Tag: poems

Some snippets of Demeter

This show is going very slooooooooowly….I think I may be procrastinating. But I’m due to start the first of three mini-residencies next month, so I’d better get my thinking cap back on. One idea is that I won’t actually perform it in the end, I will do a very complicated and clever thing with audio recordings and make the audience do strange things in a fully-immersive participatory theatre way. Been thinking about that a lot today, and whether people would throw pots of water or paint over each other just because I asked them to. Probably not.

Anyway, for them that are interested, here is a Soundcloud playlist featuring the poems-plus-soundscapes I did on my residency at Caedmon Hall a couple of months ago. There are four tracks, but only two poems – each poem is repeated with a different soundscape mix underneath. I know which version of each I prefer, but you could always let me know your thoughts on the matter.

Small stones – so far

I said I was disenchanted with blogging, but ever capricious, I am at it again. Stones, small stones, small moments from the day – today it is a scene from the window of the train, my Hartlepool-to-Stockton commute…

6th Jan    on the flooded five-a-side pitch at Billingham / a shopping trolley, wet to the fetlocks / is a zebra at the watering hole

And for those of you who missed the ones I’ve been posting on Facebook, we’ve had:

5th Jan     blinded by frost / cars turn their sleepy windscreens to the sunrise

4th Jan     that fat grey sky just squats there in a mard / but the pink cyclamen ignores it until it goes away

3rd Jan    Daybreak, and the starlings cry like the wind whetting grass blades. Dusk, and the wind moans like a child playing at ghosts.

2nd Jan

off the lacquered sand
drifts of birds
lift away from their shadows
light as ashflakes
blacken and vanish
into the sun

1st Jan    Give over, I’m not writing poetry today!