This autumn I was hugely privileged to be given a sponsored place on Pascale Petit’s Poetry from Art course at Tate Modern, courtesy of the wonderful London literature organisation Spread the Word. Over the past six weeks I’ve been part of a dedicated group of writers exploring poetry in relation to installations and artworks in the Tate Modern galleries, from Baldessari’s strange, pulsating Braincloud to Tracey Emin’s retrospectives in the current Pop Life exhibition. I’ve been writing poems in response to art for some time now, playing around with ‘ekphrasis’. As someone who’s done quite a lot of personal writing, I find it a particularly good way to step outside of myself and venture into new and often unexpected territory. The course has been a great way to develop this practise – Pascale has challenged us to approach poetry in new ways, responding not only to the artwork, but to other art-inspired poems and to each others’ stories and thoughts, as a way to feed our writing.
Tomorrow night (Monday 23 November) I’ll be taking part in a reading to celebrate the end of the course, in the Baldessari exhibition at Tate Modern. Here’s one of the poems I’ll be sharing, as a sneak preview…
Head Space
After Baldessari’s ‘Braincloud’
My grandmother hid her brain
in a cupboard, behind stacked plates.
She brought it kitchen scraps
fed it stories, gossip, TV facts
her daughters’ phonecalls, forecasts
foreign words, whole chapters
out of novels, recipes for love wounds
or smoked mackerel, once
an erotic letter, pulsing under breath.
Her brain inhaled these gifts
as moisture swells to raincloud.
Eye pressed to hinge, I watched
as, camouflaged within white china
it grew to the size of a sky.
You can read more about the event, and book tickets HERE although word on the street says it’s sold out.
