A journey south combining a full range of childhood memories with a true celebration of a life, now lost, but just as much a part of all those stored precious nuggets of memory.
Mining my sister's memory - launch
Delighted to present my poetry pamphlet as part of the poetry contributions to the launch of Pushing out the Boat publication no 18 at Newton Dee 18th May 2025. I also had 2 of my art works on display of which one is featured in the publication. Mining my Sisters Memory explores the loss of my sister to dementia through the pain and power of earth’s natural processes.
Memory circulates like the blood stream * - but what heppens when the human equivalent of a glacial erratic or a fault line halts its movement.
*Muriel Spark
Keeping up with my sister
The disconnect between reality and memory is gaining traction as my sisters dementia progresses. This slow decline is almost like a great glacier in recession and a loss of great significance in my life.
The sound of an elliptical path
The Azores seas and wind are a constant presence along with the accompanying howling and roaring - completely mesmerising and often quite scary. A human becomes such a small part in this massive repetitive cycle. The earth's moon hauling the seas backwards and forwards day in and day out as we slowly spin around our sun.
Vasto Universo
A found poem based on an exhibition by Isabel Madureira Andrade in the Arquipélago Contemporary Arts Centre, San Miquel, the Azores - designed by João Mendes Ribeiro, Architects.
It reflects the other worldly atmosphere of this misty, mysterious island surrounded by a heaving Atlantic and still bubbling and seething with volcanic activity.
Taynish Oak Woodland, Argyll
Delighted to submit my entry for the exhibition - Create for Climate at Port William, Dumfries and Galloway run by Machar sand Cree Valley Climate Action Network. This is Taynish National Nature Reserve famous for its ancient atlantic oak woodlands and lichens.
Boundaries
Accepted for the White Cube exhibition at StAnza, Scotland's International poetry festival, March 2025 and part of the Off Page visual poetics annual celebration. This is a poem about deep time geology and crossing the divide between Hampshire and Dorset and below surface memories it reveals. The soundtrack is composed especially for this poem with Catherine Eunson on Cello and Alison Cohen on percussion.
Cycle
Inspired by the wonderful 1950's book - The Pebbles on the Beach- by Clarence Ellis and the varied coastline of Scotland where the life cycle of a pebble is on display at all times. The may be another metaphor in there as well.
Caldera Taburiente, La Palma, Canary Isles
An inversion at the summit. The cloud rolls up over the aptly named Barranco del Diablo and the shattered rim of the collapsed caldera. Blasting cold wind at 2400m - its 9C and at sea level its 26C. I’ve returned to coloured pencils - first time since world travels in 1990 - and its hard work.
Coming out from the harbor but you don't see where*
Wiscasset, Maine - October 2024
Maine's Prettiest Village, launching point
across the entangled arms of the Sheepscot
shielded by the bay from its sly ways.
Floral displays funded by Yankee nuclear
until decommissioned, the derailed
narrow gauge now only for show.
From main to side, streets
layered back into federal history
brick and white clapperboard:
the old custom house and post office,
academy and Captain George Scott House.
Rust and gold line sidewalks
pumpkins and potted marigolds
its trees are on fire with fall and rhetoric.
Across the narrow cobblestone divide
two classical houses face off in blue
and red, shouting into the vacuum:
A new way forward - We are not going back
I was indicted for you - MAGA against childless cat ladies.
The Atlantic and river mix, swell, both
conceal their intent to once again cross
channels at the swing of each tide.
*Abenaki for Wiscasset
July 13th 2024 - The day of an assassination attempt
On the western edge of Scotland on the Isle of Tiree, half a world away from US politics. Somehow feeling vulnerable from the rising tide and the extremes of contrast.
Uncontained
First of a two part poem, Uncontained - Contained, about the River Add Estuary in Argyll. It follows the journey of the River Add from source to sea and reflects on the layered cultural, physical and visual landscape it passes through revealing traces of time, people and nature. Contained follows the route of the Crinan Canal that traces the edge of the estuary on the Crinan fault line to finally connect with the sea alongside the Add.
Lyme's
It is on the increase in the UK and the protected Atlantic oak woodlands of the west coast of Argyll, Scotland is an ideal location for lichen, liverworts and now Lyme disease. A warming climate is to blame as the culprits are ticks that now are not easily killed off in warmer winter weather.
The Secret Life of a Surrealist
Woodland Edge
I could not see the wood for the trees - part of a series from a sensory art workshop in Easingwold, Yorkshire. We were explicitly told to avoid focusing on the trees. A tall order. My excuse with this one is that its really about the sun beyond the woodlands edge.
Looking for something in a past life
A dark found poem from James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses (the Latinised name of Odysseus, hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey) The stream of consciousness technique and rich prose was inspirational for a video poem.
In the Woodland
Getting past the trees to achieve a sensory woodland experience in Yorkshire in spring is tough to capture when working in black and white. Even harder when the suggestion is not to focus attention on the actual trees themselves. I have cheated with this video poem although the ink, graphite, charcoal and pastel sketches are the real deal.
In the Woodland
Feel the breeze-noise and bird-talk, she said.
Smell the twitch of foliage, feathers rustling
alert hair follicles to the march
of soil dwellers and flight acrobats.
Taste the air flow, catch
sunlight on your tongue.
Through skin-pores absorb skin-bark
and leaf mould, textures of fiddleheads.
Breathe in charcoal-squeak, silence
of ink-flow, scratch of graphite
and oil pastel resistance
interrupting paper grain.
Mediate whilst mark-making.
But please don’t draw the trees.
MIning my sister's memory
Geology is a useful metaphor for dementia – the bed rock is the oldest and longest lasting memories, gradually reducing through substrate to the surface – the newest memories are the first to disappear.
Awash at sea with my sister
The beauty of the endless motion of the sea and it sounds and one of the many moments of shared humour that makes my sisters Alzheimer's bearable. I choose to take the happy laughter we had together at this stage.