Eye 2 i

I have been participating in 'Eye 2 i', a collaboration between Rugby Writers and Rugby Art Group, and the results are to be exhibited in Rugby Art Gallery and Museum from 14th January to 17th March 2012.

Each artist exchanged a piece of visual art with a writer's work, be that poem, prose, script or other writing. Each artist or writer gave a response to the others' work.

I was partnered with writer Debs de Vries, who has given her kind permission for her work to be reproduced here. You can see pictures of my work at the bottom of this page.

Artist to Writer

I chose a piece I call Hedgerow to send to Debs, and Flotsam was her response.

        FLOTSAM
        
        Three days.
        Three days before the 
        gritty mist dissolved and revealed
        the savaged shore.
        
        The ocean lay mute. No sign 
        that she had carelessly consumed 
        the beach
        In a swell of passionate greed.
        
        No matter a billion years had built it.
        No matter. 
        It was gone.
        
        Their pods lay 
        tangled in chaotic skeins of fibrous tube.
        Life lines.
        Severed. No longer pumping vital
        fluids.
        Flapping like wet washing in the soapy shallows.
        
        Now and then a pod
        the size of a horse's head
        grounds on the ragged shore,
        Bruised and broken.
        Open like a mouth's last gasp 
        Exposing the soft inner spaces.
        Empty.
        
        Keening, they walk on 
        in a rigid line, to find one,
        just one, that was emerging
        when the sea screamed.
        
        A spike of light alerts them.
        Sun runs down the delicate twist of silver.
        A spine, intact, settled in a palm of sand.
        Only a nub, a question mark, a query
        of the start of a beautiful mind.
        
        This sacrum was a triumph.
        See: eleven precisely articulated limbs
        Ready to sprout.
        Just as planned.
        A perfect design.
        Only God disagreed.
        
        Debs de Vries 
        October 2011
        

Writer to Artist

This time Debs produced the poem Sardinian Harvest from which I was to draw inspiration.

        SARDINIAN HARVEST
        
        Scarlet poppies line the orchard's edge
        Fat, cream roses sprawl the damasked hedge.
        Dry bones poke through powd'ry ashen soil.
        Picking, praying, sweating, the solemn pickers toil.
        
        Lush fruit meets flesh;
        Soft
        in the picker's gentle palm.
        Heavy
        like the breast he turned to at the dawn.
        Soft pink blush stains pale gold skin -
        He weighs it for a moment.
        Eyes closed. Remembering.
        
        She did not stir. Did not call out his name.
        But smiled a smile like flowers
        drinking rain.
        He pulled the sheet to warm her, as he stood
        brushed salty,tangled hair: bowed his heavy head.
        
        His  pail is full. His bucket overflows.
        He steady treads the path between the rows.
        And squinting in the deadly tell-tale  light
        He sees again their single, stolen, night.
        
        The poppies see and close their kohl-black eyes.
        Fold his single, perfect guilt in scarlet leaves.
        The rose drops petals at his careworn feet.
        Silent witness to the summer's heat.
        
        
        Debs de Vries
        Summer 2010
        

When I read this poem, what caught my imagination was the colours of the fruit and the flowers, especially the scarlet poppies, and the figure of the remembered lover. The fruit picker seems to be remembering her with a hint of trepidation, but not regret, will he see her again?

I aimed to bring these ideas together in the figure of the woman, dark, partly hidden,and divided to express her vulnerability. She is tangible yet elusive, and contains within her the colours of the fruit and flowers: Papaule Rojo.