Pound mugshot 1945 whilst under arrest for Treason in Italy An interesting session last night with Sarah Jackson again focusing on imagery which had an unexpected relevance to me and not in the direct way I might have imagined. There was a good selection of examples and the background reading was interesting if only because…
poetry
Edwin Smith – ‘Catching Light’ completed
Final draft of the commissioned poem has gone to Apples and Snakes and R.I.B.A. 6 stanzas of eight lines each stanza titled according to Edwin Smith’s cameras. 1. Kodak Box Brownie 1927 2. ICA Ideal 205 1935 3. Contax II 1936 4. Thornton Pickard Ruby 1904 5. Graflex Speed Graphic 1960 6. Ensign Autorange 1955…
Station to Station – Edwin Smith commission.
The Edwin Smith commission is turning out to be a detective story….nothing is what it seems…this photo is not Kentish Town station as represented in his catalogue..it is Walthamstow Central and it still standing. Wonder how RIBA will take the news. Shame I spent two days researching Kentish Town station and linking it to George Orwell….
Poetry: A bad day in the comfort zone?
There have been three Monday lectures on the course and two of them have been by poets and in addition a first Poetry tutorial session with Rory Waterman ( I have since requested changing to part-time so that will be last Poetry session until next year). I have had a hefty poetic boot up the arse…
Poem for poetry day – My Father’s Crashes
A poem I started in 2010 and finished yesterday… My Father’s Crashes We could tell by the engine When my father’s truck was home. The diesel engine would vibrate The windows as he reversed in. My mother would boil the kettle at 5pm Knowing he would arrive. Three times in five years he…
Edwin Smith photograph commission
35 Hallam’s Lane, Chilwell near Nottingham, 1937 A strange day. I was going to go to studio and write all day but I got knocked sideways by this request. Apple and Snakes and R.I.B.A. have commissioned me to write a poem on one or more of the photographs on show at RIBA from the Edwin…
The ‘real’ 12 line poem…Sunday Worship
I was tasked with finding a poem not longer than 12 lines and thought I had only found one in 1987! However in sorting through old first draft folders I found a ‘coda’ type poem which for some reason I had left off the sequence from 1999 collected here as ‘Skeleton at the Plough’….
The Negative Owl – Mark Strand
First lecture by Sarah Jackson and a surprise….a poem from a book I had not really paid attention to but had purchased many years ago…probably because of the cover. The image does indeed turn out to be a negative image of Bewick’s ‘White Owl’ engraving from page 89 of his ‘British Birds’ from 1809. It entirely appropriate…
A 12 line poem….The Fallen Tree 1987
A simple enough task…choose a poem you have written that not longer than 12 lines and bring to discuss in first session. Fine only I decided I would stick to rule and proceeded to search backwards through everything IÂ had written until I found something that could be a poem and under 12 lines…I searched and…
Creative Writing reading list…
Thursday was the induction day at Clifton. Rory Waterman, David Belbin, Georgina Lock and Andrew Taylor introduced themselves to the students and the course structure was laid out. I was impressed with the layout and I have quite a lot of work to do…deadlines are good as I would default to laziness if did not…