The Library of the Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy, Amsterdam
Saturday, 4 January 2014
Friday, 3 January 2014
Saturday, 28 December 2013
I See You Everywhere
I am curating two exhibitions to celebrate 25 years of limited editions issued by Zitouna, an imprint run by the artist Roni Gross in New York. Since 1989 Zitouna has produced a limited edition object for Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en every year. The Zitouna projects divide themselves between the themes of love and death, whether it be the mating of toothbrushes or the alchemy of a person's life. For an advance preview of some of the works on show, click here.
The first exhibition, I See You Everywhere: Works From Zitouna Press Over 25 Years, will show at the Arnolfini Reading Room in Bristol from 1 February until 2 March 2014. This will present a survey of works made for Valentine's Day.
The second exhibition, They Cast No Shadows: Works From Zitouna Press Over 25 Years, comprising the Hallowe'en editions, will show at the Special Collections of the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England during October 2014.
Friday, 15 November 2013
Hawthornden Fellowship
I will be away until the end of the year on a fellowship at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. Hawthornden was the birthplace and home of the seventeenth-century poet William Drummond, and since then it has served as retreat to innumerable writers, giving them space to finish old projects and begin new ones.
I will be completing a collection of poems about the Arctic and working on a new song cycle Quujaavaarssuq and the Queen of the Sea. The latter is based on the legendary journey of the Greenlandic hero Quujaavaarssuq to beg forgiveness from the Queen of the Sea, who destroyed the ice as an act of revenge on the humans who pollute her waters.
There is no internet access at Hawthornden, but I will resume posting in January 2014. The new year holds some exciting new projects, including two book publications and the unveiling of Vantar | Missing, an fictional history of avalanches in Iceland.
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Beyond Words
Wednesday, 16 October 2013
The Third Thing
I like riddles. Perhaps Gollum's 'Voiceless it cries, / Wingless flutters, / Toothless bites, / Mouthless mutters' in The Hobbit was the first I encountered. Then the far more ancient, suggestive kenning of Anglo-Saxon riddles from the Exeter Book. The equivocal scraps, stones and body parts
that voice the works of the poet Vasco Popa.
Writing a riddle demands concision, yet the frame of
reference must be universal. Why title any poem with anything but a question mark? When I start writing about one thing, I soon notice that I’m describing another. A
small object takes on a greater significance. This same shape-shifting
perspective may be what draws me to Inuit ivory sculpture, tiny objects that from one angle may be a polar bear, from another, a human being. You head out in one direction, but find yourself somewhere unexpected.
It was a great honour when Frances and Nicolas
McDowall of the Old Stile Press contacted me to ask permission to use my translation
of one of the riddles from the Exeter
Book in a new anthology of writings on water.
The Third Thing is a
selection of poems with woodcut images by Ralph Kiggell. Water and swimming have featured strongly in Kiggell’s life and when the
Old Stile Press commissioned a second book to follow his hugely successful Leading
the Cranes Home (2006) it was only natural that the subject should be ‘water’.
A generous slideshow of pages from the book can be
seen on the Old Stile Press website,
where the publishers write:
"Roger Deakin, the author of Waterlog, linked the passion to swim to our body’s mystical
sympathy for water: ‘When you swim, you feel your body for what it mostly is -
water.’ However, swimming was not to be the focus of the book and Ralph allowed
himself to explore poems and prose from across different ages and cultures. Writers
have shown us that from sea to land to cloud and back to sea, the cycle of
water encapsulates history and life itself. ... There are driving shafts of
rain, frozen crystals, rivers which support teeming life on boats, clouds heavy
with impending downpours. All derive from D.H. Lawrence’s wonder at the
unknowable ‘third thing’ that, with an oxygen atom and two of hydrogen,
completes the mystery of water."
Other poets in his selection include Robert Frost,
Wallace Stevens, Padraic Colum and John Masefield. As well as the riddle, I have contributed a new poem, written in collaboration with Anna Zvegintzov, ‘The
Last Assignment’.
The book can be purchased from the Old Stile Press. Main Edition: ISBN 978-0-907664-89-5 £340 (plus p&p);
Special
Edition: £1250 (plus p&p).
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
LMH Oxford Residency - Talk
My year as Artist in Residence at Lady Margaret Hall is now under way. I've been working in the library on the early stages of a print series which will combine my interest in Arctic landscapes with a response to the college site. I visit Bristol next week to meet with Arthur Buxton at the Centre for Fine Print Research, who will be advising me on the project.
More on this scheme as it develops. Meanwhile I will be giving a public talk to introduce my work at the end of the month. All are welcome, whether members of the university or not.
No More Words for Snow: Arctic Alphabets
Nancy Campbell will discuss the influence of the vanishing languages and landscapes of the Arctic on her work. This illustrated talk will reflect on poetry and artist’s books created during residencies at institutions including the most northern museum in the world on the remote island of Upernavik in Greenland.
Refreshments will be served.
Venue: Old Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6QA.
Date: Friday 25 October 2013
Time: 5.15pm
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