Dark River 016

George, a pale plastic hero

"Give me the helicopter!"
Heat or humans, sixty-eight people outlined

We missed one

Glasses watched the travellers
Every person kind, impossible to hide

dark river 013

Snowflakes
Storm children,
their mouths ice crystals

Alice
and a blue nylon parka

Thirteen long boys
taste the snowflakes

dark river 015

Further experiments in erasure art/poetry:

Night Vision

The lower heat, the two combined
Nathan had been watched,
no sugar white vision
Short, gray, something severe

Guards lowered their eyes

He was inside one person
Outside the trees, making a human being















This is the first page of a  collaboration with Sandra Davies. We both have a copy of the same book (The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks) and are working through the pages, seeing what we make of each...
Here is Sandra's page 015; and you can see the images side by side at darkrivererasure.blogspot.co.uk
With lots of nods to Tom Philips, and inspired by a discussion of work by Adam Byatt at A Fullness in Brevity

erasure experiments continued

I've continued experimenting with the zentangle / erasure poetry project, beyond just creating the "output image". Because I like to "see the journey", I hit on the idea of a triptych, showing the original page, the found poem, and the found poem output image. So you get three shots at the same words, in different arrangements. And on paper, I can start to add further lines and words (to really make this feel like a Tom Phillips rip-off!).

Well, it feels like a long project, and I am enjoying myself, anyway :)

erasure experiment 005

Islands
Eyenhallow, uninhabited island
Summer afternoon, carpeted with a congregation of selkie

Hoy, sound of singing,
plangent musical

Stromness mornings, water town, 

pleasant rooftop sitting with paper, pen, 

working magic

Scapa Flow, childhood
An hour reading early lives

erasure experiment 004

I've found a simple way to blot out the unwanted words, but worry that things might end up looking a bit same-y if I use that method all the time, so will definitely keep experimenting with other ideas as they occur to me...

Wide awake

Afternoon disaster,
writing monosyllabic, tapering hands

Stromness afternoon
witty, vivacious, he showed us a Queen of our attention
Enthralled islands, different world unreal in that morning

Sentences that pleased come back,
walk and belong here in Orkney

On Papa Westray
overlooking the sea,
the seventy islanders dance

erasure experiment 003

Experimenting with different ways to make the chosen words stand out, here overwriting the unwanted words with "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It's a way of adding something rather than subtracting something. Would maybe work better if a) more relevant words were chosen, and b) the words were added by hand. Started me thinking about printing out the pages and adding more to them...



Portrait

A part after years
a poet in an age roots, drawing boundaries
Travel, time, islands and generations
Travel and depth,
the road stands by a gallows
“Martyrs,” she explained, as real as the past
Let me travel north to the islands
bright spilling over with light

erasure experiment 002

This, this is better, I am more satisfied with this image. The shapes of the words and the picture and texture feel more meant; and the words also seemed to flow better. Including a potential title for the whole work (if I go that far)

Geocrown

Lovers splurged sea salt
A poet passionately present
Aware of his name, I overheard the perfect death
Agreed to be exactly right, a dignified moment

Newly awakened, and deepened
Himself born to Orkney

erasure experiment - 001

My first draft of "erasure art" - inspired by Adam Byatt's post here; and further musings on Tom Phillips "A Humument"

Far from finished, all I have done for this piece is take a page from Maggie Fergussons "George Mackay Brown; The Life" and one of my own pictures of Hoy Sound from outside of Stromness, and erased. So simple, but I feel I haven't added anything so at the moment it's remaining as an experiment.

Face

Beguiling once young, he met the present
Doors led to roses the size of an archive
Spines like ghosts
Past poetry dazzled