Occasional Poetry

May 31st, 2007

Johanna: Move

Tables, chairs and unimaginative leaving of empty drink bottles on the window ledge was a frustrating opening to the ‘Occasional Poetry’ installation. It was certainly the most interesting, curious and unexpected window front of the festival night opening. And, all yesterday, especially when lit under the bruised night sky, the installation was a space of contemplation and quiet. That was only if you could squeeze past the chairs and tables the cafe insists on sitting infront of the window front. I tried to monitor the tables myself but unless I stand there in flesh and huffs instructing punters to slurp their soup from a distance to allow the dummies space to breathe, I’m afriad the installation will be a little hard to stand infront of and gaze at. Any customer of the cafe has the perfect view of the window contents and being bold in body will allow you to view the space but you may have to hip a few tables and push back the odd chair to eye it all.

Today I shall pleasantly request the table be moved back to allow for a viewing area, but with a cafe needing to make profit I doubt poetry will be placed before the plate.

Regardless of the intimate, breathless space debacle the occasional badges / wearing of our poems has been a tremendous and powerful way to bring poetry into every area of the festival. Countless collars proudly boast a line from Greg, Adam or Claire’s poem. Tiny oval slogans that enforce the reader to move into the wearer and create a strange literary intimacy, the reading of the badge on a person almost brings about a kiss or embrace of the words and the word wearer.

May 30th, 2007

Johanna: Dummies dream and smile and drink champagne

Mitch in a kerchief and overalls was bent over a terrifying wood cutting tool on a table of plywood in the middle of a gigantic room of dust and wood. With a set too large to fit into the window space I bribed Mitch with badges and poems and after a few seconds hesitation he took with open arms our backdrop (donated by All Saints) and sawed the jodphur coloured flat in half (without asking any saint). How lucky we were/phew – installing our set on location at The Sydney Theatre Company a space that just happened to have on site a fully functioning set building center complete with handsome men in short sleeves and muscles. Somehow we’d mis-measured the length of the window space by about a million metres and when we moved in the set the was a rather severe overhang that suggested mayhem, failure and desperate decisions ..

but it is now 7.12pm and there is an hour to the opening night. ‘Occasional Poetry’ is set for the first festival occasion. The dummies are brightly lit and calling for attention, I’m delusional at present and thinking people on the other side of the horizon can read the poems from where they are, the window is so resplendent. Each poem is attached with twirls of blonde rope and the pebbles and rocks are scattered around the base of a music stand and the comical and inquisitve gaze of Gwen Harwood. The set installation took the entire day and with each individual, Bonny, Fiona, Steve, Greg, Elliott , Rita and Bob the building manager. If successful we will have created a window of imagination and language, punctuated by a bow tie and a red lace bra with a crecent shaped 12C cup – a bra to which no one involved will own up to having ever worn, it simply appeared in the pocket of Adam Aitken’s jacket whilst we turned our backs to reflect on the harbour water.

May 29th, 2007

Johanna: Ms N.B. Map-Bow

There was a circle of four Sunday brunchers who shouted so loudly whilst swallowing pools of scrambled eggs and milk, that I could hardly hear Pam Brown talk. A few sour glances over our latte glasses towards the loud mouths didn’t work either so Pam and I conversed with our noses almost touching, reading lips as conversation rather than hearing words. Pam is well prepared for Sunday. Her mineslec features some of her own work as a poet and many interesting references and reports on other poets and occasional poems she has unearthed whilst co-editing Jacket.

I’ll report on Pam’s mineslec after Sunday, not wanting to reveal her substance or her style before she does. However I should note I’d not met Pam before today (not including momentary glances over shoulders at poetry readings) and her physical self is a fascinating reflection of her poetry writin; her cafe language is witty, quicky, precise and gleeful; the stories she shares with me concern deaths in suburbia, daughters, filmmaking, radio; between sips and quips Pam reflects on a life lived so far and provides advice to me on how to escape being strangled by reading too much of other peoples’ poetry.

Pam’s tone in the page and in the cafe is of paint on a silk screen or colour on film. Her spoken voice is like her written – a lullaby-lyrical rhythm and volume particular to Pam’s voice welcomes the reader, lures them in and as her poem narratives, maps, journeys or reflections move from the everyday to the back of the imagination there’s never a sense you’re being left out or behind, but rather encouraged to sit next to her and continue moving along, into her world/s.
—

A few days later and the flats have been painted, props hired, windows swept and invitations circulated. It took the heart of Saturday to paint the set and if you ever need a man to turn ply wood into a costume shop, walls into doors, air into earth then I’d be suggesting beanie wearing Andy, the prop and set maestro Rita invited to assist with the set building.

More thanks to …

The generous Maritime man who has lent Red Room an entire Pier to store the dummies in. Last time I checked they were sound asleep and safe and tomorrow I’ll bring them croissants and Berocca to get them up and at their best for five days of performing without eating or moving:

Tomorrow we raise up the walls, walk in the bodies, hang the poems and stand before the Occasional installation wearing smiles and perhaps a badge.

May 25th, 2007

Johanna: Do dummies dream?

The brassy red hair and cloud white skin of Ms Prudence Upton greeted me at 9am on the pin point yesterday morning. Prudence is the chief photographer for this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival and a graphic designer who clipped and positioned the poems onto fabric which will feature in the Occasional Poetry window. Every editor and curator and designer will know the traumatic experiences that accompany laying text up for printing, as if mistakes find you out from every angle of the page and place themselves within the spaces, columns, borders and patterns of your task. Pru and I back and forthed commas, full stops, spelling corrections and angles until we had three perfect fabric poems.

These three poems were then sent to the Charing Cross Photoshop (11 Albion Street Waverley, NSW) where a young girl with soft black curls tickling her cheeks and a sprightly French printer and photographer (also her father) had produced a trio of poem fabrics that stretch from my head to my waist, a perfect fit if I was to wear them. These printed poems are remarkably different to the hand written ones each of the poets have supplied me with.
…

Having swallowed the last slice of apple I’m staring at the fan. And planning to be at Sydney Writers’ Festival space by 10.30 where the Occasional crew will paint and hang out to dry the backdrop for the installation, ready for the opening night on Wednesday 31st May. My car is being opened up and stitched together by Bill the mechanic and so I’m about to knock on my neighbour’s door and request to borrow her Ute to collect the dummies from their hotel. My neighbour assured me, a few days back, I can borrow her Ute anytime, but words mean nothing without actions and so I will start the Saturday with a test of Truth.

May 22nd, 2007

Johanna: Vanished landscapes

DSCF0699.JPGBehind me stand three creamy white torsos. One is jacketed, one shirted and the third naked, nude and waiting for Claire Potter’s costume. The dummies have pine glossed claw feet and finely wood turned tops. Fiona Wright found them at St George Tafe and now they’re part of The Red Room Family, soon to be eyed by thousands of festival goers.

On each dummy there is a hint of breast and belly but, as is with the dummy form – nothing is whole, everything is part. Dummies pose and present themselves and just as immediately vanish. They are air and earth in the same moment.

This notion of unwritten spaces or blank areas to be filled in by the writers’ imagination or the viewers narrative was explored yesterday by Andrew O’Hagan at Macquarie University.

eilean1.jpgSet in a Scottish town of Irvin, O’Hagan described his family history, the history of his town and lives that were never recorded. Not in words or pictures. O’Hagan experienced the physical landscape of his childhood without any imaginative guide or map or inspiration – that it was up to he as a tiny little lad to build the narrative of his town, whilst escaping it.

When I gaze on the three dumb bodies behind me they have no pre existing portrait, signature, style or features that I know of. Their personal histories change and rearrange with each new piece of clothing layered upon them, and with each new set of eyes that decides whether they are male or female, ugly or attractive, short or tall, writers or poets, dancers or walkers, cretins or sophisticates.

May 20th, 2007

Johanna: Boxes

Rita has collected the pebbles and rocks. I hold 2 handwritten poems. Fiona is picking up the headless dummies. Tamryn is embroidering letters. Elliott is hunting down organs. Bonny is fine tuning Gwen’s music stand. Claire is packing her bags to board the plane which brings her from Paris to Sydney, for the Occasional event.

I await the 3rd and final poem,Claire’s poem which has been express flown from
from France to Darlinghurst.

The post box routine:

The Darlinghurst post-box provides flavour and meaning to my morning hurry to the pool. I awake to my neighbour laughing and snorting like a giant human balloon, but also with the knowledg that my grotty silver key will soon bring treasures.

The key will be inserted into a black metal box, (the size of a shoe box), built into a wall that is a family of identical metal boxes. The keys will un-lock the dwarfed gate, and I will reach into my miniature postbox mouth. If lucky I will extract a filmsy red and white card instructing me to collect a parcel from the parcel palace. If unlucky it will be a large parcel addressed to someone who owned the post box before me, their names are often Andrew or Michael.

But, with red/white card in hand I can proceed to the parcel office grill. A nervous knock and the grill whips up, and I push the card through the bars to the personable parcel officer. (In five years, I have never been greeted by grumpy, scowling sleep deprived parcel officer. This is a magnificent relief as interaction with a parcel officer is normally the first greet of the day. The parcel officer can make or break your mood, so having an enthusiastic hello as opposed to a shut up before you’ve woken up is empowering.) After the hellow, one signatures below all the other parcel recipients. The transaction closes with thegiving and receiving of the parcel, and finally a sharp whiisshhh-bang slam shut of the parcel door.

Parcel under arm I will return to a secluded spot, in a cafe, at home or in The Red Room workshop, to un-stick and rip open the wrapping and hold the object that has been sent. If all this goes according to plan, the object of today’s collection journey will be Claire’s poem.

Each of the three poets wrap, give and take in such different manners. Greg turned up at the workshop to deliver his poem a few weeks ago. In a flurry of language and motion he threw into the floor’s middle a black back pack. This pack was rapidly unzipped. From the front pocket he unscrumbpled a black shirt which will be incorporated into the installation. Then, Greg fanatically shook the back pack, dust, pens and scrap paper tumbled about as he searched for beads, which were not there.

Adam greeted me in a sleepy haze on his front porch, like an introspective child who would prefer to have been greeting people in a dream world, he slowly and cautiously
me into his home. I tip toed down the corridor, not wanting to wake the people behind the frames on his walls, captivating images and relics Adam must have gathered whilst traveling the globe. I arrived at a white walled room like a sculptor’s furnished with awhite couch and museum like display of objects, trinkets, talismans and stories. Adam handed me a white plastic bag, with the thick leather arms of a black travel jacket poking out the handles. The jacket was so heavy I thought he must have sewen, into the lining, pieces of all the earth he’s roamed about on.
Adam also gave me a Sumatran mask. Both costume items perfect autobiogrpahies of the poet himself.

A man who looks exactly like The Fat Policeman from Thomas the Tank Engine just walked past the window and stared at the flowers.

May 19th, 2007

Johanna: My house is being recarpeted with second hand corporate carpet

To be regarded as one of history’s most intelligent and powerful women, I too would recline with a smirking beauty whist wearing a lavender blue universe of fabric, bows and flowers. The choker Madame de Pompadour wears in Francoise-Hubert Boucher‘s portrait here, 300px-François_Boucher_0191.jpgmust surely have been an inspiration for Clover Moore who so often shows off a very high, tight, strangulating necklace whilst walking around her Independent City of Sydney. And although her breasts are costumed in champagne pink ruffles and roses you can make out their outline and perhaps believe the story that the French Champagne200px-Glass02.jpg glasses (Champagne Coupe) were modelled on her bosoms. I am now about to venture out of the red room walls and away from you, to have some tea at a local cafe and continue to read El Dorado, Dorothy Porter’s poetic erotic thriller. The ickiness and sexiness of Porter’s metaphoric rampage has managed to lure me away from French aristocracy and Red Room work to gore, obsessive love and pedophiles-themes in Porter’s book, but probably the Saturday newspapers too.

May 16th, 2007

Johanna: The romance of Felt.

headerR.jpgDelivering the Occasional flyers to shops or mailing them to our supporters I am dressed as the post-woman not the poet, at the moment. As I waded through my wardrobe items (flicking off a few filthy tiny German cockhroaches) the thickening fog and job of delivering publicity guided today’s outfit.

I considered wearing a navy blue jacket which half resembles the early Australian postman’s uniform, of navy blue sleeveless coat with a short shoulder cape attached at collar. But the fog suggests rain and my jacket isn’t built with waterproof heavy duty material nor does it have the postman’s required five button holes down the center front of the coat with one button remaining “Post Master Generals Department”. I wasn’t totally dissuaded – my jacket could be tailored to the postman’s jacket by pinning a few Occasional Poetry badges on my front

dress_felt.jpgBut, what I truly desire to wear is a red felt hat, that worn by fashionable postwomen of the 1980s. This hat with its soft curved sides is like a slippery dip, an apricot or a bottom smooth to fantasy perfection.

Digging into my top drawers I can’t find anything felt, not even matted wool button. Out of all the wool variations felt is the most poetic, material shorn from the back of a sheep that transforms to felt when it is subjected to moisture, heat, and pressure. And from the pressure the felt fiber produces scales, which open up and snatch one another, interweaving scales into scales so they are tangled up for life. The scales then cool and compress and lock together forever. This is felt.

In addition to being called ‘felt’, itself a highly sensitive, erotic, imaginative words, felt shares characteristics with those of top quality human beings: - it doesn’t raval or fray, Does not ravel or fray, it is as hard as it is soft, its essential structure remains unchanged regardless of what is is re-modelled into, it absorbs other materials with a resilient ease and can be touched and felt countless times without ever being permanently deformed. It protects you against the cold, turns the world volume down a few notches and presses itself tightly and smoothly against you, making its presence felt by the feel of you.

May 13th, 2007

Onfrayed

I can’t help but note that, according to Amanda Hooton in the SMH Good Weekend, the delicious Michel Onfray, author of The Atheist Manifesto, has received some celebration in fashion circles. Not only is Onfray “beloved by the frivolous”, but Sonia Rykiel dressed her Paris WINDOW DISPLAY with Onfray’s books, beside her new collection.

May 13th, 2007

Johanna: Reading circles

Cupping the badged poems in my hand I was certain the phrases were shouting at me, rather than being silenced because of their letters being pressed and kept between plastic and a sharp pin with the future of an anonymous bosom to stick into. There are five badges designed for Occasional Poetry. Each of the five phrases (poem excerpts) allow the wearer of the badge and reader of it, to read poems like you would a Catherine Wheel or a coin; the eyes circle round to find the rhythm of the poem – A curious contrast to reading poems horizontally or, as will be the case in our Occasional display case, reading the poems vertically.

This weekend I challenged myself to read pieces of text in the round form. For example, I scissored into a perfect circle the lines:

‘The magnitude of the task facing Kevin’ (P.19 The Weekend Australian; Inquirer; May 12-13, 07).
Not only did the headline morph into the shape of Kevin’s head, the round reading of the news text lightened the meaning behind it, reading politics in the round makes the voter feel momentarily safe, as it everything joins up where it should and just keeps on moving; for a moment in the round you adjust the eyes to destiny, with the seasons return and the ongoing promise of the sun rising; reading text round provides the reader with the certainty that you’re reading in the direction; as opposed to reading up or across where you can feel about to burst with worry that the lines and spaces will keep on stretching down the page blankness and into blank air.