Moon Tree Calligraphy
poemimage
The visual & the poetic.
Category: Poetic & Visual Narrative
April 8, 2022
John Heartfield & Big John
When I was a boy the radio played a country music song called Big John.
A song about a large miner. He was both ominous and mysterious.
He did not spend decades designing for the theatre.
One day deep underground Big John saved many miners when timbers collapsed.
Through the dust and the smoke of this man made hell
Walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well
Grabbed a saggin’ timber, gave out with a groan
And like a giant Oak tree, he just stood there alone, Big John
He did not save himself.
Like a giant oak tree he stood there alone.
Big John was popular when the folk music revival was reaching its crescendo.
Country music and folk music both express blue collar or working class themes.
Nobody confused Big John with anti-fascist, anti-war German Dada artist & creator of photomontage, John Heartfield.
Heartfield survived the war and spent decades designing for the theatre.
The johnheartfield.com website is both exhibition and biographical historical document.
Heartfield moved through artistic phases and spent decades designing for the theatre.
Heartfield Art. Dada To Graphic Design To Anti-Fascist Antiwar Images To Theater Set Design
John Heartfield was never a miner. He did not work in a mine.
He did not create the stage design when Jimmy Dean performed Big John on live TV.
He spent decades designing for the theatre.
March 24, 2022
2 GIFs
I went to bed with one sock on.
Walt Whitman decided to bury the sparrow.
A suggestion of Janus, before & forever following
the ignition of neural pathways.
A suggestion of Raven dipping her beak
in the soldered inkwell
casting a spell, perhaps.
Been drinking coffee like a chain smoker
this moment crashes into the next.
March 23, 2022
flightpath
flightpath is a cinematic video-poem featuring the art of Tehran artist Shirin Pilehvari in contrast with pristine, old-growth forest in Limehouse, Ontario. My function was writer (poet) & director. Please note full credits in the video and on my YouTube channel for a list of creative collaborators in visual art, music, poetry, narration, translation and editing.
Our core team included Eric Gerrard (camera) and Konrad Skreta (audio and video editing). We created seven video poems between 2009-2013.
In 2020 Konrad Skreta and I collaborated on a 32 minute video poem featuring his experimental animation of my digital collages (and poetry).
March 15, 2022
Nine Whales (or three)
9″ X 12″ works on watercolour paper from 2021. I’m not sure why the whales (in groupings of three) are looking at the iconographic images (on a shroud?) within eggs or stones. I discovered about thirty blueish smaller paintings on paper I did during the second lockdown.
March 14, 2022
Towers of Cake in Byzantium
I meet an old friend for coffee and cake
we discuss the symmetry of
consequence, the coincidence of
symmetry.
After we stand on the corner
I visit two bookstores
near one another in The Annex,
mostly second-hand
books I will thumb through
a hundred times (knock on wood)
finding inspiration
sifting subconscious & mythological elements
a chapter here, chapter there
traipsing the curvilinear imagination.
Birds fly low magnetized by subterranean quartz
wings whoosh, swooshing
miraculously, above the roar of wind,
I hear their soft instruction.
A young person, in motion a river,
photographs the books
over my shoulder.
Humming a tune
I contemplate pages
on the subway train.
Or so it seems, the way she steadies her phone
visible out the corner of my eye –
my station approaches.
I said this image is four, maybe, or five-thousand years old
she said I saw the books.
She said something, maybe, what
she read or might be reading.
Maybe she mentioned Byzantium.
I understood barely anything almost nothing,
with her speaking through a mask,
the subterranean ambient noise,
additional my normal hearing trouble.
She repeats a word, I tilt my head
like a bird
darting
the door embellished with golden mosaic tiles,
sliding closes in my face.
A vast dimension
composed of light-years
descends upon me.
The sound of her mystery words
accentuates her aura
like a river in motion.
I repeat rhyming words
the consequence of symmetry
the symmetry of coincidence.
Thank you, she said.
I dart for the door again
climbing tiled stairs
beneath vast archways
tasting cake.
Birds swoop above & below a quartz-river
flowing from the sun.
The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology and Fiction by
Jesse M. Gellrich –
Sun, Moon and Standing Stones by John Edwin Wood –
Inside the Neolithic Mind by David Lewis-Williams & David Pearce –
A Search for Cave and Canyon Art: Voices From the Stone Age by Douglas Mazonowicz – (signed by the author)
March 2, 2022
A New Painting
I was tempted to leave this as a rougher, more expressive work.
Started this painting in 2020.
It has quietly ‘stayed put’ on the easel while I work on my big roll of paper.
I see it every day. I really do need a phone with a ‘good’ camera.
Size: 40″ X 40.” Acrylic on canvas. Title: Annunciation.
After working in mostly blues for three or four years it feels good to
work with colour again.
February 28, 2022
Elsewhere, the Poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
In corridors
of
a shadow-mansion,
once well-known,
obsidian-animals
summon an alchemical star.
Elsewhere, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
chanting subterranean architecture of poetry.
The haystack-man
within my obsidian-heart
longs for the once well-known
song of the silver bird.
Elsewhere, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
chanting original colour wheel of poetry.
Oceanic echoes
vibrate between stalactites.
The silver bird chants subterranean poetry
perched
upon an enormous iron wheel.
Elsewhere, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
chanting physiology of poetry.
Nimble obsidian-animals climb
a half-visible clock-tower
buried in night-coloured shadow.
Elsewhere, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
chanting geological formations of poetry.
Obsidian-animals,
pulsing hearts moist as roots,
prowl the corridors.
A vase tips
dried flowers scatter across a night-coloured carpet.
The seahorse-ghost of my cubistic, star-like obsidian heart
envelops the buried clock-tower.
Elsewhere, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
chanting vast agriculture of poetry.
Haystack-man nimble as a shadow-animal
swims within buoyant
star-like dimensions,
climbs an enormous staircase
enters an unlocked door.
His feet rise above tar-night shadow
skipping iike a child.
Elsewhere, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
chanting the infinite mansions of poetry.
I wrote a short poem this morning in homage to Marina Tsvetaeva. The poem was spontaneous. A lifetime entered that quicksilver moment. I have revisited the poem and edited.
Wherever you are Marina, I accept your verdict.
Last night I read selections from Marina Tsvetaeva’s Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry (translated by Angela Livingstone).
‘Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) was one of the four great Russian poets of the 20th century, along with Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Pasternak.’
‘For me, there are no essays on poetry as unique, as profound, as passionate, as inspiring as these. “Art, a series of answers for which there are no questions,” Tsvetaeva brilliantly asserts, and then goes on to ask questions we didn’t know existed until she offered them to us, and answers to some of poetry’s most enduring mysteries.’
– C.K. Williams
February 23, 2022
GIF Experiments: 32 (Mandorla 1, 2, & 3)
The mandorla symbolizes the intersection of the two spheres of heaven and earth.
A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Cirlot
February 20, 2022
Slowly, Slowly, Like the Turtle Winning the Race
My large painting (& drawing) on a roll of Fabriano paper has turned the corner.
Still down on the floor like a turtle. Maybe the turtle is giving birth.
I’m playing with the title:
Druidica.
Druidica Blue.
Druidica Blue: Deja Vu.
Druidica Vu: Deja Vu (Cave Art for the New Psyche).
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