonly thought.' Elska means to love. It's a pretty sounding name.

It is after midnight when we arrive at Keflavík airport amid some drizzle and nothing exciting to report in the sky. I'd had secret hopes to fly through a light show if the Aurora Borealis was playing ball. Sadly this is not to be. Nor is the land a blanket of white as I had hoped and actually I'm feeling a bit suffocated in my long coat, hat, scarf and gloves with sheepskin boots toasting my legs. I board the 'flybus' which is conveniently waiting for my flight and am slightly concerned to be moving at Iceberg pace throughout the “forty-minute” journey to my hotel. Something like two hours later I am deposited into the night with what could have been any city to my right. The ever present umlaut my only clue that we are perhaps not in Kansas anymore, in this darkness it is hard to make anything else out; except for the fact that the Icelanders love Christmas lights. Disappointed that I cannot see my reflection in the snow covered hills, but with Stevie's voice ringing in my head, 'well I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I've built my life around you...', I swing my rucksack onto my back and breathe in the cold sea air before checking-in to Hótel Cabin at Borgartúni.

I am given the key to room 520 – on the fifth floor – and take the lift to my sanctuary. The flight to Iceland only takes 3 hours, but what with the added journey from Cornwall and waiting around; I get to bed some 20 hours after getting up the previous morning. My twin room offers me two beds in which to sleep. One quickly becomes my wardrobe before I slide between the crisp white sheets of the other one and give a thought to Diski and her yearning for clinical purity. At last Iceland has delivered. I am surprised to find that despite it being mid-December I can sleep with the window open.

Around ten the next morning I am jerked awake by a low metallic grinding that wouldn't be out of place in a The Knife track. The Swedish dark electro duo are what started my obsession with Scandanavia and its rich music scene and so it seems rather apt that I should think of them on my first day in Reykjavík. 'I was looking for you/ When I'm glad I found me/ A special kind of personality'. I'm luckily in time for my free buffet breakfast and head downstairs to help myself to toast, coffee and cereal. Skyr is a kind of Icelandic natural yoghurt, which I add in mountainous peaks to my cereal and study some tourist information booklets I swiped from the reception desk.

At around 10.30 dawn is breaking as I walk along the bay towards the city. It is only as I am crossing the busy road from the hotel that I notice the large mountains in the background and see what a wonderful view I must have from room 520. There's snow in them there hills too and an icy wind blowing across the bay. It stings me into addressing this reality and my hands flutter across my tummy again as I pause to take a macro shot of the igneous rock with its tiny worlds inside it. Winter is everywhere on the twisted branches that grab at the sky, intercrossing each other with the same complexity as the bus map I tried to understand.

Nabokov says 'You can get nearer and nearer to reality; but you can never get near enough, because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable.' 1 For this reason I try to avoid making plans when I travel, preferring to be carried where I'm carried and avoiding disappointment by searching for someone else's reality. That said I do want to visit the Blue Lagoon – one of Iceland's Geothermal Spas – and to go on a Northern Lights hunt, which I manage to book through Iceland Excursions; a sister company of the 'flybus' operators. I am travelling with a very limited budget and each of these trips costs 5-6000 kroner (about £25-30), which means I have very little left for anything else. So I spend this day getting a feel for Reykjavík; and taking quirky photos of trees and colourful houses. At 2pm I realise I am shivering almost permenantly when I walk and decide to stop for coffee in a bakery. I pay around £8 for a biscuit and a coffee and find myself marvelling at how people ever came to visit here before their economy crashed. “More coffee? Always more coffee.” Drawls the counter assistant gesturing towards the machine. I am relieved to discover I have paid for endless refills and stay a little longer allowing the warmth return to my bones.

The sun is sinking again as I get to Hallgrímskirkja, a modern church that resembles an organ to me, with its stepped sides reaching up to a pinnacle. It was designed by the architect Guðjón Samúelsson, who was inspired by the basalt columns of Iceland's geology. It provides many good photo opportunities inside and out – at 75m high it stands proudly over the city – and is the perfect place to watch the day wither into night at only 4pm. I begin my lonely walk back to Borgartúni; Reykjavík's centre of commerce. It is now dubbed Reykjavík's own Wall Street, which I hardly find surprising when I pass another busted neon sign and vacant office blocks surrounded by empty parking lots. There is a feel of desolation and starkness, even here in the city, which resonates with my mood.

Returning to room 520 I want to feel warm and this time get into the other bed. If I have to pay extra as a single occupant then I might as well get as much use out of the room as I can, right? I take the duvet from the unmade bed I slept in the previous night and snuggle up to watch some American cartoons. I have not had a TV in over five years and have come to associate it with hotel rooms. I am transported back to the town of Tenosique on the Mexico/Guatemala border where after a narrow escape from Cockroach Hotel I watched films on cable for the first time in the luxury of my air-conditioned room. The two scenes couldn't have been more different, and yet it strikes me how they inform one another. If landscape itself is text, then this is a form of intertextuality.

It's an early start the next morning in order to get to the Blue Lagoon. I want to see the sun rise over the volcanic landscape. I am the only passenger on the bus, although there are plenty of other vehicles on the road. Leaving Borgartúni and central Reykjavík we pass busy office blocks with glass fronts, calling to mind a Gursky exhibition I saw at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm last year. Floors upon floors of people, each in their neat little box. The bottom floor with its gym; each individual running their own gauntlet. When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see. 2 As we crawl across the lava fields dawn's not so much creeping in fresh and rosy fingered as rather seeping cooly round the edges; like the time my tent was flooded at Glastonbury. Mist rises across the lunar landscape, silhouettes emerge from the rocks and I congratulate myself on a good decision to get up early and experience this with a degree of solitude. The sight of warm steam hitting frost, revealing small islands from the milky waters, the crunch of frosty moss-covered lava underfoot and the vicissitudes in the colour of the sky combine to make this a magical morning and I've not yet got into the pool.

The water is a wonderful temperature and l feel privileged and relaxed to be one of the very few people at the spa so early. My belly feels weightless, and the water nourishing as I push my mental battle under the rug again and try to enjoy this treat. There are crates of silica mud positioned around the pool, so I treat my skin to a couple of full applications of this, and feel glowing for some time afterwards. Iceland has the biggest Geothermal system in the world and the water heats many homes as well as protecting the two main shopping streets in Reykjavík from ice. Protect their consumerism, keep people spending money; that's the Icelandic Government, I cynically think. After a couple of hours of luxuriating in the pool, sauna and steam room I get out and get dressed with the intention of walking down to nearby Grindavík to explore. It is absolutely freezing outside and the surrounding area is so beautiful now that the sun has properly come up and illuminated the land, I instead spend some time photographing the lava fields with their teletubby land hills and taking macro shots of ice crystals.

I am tired when I return to room 520 and crawl back into the alternate bed, with extra duvet again to watch more mindnumbing television. I pick up a few words of Icelandic by reading the translation, also noting that in Icelandic surnames are passed from the father to their child, including son or dóttir. Sóley Stefánsdóttir is Sóley, Stefán's daughter, Kjartan Bragi Bjarnason is Kjartan Bragi, Bjarn's son. Elskan means loved one or darling. Will I have enough love to be the only parent to this bunch of cells created under the wrong circumstances? I can't help but laugh at the irony in the fact that the man I love is named Edmondson, but this unborn child cruelly is not his son. Or dóttir.

That night I am booked for my Northern Lights tour. It largely depends on weather conditions and the tour won't operate unless the company feel there is a fair chance of seeing some activity. I wear all the clothes I have brought in my little rucksack and take a seat next to the window. I am later joined by a friendly Polish Jew en route from Boston to Germany for Christmas. She reminds me of Anja, Spiegelman's mother in Maus with her mild unassuming manner and delicate mousey features. We arrive into a forest in the middle of Iceland lined with firs. Icelanders seem to find their trees the source of much amusement. I'd read somewhere that the Christmas Tree outside the Town Hall was donated by Norway because the Icelandic ones were too small, and tonight 'Hussy' our tour guide cracked the joke 'If you ever find yourself lost in an Icelandic forest, just stand up and you'll be able to find your way out.' It was 11.30, it was very dark and the temperature was at least -5ºC and Hussy was urging us to be excited about the constellations. Don't get me wrong, Orion was looking stronger than ever and I could make out my little pisces kite above us, but I haven't paid £30 to freeze my ass off in a forest just to look at the stars. I grumble and sit back in the bus lamenting the GusGus and FM Belfast gig I turned down in favour of this tour.

The bus pulls into a different location for people to use the bathroom. I'm catatonic with cold and staring blankly ahead as a young couple shush their crying child by taking turns to walk the floor of the bus. Everyone is subdued with the disappointment of not having seen the Aurora Borealis and hostile eyes curse the parents. We are getting ready for the journey back into Reykjavík when an Australian voice pipes up “Is that it?”. How rude, the English are thinking. Hussy is not to blame if we can't see the lights, it's hardly as if the government can put a tax on them! “Over there... I mean is that it?” She points across to a green cloud. Everybody starts shouting to open the doors and turn off the lights and Hussy begins to get extremely excited. We all pile off the bus, and in our new, even more exposed, location shiver as we watch the sky do the same. The green cloud moves in ripples and undulates around the glittering stars; so crisp and beautiful in the night sky.

I was searching for answers in snow, in ice in solitude, but that night my decision came to me from those stars and I travelled back to England two days later with a heavy heart preparing to face the hardest decision of my life; alone. He takes his time like a Northern winter night. The darkest hour happens before it dawns. His eyes hold constellations, his heart a kaleidescope. Broken particles alone won't make pretty patterns.

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Blowhole  

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Sibilant sea coughed our stories into the chasm.
Its echoes carved out a new path.
Fissures expose the truth about us;
we are archipelago
in need of an isthmus.

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extract from (untitled) Long Poem  

Thursday, March 25, 2010

His floating workshop; a place he remembers
times past.
The wind up bird
her mechanical wings
laden with words. She'll knock you
for six
she'll blow you away.
Quietly squeal queer bird,
her mechanical wings
clipped
and words pirouette
like feathers
or hard rain.
Chained to a tether she only
makes whirring circles
and bounces like
the sound
of a moth inside
a lampshade.
His bird was flown some
time ago.
Left behind no
scattered seeds.

Hiding in shaded gardens where
she tends
to her rich fantasies
and in grand houses
where she hides things under carpets
and worries about dust.

Her dissembled sentences rolling too quickly from the lips,
His arms; the archipelago of oil floating on skin.
Her fingers tacking side to side across his back;
His shoulders tensing, rippling under her touches.
Her consonants crashing against vowels, fricatives spraying
His face with its crags and boulders.

“I can't have children.”

Rowing out to an island,
clinging to a rock.
Words bend truth like
waves bend wood
splinters
into a thousand pieces
each with a story to tell.
A ghost ship,
a kraken.
a thunderstorm,
a night of a thousand fish.
The night she slipped away from him
and his lonely hours by the radio

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extract from (untitled) Long Poem  

Monday, March 22, 2010

Woke up; found my love gone.
Left in its place words
falling from the seams.
Many's the night I've walked this
land. I was trying to remember.
It felt like my mind
was being cast
out
to sea. Tiny
bits of brain nibbled
by phosphorescence. Are they
illuminating
the darkness or
is it
permeating
them?
Like the sunken
shell of integrity I
sit and wait.
I rise
with the tide.
This means I have to fall.
There were stains on the carpet where
He'd dropped his consonants.
All achin', shakin' and breakin'.
His hollow cheeks gulping down
apologies. Tired lies
and vinegar flies
carve mermaids on his eyes,
which look to the sky.
He said he knew science;
told me
'how you get pairs
of stars that pull
into orbit
forever unable to touch
or part
' *
like how grains of sand
won't just dissolve into water.
Some words I collect
I have stars in my heart.

This is some of the work I am considering putting to music when I do my performance piece. I'm hoping to collaborate with Kath A Bit OF Cello Williams.
* From 'Years Later' by Lavinia Greenlaw

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Me, Universe and You...  

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Wind writes in foam on sea
halliards crew
unscathed leagues under ocean.

Lichen likes rocks
who care to remember a name carved in fathoms
when love is a vapour.
Pebbles are worn to reveal your image
and the rhyme of tides
echo across the archipelago of galaxies.

Galaxies are everything from nothing
bursting from seeds of matter.
Raging energy
brings it all to existence.
Gravity's relentless lure
opening a vortex,
stealing light,
hiding energy,
stowing orbits.

In the ebb and flow
the binary of light
and dark
you are like the universe;

you are made from me
and I am made from you.

This poem was used as a basis for a more complicated project I wanted to produce. Below is a link to my video, which takes my reading of the poem, and uses sounds made within it to make an ambient soundscape. Behind this lies the message that words are everywhere to be found, and poetry can be pushed in many directions other than reading it straight from the page...

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