Poetry Workshop

18th June 2016

We are always looking for ways to enrich the experience of on form without losing any of its calming focus. The poetry workshop led by poet Tamar Yoseloff on 18th June did exactly that. The poets were encouraged to get out into the garden and experience the sculpture and its setting with all their senses. And here are some of the results:

On circling Angela Palmer’s geological installation Anthropocene

from shifting sightlines epochs move

the curl of earthwork

wrestles its spines

a corps de ballet misaligned

stones leap and ages meet

narratives bend towards and

away from the mirrored end

Gneiss, Quaternary

and their in-between

wayward sisters spin

a dance of time

Wendy Osgerby 2016

Asthall Manor

Yes, yes it was full of Druids back then-

Tossing Crystals,

Telling tales inside a cold hard mouth of marble.

Over there, layered on that low horizon of

Basalt and sparrow-pecked limestone,

The sediment of their nettle-creeping long memories.

Ah, these bundles of still days!

So much better than the aisles at Sainsbury’s.

Ciara Healy

Complexity

Light bathing sensual

voluptuous curves

Pleasure waves rippling

through sentinel trees

Bird choristers

harmonising with

red poppy drug

Infused wild colour

tempting dishonour…

Beware desire’s

simplistic judgement

Sharp edges

protect vulnerable

rough-hewn complexity

Persevere;

caress my skin

Feel its nuanced texture

shifting temperature

and diverse mood

Explore surfaces

uncover its depth

Marvel at shared

Imperfections

JM June 2016

The Space Between

(After Rob Good’s sculpture, ‘Long Ago’)

I resist interpreting

            this silent gesture –

leaving your wooden ladder on the lawn

            as if nothing happened,

as if you will return later.

            I resist hindsight –

you lying on the grass

            gazing up, contemplating,

reaching above

           

            ourselves, unsteady.

           

And when you smiled. I resist

            the wood-song

as my hand sweeps down its rungs,

            strumming a new scale

of loss and gone.

            Instead I fetch a second ladder, 

lean it till balanced

            they touch,

their breath sustained –

           

            the mass and weightlessness of love.

                                       Hanne Busck-Nielsen 

Pygmalion

polishes to the last finger-nail

the last half-moon, milk-white

sees a darkening, a roughening

of the  nail’s edge.  He files, chisels back

to the crescent a cataracted cuticle

but still the lovely nail-plate splits

reveals striations, strata, crushed skeletons

of creatures we once were

until the perfect oval sharpens

curves, unfolds a claw.

Margot Myers  01/07/16