Poetic Inspiration Project

This week I have been putting together the contents for an envelope to send to another poet as part of a poetic inspiration project. The project was inspired by the idea of mail art. Basically you put together a bunch of pictures, found objects, words, postcards etc and mail it to someone, then you receive an envelope from someone else on the list. It's a circle of giving. As part of mine I decided to make a collage. Because I don't seem to have enough creative time at the moment I have been mostly focusing on writing and editing poetry and reviews and I had forgotten how much I love making collage. When I practised art more collage and photography were my forms of choice.  The picture above is a not very good photograph of the collage that I made for my envelope. I am looking forward to the day when I receive an envelope through the post - I am hoping that it will inspire some poems.

Thoughts on visual ideas

I am finding it difficult to know where to go next with my visual project. I am drawn to the idea of fragments and fragmented texts - but I am also interested in the poetical nature of everyday language. Last week I found the page of an old recipe book on the street and was immediately struck by the poetic nature of some of the writing. I like the idea of somehow marrying fragments with the poetic elements of everyday text - for example recipes, news stories etc - but as yet I am unsur how to do this. One idea was to make some kind of collage.

I am also continuing to develop my idea of using dymo to add text to existing things. My favourite is still the one that i put on the graffiti-ed power cupboard. Not only is is the most aesthetically pleasing but I also feel it has more levels of meaning. The dymo letters are placed in response to the graffiti that someone else has placed there (probably in response to the cupboard itself). So the viewer is viewing a response to a response - taking a photograph changes the nature of the work again and makes it into something else.

Into the Dust

The placing of the lettering on the dusty ground was especially effective - it made it look like it had been there for some time. I still prefer photographs where you see a fragment of the text rather than the entire thing. I like the mystery of it and am beginning to feel that the content of the text is actually not that important. The text exixts as a gesture of communication and it can add to our understanding of what we are seeing. In trying to work out what the text is saying the viewer is interacting with the work and they may add their own words as they try and work out what the text might be have been missed off of the edges of the photograph.

Art as Poetry

For some reason, this evening I found myself thinking about the work of Robert Rauschenberg - not the collages of iconic images of the twentieth century which he is most famous for, but his other works - paintings with objects incorporated into them.

I like the idea of juxtaposing surreal or abstract imagery with concrete everyday images (or objects) . This is something that I try to do with words in my poetry - making the mundane surprising (for example licking a photograph). Through a process of defamiliarization we are forced to see things in a new way. Shelley describes this process as making "familiar objects be as if they were not familiar’ by stripping ‘the veil of familiarity from the world" Viktor Shklovsky called this ostranenie (making strange).

Rauschenberg does this by juxtaposing abstarct painting with everyday objects like clocks and electric fans. He creates a kind of visual poetry - although mostly without words. Arman too creates a kind of poetry with his art owrks although in a slightly different way to Raushenberg. In his works the objects are the main focus - in effect they become the art. My particular favourite is a collage made of old typewriters pinned to red painted board.