dublinka

Circle press, in London, have made their name producing beautiful and fascinating limited edition artist books. I highly recommend you take a look at their site, as quite a bit is devoted to poetry. The following is from the book delicious babies:



Author: Shuttle, Penelope
Artist: Legge, Willow

Eight blind-embossed illustrations carved from linoleum for a previously published poem. Text printed in letter-press in blue and red in 12 pt Baskerville. 85 signed copies: 16 pp 30 x 20 cm on Somerset mould-made paper, sewn as French-fold sections into thick blue card covers with a hand-made wraparound cover.
London, 1996

Artist Jenny Holzer, has been projecting Beckett poems onto London's over conceptualised city hall. This follows similar work in Berlin and Paris. Useful if you've forgotten your glasses.

The ever strange, curious, and quirky total poetry of Anna Homler, can be found at: pharmaciapoetica. The work is a live composition of poems, songs, dance, installation; where all boundaries melt, and all worlds are fluid.

From The Hands, 1988

***

I was on one of those long flights...

I was on one of those long flights from LA to New York. To pass the time, I started to read the palm of the man sitting next to me. He was a businessman from Seattle,
so I was suprised he let me do it.
When I finished with one hand, I asked to see the other.
He didn't have one.

This image is reputed by bugpowder.com to be a contender for the world's oldest comic. Etched in copper, it's called Lenardo and Blandine and it's a melodrama, in 160 soulful ('leidenschaftlich') sketches. The date? 1781. The inspiration? A poem by the poet A. Bürger.

Here's a snap from the cartoon propaganda, which accompanied the playful Barnum and Buddah poetry circus tour, back in 2000. Looks like they had fun.

Looking at the Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, you would be forgiven for wondering if these poets have entirely disengaged from the world, in favour of an incestuous dialogue with dead artists and literature. Dedications, claimed inspirations and quotes abound from Philip Larkin, Alexandr Blok, Moby Dick, Lorca, Joyce, Baudelaire, Giacometti, Primo Levi, Johann Strauss, Saint Augustine, Kierkegaard etc. Only occasionally, is there someone less well known, or of personal association to the poets found here: Harry Clifton, Dennis O’Driscoll, David Wheatley, Sinéad Morrissey and Caitríona O’Reilly. Of course there is nothing new in artists referencing other artists, or claiming artistic lineage, but nevertheless the quantity and kind here, comes across as somewhat unsubtle, brash and disconcerting. If these poems were clothes, then these names would be brands -and mostly mature conservative brands at that. These iconic names come across as being worn for show, to illustrate wealth of learning, and rarely show any deep engagement with the ideas or sensibility of the aforementioned. Rarely are these inscriptions ‘fresh’. Is this a quirk, or reflection of a deeper withdrawal from continents of experience by Irish poets? If not, why the inexplicable absence of the contemporary world? Must the living be fossilised before they become ispirational?

Nevertheless the collection remains interesting. Caitríona O’Reilly who I have looked at recently continues to delight, but it is the selection from Harry Clifton, which is especially outstanding. His poem The Poet Sandro Penna in Old Age is stunning in its brilliance, and can only be considered a masterpiece. Using as his subject matter the Italian poet Sandro Penna - who gained public notoriety in Rome for unashamed pederasty, and in literary circles for daring to compose poems about such heresy- Clifton overlays tones of melancholy, loneliness, and decay, to paint a human soul, and in passing the eternal city itself, in revolt against morality, and convention. Clifton steps into the poets world and speaks through the mouth of Sandro Penna, who remarks that some leave the world “on a gun carriage, draped in the flag of the state” and others, with whom Penna identifies, with their bloodied heads “kicked in by a male prostitute”.

-it could so easily
have been him and me!-
splashed all over the Roman evening papers
coming in public to scandalous ends,
in the underworld of the id.

While bemoaning the lack of recognition and the expurgation of his work, his invisibility, and the still vivid horrors and endless months of nazi occupation, Penna nevertheless, with vainglorious nonchalance takes some satisfaction in his critics characterisation of him: “the last of the Greeks, the most ancient of men”, and as such, views his work as poetry for the very few “who see through the mists of the twentieth century”. And what are these mists hiding, argues the fancier of boys Penna? Two things. The first is love, and in particular, a love for a boy Raffaele (with who Penna had a relationship with for over 14 years), and the second, is the reification of an overriding conviction and loyalty to beauty. Clifton, thus without passing judgement or condoning, allows Sandro Penna, to do what many would detest: speak and outline his condition. We can see now, that it is the restrictions of this poetic narrative, then give it strength. Because Clifton has removed his own voice, he cannot take issue with for example Penna’s Greek love as, say, a specious argument from authority, nor can he support it as an example of historical relativism of sexual taboos. Instead the reader is engaged and left to make up his own mind. If the readers indictment is savage, then perhaps Clifton would be consumed by such ire, but that would be unfair. Clifton is not complicit: instead he has offered us a portrait of the essence of a man, which is at once tender and sympathetic but never hagiographic. The Poet Sandro Penna in Old Age presents us with a distinct voice. And that is all we require from a great poem.

This is the promo poster starring Johnny Depp from The Libertine - a horrendously inept piece of film directing if ever there was one. It's an attempted biopic of John Wilmot, the infamously debauched 2nd Earl of Rochester, who incidentally was of Anglo Irish descent. If you're unfortunate enough to have suffered through this film (I found myself preferring to stare at a plant in boredom) you'll have noticed our 17th century hero is supposed to be quite the poet among other things. I could do an autopsy, but that would be straying from home. Forget the film, and go straight to this site to read the unmangled originals.