Amina Imzine – Crossing the Sene River

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Senegal River Shores North Wharf, climatic change, West Africa Delta shores. Copyright © 2016 by Amina Imzine. All rights reserved.

Senegal River Shores North Wharf, climatic change, West Africa Delta shores. Copyright © 2016 by Amina Imzine. All rights reserved.

 

Crossing the Sene River
by Amina Imzine

So deep the river, so light the gaal.
Passengers packed in raw
in the slim canoe. A sweet bean, tasty mafe
smell is cooling in the stewing pot. Larger the river
farther the flooding. Climatic survivors
would agree. Half nautical
mile that deserves forty-minute
fresh attention. The ferry lines of the Sene River
forecast a cloudy schedule. Packed in raw
in the slim ferryboat, our hands
are sweating. Dragonflies
are patrolling, and we sink into the tropical
buzz around us. Unrested mourners
in the old riverboat. Captain Thioubaly’s
belly is waxed with eggnog.

Narrower the river channels, willowy
sails the gaal. Ancient
Sene river shores, ancient November flooding,
and our hands ripple. Or wipe the sweat
off the forehead! Dragonflies dart. The old canoe
cruises smoothly. Deeper the large flood, so slowly the tidal mudflow
ebbs off. Sounds like floating
ghost islands are popping out. Our tidy mafe stewpot
is wrapped into stiff layers, ochre to rusty
coloured batik and dyed-design of shells and sea fish. Captain stops
the motor. The ferry canoe is adrift downstream.

So the gaal is rocking
while passengers are shivering.
Streams are tangling. Floating
Phragmites mats bundle. Frantic hands grasp
and scratch. Dragonflies play dart games.
The ferry canoe is rafting. Blurred-eyes
on board. Our trendy mafe batik
is packed into a basket crafted
of fragrant leaf-and-branch mango tree. The ghost river
archipelago collapse! The reed brooms sweep under
the brackish water. Passengers
turn mute. The slim skipper hip hops quick
between turbid tributaries. Thioubaly’s eyes turn
milky. It’s time to drown, perhaps?
Not yet, my friend, you won’t. Not yet.
 
A massive sea turtle surfaces at the ebb out of the blue.
 
As the gaal engine starts buzzing fast
the passengers try to relax. Such greasy buoyancy
is sealed with our lips! Salty hazes engulf
the ghost landscape. Recycled fabric
packs the old ferry. Dragonflies swoop
and sample the tidiest string of
each neat boubou dress fabric.
Upstream, couples of massive
sea turtles are dancing. The mafe gift-basket
is encapsulated in our ebony helmet of bristly Acacia
radiana fabric. Yet Captain Thioubaly
is sailing downstream
to the greenery, precarious shores. An emerald
spiny-lizard screens the reed
stiff lane through the river bank
to the wharf terminal.
Till, bloomy orchards atop shores
waft mango fragrance.

AQ17 Climate (Change)

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Bryan R. Monte – AQ16 Summer 2016 Book Reviews

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AQ16 Summer 2016 Book Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

Utmost by Hiram Larew. I. Giraffe Press, ISBN 978-0-9972243-0-6, 35 pages.
Resonance by Gary Beck. Dreaming Big Publications, ISBN 978-1523916405, 135 pages.

During the last quarter, I received two books that I felt were worth reviewing due to their artistry and scope. Both are by present or past AQ authors and both describe similar concerns such as aging and love. However, their poems have different settings such as country v city and the natural v the human worlds and different approaches. The first book is a poetry chapbook entitled Utmost by AQ16 contributor Hiram Larew. The second is a poetry book entitled Resonance by AQ12 contributor Gary Beck.

Utmost’s 23, one-page or half-page poems are suggestive, meditative, find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and use common words to express enigmatic thoughts. “Anything Can Happen” is the most concerned with the inexpressible and the unknown “You love what’s next more than people—/…You’re so grateful for what’s unknown.” The poem “What Do You Think” also describes Larew’s love of the unexpected. “But most of all/I worship stuck doors/Because they make me blink when I didn’t expect to” or the upside-down world of “Marvely” “When bad tastes like candy/And good is just ache?”

Thoughts about aging are also found in “Boy Howdy.” Larew refers to aging by saying his father’s: “…coat pockets were really my teenage years.//Carry on now is how I feel now — ” In “Vista” he writes: “I’m new at being old.” “Rafters” opens with “Maybe you can’t roar to start/Anymore as others can.” The next poem, “Your Life’s” terminal line is “Not forever but a dot.” along with “It’s Getting Late,” which comments on the aging process: “Too often it seems shoulders are cold.”

Larew’s poems are also about the comfort that he feels in the outdoors “…the best work you will ever do is when/You are opening the barn.” His enigmatic use of images from the natural world to express his thoughts are most prevalent in “Who Is” when he writes: “What I won’t say is why/What I will say is look/I might even whisper smoke—/But I won’t say you.” His line “I will only love a small piece of sky” shows once again his love and trust of the natural world. In “But More” we can see Larew’s artistic delight in the natural world and the ability to imagine other, unknown places. “To swell summer as apples do/Or shade swirls like bridges can/To be lights on in other rooms”

The last and title poem brings the writer back to the natural world with images of “I would be garlands older…”spoons of dirt…”an idea that scratches radishes redder”…”A bird straddling two branches.” These poems are imagistic, enigmatic little gems with one foot in the natural world and the other in the world of the imagination. I highly recommend this collection.

Resonance by Gary Beck also discusses the subject of mortality and especially aging, (among others) but within a New York City nightscape. “Old Age” for example which mentions: “youth’s unebbing hunger/is eternal and denied.” reminds me of William Yeats’ “Long Legged Fly” poem in which Caesar considers his battle options. Other mentions are included in the poems “Change” in which the writer is asked to be a pallbearer for a man he barely knew: “I think about an acquaintance, now dead./I never liked him…I look at pictures of the dead/and barely remember their faces.” or in the very short, “Woeful Vision” where the poet sees a woman he once knew: “No longer young/but not older than me…and a wrinkled face/that has forgotten smiles.”

Unlike Larew, Beck directly describes social and sexual relations. In “Opium Escape” Beck describes the intoxicating and sometimes unwise nature of being in love. In “Fond Pause,” “Sad Mate,” “Two Songs of Lust” and “Separation” he describes the separation felt by the unloved from the active world that goes on. “Severance” is about the intensity of a one-night stand/brief encounter, “Renunciation” about how unrequited love that burns itself out and “Electronic Loss” includes new metaphor about losing a love in a telephone booth or over the phone. Beck’s social consciousness is best expressed in his poems “Dire Prediction” in which his wonders what the the loss of jobs to the service economy will mean to those “who will walk through fire, bullets, blood,/to protect us.” In “Children of Deprivation” he wonders about the effect of capitalistic hoarding from poor in a land of plenty—“know swollen barns of grain/rotting on a distant government preserve.” In “Rebel’s Pliant” he hopes humankind will overcome “its obliterating madness.”

Buried within Resonance, however, on page 98 of this 135 page collection, is the book’s real touchstone, a vignette about the poet’s first submission and its relative worth, entitled “First Poem Sent — Oct. 1962.” In a few lines, Beck describes the respect a poet’s hard, passionate work receives as it is sent on its way: “(I) gave it to the postman./Without a glance/he tossed it on a pile/and it fell to the floor.” Other ars poetic or ars longa, vita brevis poems can be found in this volume including “Possession” with its “dozen poems on my desk…works of beauty wisdom joy wild hearty lusty obscene reverent ecstatic maudlin curious erotic mad exuberance….” “Art Calls” is a prose poem that goes right to the gut as it describes a poet’s struggle in discovering and fulfilling his calling.

There are many good poems in Resonance. However, the volume could do with a thematic regrouping of the poems to give the reader a better overview of Resonance’s approximately 110 poems. In addition, I would suggest moving “First Poem Sent” to the very beginning so it could function as a sort of prologue or proem. These two changes would help a reader dip more easily into this long and varied poetry collection.

Bryan R. Monte – AQ16 Summer 2016 Art Reviews

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AQ16 Summer 2016 Art Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

Andriaen van de Velde: Dutch Master of Landscape, Rijksmuseum, 22 June to 25 September 2016
Living in the Amsterdam School. Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, 7 April to 28 August 2016

Not Just a Pleasant, Sunny, Sunday Afternoon

On 22 June 2016, the Rijkmuseum’s soon-to-be-director (as of 15 July), Taco Dibbets, launched the Andriaen van de Velde Dutch Master of Landscape exhibition. Van de Velde, the son of a painter was one of the best landscape artists of the de Goude Eeuwe (the Golden (seventeenth) Century) even though he only lived to be thirty-five. The museum has assembled one of the largest collections of Van de Velde’s oeuvre (60 works — 37 sketches and 23 paintings from public and private collections). It includes not only landscapes peopled with farmers, milkmaids, shepherds, shepherdesses and farm animals arranged around a lone tree or thatched huts or cottages, but also the seaside, ice skating and hunt preparation and even a few religious scenes. In addition, many of these paintings are accompanied by Van de Velde’s preparatory pen and ink sketches. The Rijksmuseum describes Van de Velde as “one of the best Dutch landscape artists,” but Dibbets added during his introductory speech, that Van de Velde painted much more than just scenes from a “pleasant sunny, Sunday afternoon.”

The combination of sketches with the paintings clearly shows the development of the larger canvases from various sources. The link was clearest for me in Van de Velde’s “The Annunciation” (1667). To the right of this painting hangs a sketch of woman naked to the waist, posed with the same outstretched arms and expression of fear and astonishment as the draped Virgin who greets the angel. The woman’s pose in the preparatory sketch allowed Van De Velde to make this standard religious scene much more compelling by having his Virgin look directly at the angel versus a more traditional paintings in which the Virgin looks away.

Although Van de Velde was generally a landscape painter, he also paid equal attention to the human element in his compositions. The central painting of this exhibit is certainly his “Portrait of a family in a landscape” (1667), Van de Velde has painted a well-to-do family out for a ride in an open coach. This painting shows off the family’s money through their elaborate clothing and red coach drawn by two white horses. The gentleman is dressed in a brown coat and stands in the centre foreground of the painting with a walking cane. His wife stands on his left in a black dress and a red mud skirt. Even further to his left is his son who holds a mottled white-and-brown dog on a leash. To his right is a nanny who holds his daughter dressed in white. The triangular placement of these burgers also emphasises their social solidity, familial order and wealth in the middle of an ideal countryside.

In contrast to this wealthy family, however, Van De Velde also painted many fieldworkers. “Haymakers resting in a field” (1663) depicts an intimate gathering of fieldworkers, some taking a break. The first four in the foreground are seated. One man has his arm around a woman while another looks on and another man smokes a pipe. To the right is a man standing drinking from a large, brown jug and a fourth man is asleep on a mound of hay. There is such a contrast of activity in such a small space of canvas—and these are only the characters in the foreground. In the background, four other workers continue to build haystacks with pitchforks and by hand. Other general social scenes include ice skating as in “Colf players on the ice” (1668) and “Ice skating outside the city wall” (1669) which are populated by men, women, children, dogs and horse-drawn sleds lit in a dusky gold-gray winter light.

Van de Velde’s mastery of colour, light and shade is further demonstrated in his paintings of Scheveningen which include “View of a Beach” (1660) and “The Beach at Scheveningen” (1670) with the ships and horses lit in what I think is a similar yellow light to what Breitner used in his paintings at Scheveningen two centuries later.

Some surprises in this exhibition were Van De Velde’s “Figures in a deer park” (1667) in which the eye is drawn by a row of tall trees dwarfing the figures of the men and deer beneath them to the left and into the distance. Others are sketches of figures representing “The Continents of Europe and Asia and America and Africa,”(1671) and a few male nudes (undated). Lastly, are sketches of “Plundering soldiers at a peasant’s dwelling” (1669) showing soldiers with a battering ram and others loading muskets preparing to break down an old farmers door. Another sketch, “Marauders attack peasants at their huts” (1669) shows the next scene in which a man on his knees is about to be run through with a sword, a woman with bare breasts is held by a man from behind whilst another approaches, and a last man with sword drawn chases two figures towards the fields. Such was the reality of life during the wars in the Lowlands during the 17th century. These two, atypical pen and ink sketches remind us how quickly a quiet, sunny Sunday afternoon in the countryside then could disintegrate into chaos and carnage.

Living in The Amsterdam School

If you’ve ever wondered what happened when the optimistic, fin de siècle, organic Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements crashed into the trenches of the First World War, visit the Living in the Amsterdam School exhibition now at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk museum. This carefully-researched exhibition will show you the lavish interiors created as these movements entered the dark, expressionist wood created by this Dutch movement (1910-30). And since this exhibition concentrates on carefully reconstructed interiors and objects, the visitor is able to get a feel for what it was like to live in a stylish 1920s Amsterdam home, work in an office or shop at some of the Netherlands’ most prominent department stores.

Instead of seeking solace in the simple, natural forms as the Arts & Crafts/Art Nouveau movement had done, the Amsterdam School sought escapism and adventure in the exotic possibly as a reaction, but also perhaps as a precursor of the coming financial and political disasters. Characteristics of the Amsterdam School include unusual use of colour (red, orange, and yellow detailing on dark backgrounds), unusual wood detailing and carvings and exotic influences and designs. It’s worth visiting this collection of Amsterdam School artwork because as director Beatrix Ruf said at the press conferences it “is the largest ever assembled.”

The exhibitions first gallery includes a pyramidal display of the distinctive somewhat-tear-shaped clocks (similar in shape to Amsterdam School building towers) in various but mostly dark woods with orange, red and black accents. This is part of the 300 clocks collected for the exhibition and which also mimic the shape of the tops of the towers of the Amsterdam School buildings where mainly large, exterior clocks of similar design were displayed. (One design in particular, by Hildo Krop, contains long, thin, seated memento mori figures at the top of each clock). This gallery’s exhibition is also augmented (as in some others) by a film, music or video. (In this gallery, it is a silent film about Amsterdam School architecture exteriors).

The next gallery includes the reconstruction of an office with a large table and several very solid chairs and coffee table (One needed a very strong back to move this characteristically heavy massieve furniture) Further galleries include furniture for the home including first living, dining and bed rooms including photos of some of their occupants involved in various activities such as knitting next to the hearth, reading, etc. The dark wood furniture in this collection, some by Peter Lodewijk Kramer, creates a very den-or cave-like interior. A notable exception to this a suite of black and white bedroom furniture by Joseph Crouwel which stunningly presages the streamlined clean lines of Art Deco.

Another aspect of the Amsterdam School included in this exhibition is sculpture including the Modernist looking Girl (three-quarter figure) sculpture and the cast concrete Man with Wings (who looks more like a demon with wings from The Lord of the Rings) both by John Rädecker. Hildo Krop is also represented by his wood closets with wooden sculptures both above and in the cornices. Some of Krop’s work can also be found today on some of the city centre’s sculptured bridge pillars.

The exoticism of the Amsterdam School movement is given further explanation by its use in film theatres and department stores. In the 1920s, going to these two buildings was a type of escape, the first for a new form of entertainment—film, the second to a sort of retail adventure. These are demonstrated for example, by photos of the Tuschinski theatre’s Pieter den Besten’s native American designs (mural and lamp) and in The Hague’s Bijenkorf department store’s by two, giant, dark-wood, carved staircase padauks with details of flautists, a harpist and theatre masks by H. A. van de Einde. Toordorp is also represented by an expressionist (almost ’60s hippieish) brightly-painted wooden changing screen.

The last three galleries include even more gems. In the antepenultimate gallery, objects are displayed on shelves similar to those used in depots. These objects include firescreens, ceramics, a cradle, and an exquisite chest of drawers by Louis Bogtman of batik-patterned wood and wrought-iron from a private collection which demonstrates how Eastern styles affected the Amsterdam School.

The penultimate room in the exhibition has dozens of characteristically tear-shaped, dark, metal, hanging electric lamps demonstrating the new influence electricity was having on home interiors. Across from the lamps are distinctive stained-glass windows for both commercial and home use.

The exhibit’s final room contains a collection of Amsterdam School exhibition posters of shows, revivals and retrospectives. In the centre of the room is a red, yellow and white bedside table by Hildo Krop, which looks strikingly similar to the simple angular, Mondrian-coloured Modernist furniture made by Gerrit Rietveld. It demonstrates how Dutch interior design and this long-lived, multi-media artist (1884-1970) reinvented themselves again in the 1930s.

There’s probably something to satisfy everyone’s interest in early 20th Dutch interiors from chairs, tables, sofas, beds, desks, paintings, rugs, lamps, windows, posters, art magazines, photos, film, video and music. Visitors with children will probably be grateful for the “Build Your Own Clock” hands-on activity area, about two-thirds of the way through the exhibition, for visitors with children. Here children can construct and customize (detail and colour) their own Amsterdam School style clock. There are three different styles (5 minutes for the easiest, 15 for the most difficult). The clockworks, however, must be purchase downstairs at museum shop.

Even though Dr. Marjan Groot spent 10 years researching and collecting the Living in the Amsterdam School’s over 500 objects, gallery visitors are not overwhelmed by either too many objects or too much information. Her selection provides a rich overview that is exhaustive but not exhausting for the visitor. It is both scholarly and tasteful and the perfect length for a morning or afternoon museum visit.

Arthur Allen – On my father

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On my father
by Arthur Allen

like snow drifting down
from where my mother lives-
loneliness in Tokyo
Machi Tawara

I see as you see,
the sun
hidden in the blue mountains
    bluebells pooled about your legs
mountains so high they reach
to heaven    but you
need not go that far
I don’t lose
sleep over the mercy of God
into the garden where pear-
blossoms fall
       I will go to see
my mother with her joy
broken for keeps, a sob
breaking like a small bone in her throat
                trying to eat the lie
          that once you were gone
you were an abandonable thing

     found maculate
on your side, limbs like crushed cowslip flowers
tangled in the bicycle frame.

     Swept aside
by something that had passed,
gone in the wake
of something that was passed.

Arthur Allen – Unresolved harmonies

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Unresolved harmonies
by Arthur Allen

Today was nearly as tragic as
                  Alma don’t leave me
calligraphed and carved in the margins of Symphony No. 8
nearly necking the unresolved harmonies.

Yolanda V. Fundora – Images of Music and Flowers

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Images of Music and Flowers
by Yolanda V. Fundora

Yolanda V. Fundora is a Cuban-American artist born in Havana and raised in New York City. Her artwork is part of many private and corporate collections including the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico in San Juan. She has designed many series of digital images for books, textiles and other media. For AQ16, Fundora shares two images from her series, A Garden Alphabetized, and two from her book, Toward a Digital Aesthetic which accompany Meryl Stratford’s “Florida’s Oldest Tree” and Alida Woods “The Clearing” poems on their pages in this issue.

 

Yolanda V. Fundora, N, Violin and Mum, digital image, 2015

Yolanda V. Fundora, N, Violin and Mum, digital image, 2015

 

Yolanda V. Fundora, Y, Magnolia and Paisley, digital image, 2015

Yolanda V. Fundora, Y, Magnolia and Paisley, digital image, 2015

Perry McDaid – Landscapes of Memory

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Landscapes of Memory
by Perry McDaid

The first time I saw our new home, I was buzzing with excitement. There was a football pitch beside us where the children were allowed to play, and what looked like a mains leak proved to be an overflowing burn which gurgled between a break in the houses offering a glimpse of a woody lane.

I wanted to explore immediately, but mother insisted she check the lay of the land first, saying hello to the neighbours and sifting through the small talk for vital information on where children were allowed to play: the grass of the park near our previous one-room home being off-limits to children, and the parkie wasn’t shy of laying about himself with an old blackthorn stick.

I didn’t mind the delay. There was such a lot of garden at the front and gable of our house that it dizzied me. Francis street – our old hovel – had a front door which would have brushed the pedestrians off the pavement had it opened outwards, and the only greenery was either off-limits inside the gates of Brooke Park and Saint Eugene’s Cathedral grounds or on the dinner plates.

In this comparative palace there was plenty to roll about in, play in, and… Good God, there was a back garden as well. I had to run indoors and exit via a back door to make sure it was ours as well. It was only later that I registered having the space to run indoors. At the bottom of what seemed a huge garden was a pond … A POND.

It wasn’t fancy or installed; it was just surface seepage from the houses up the street. Rain would pool there because of topography, not financial investment. All manner of beetles swam in that pond and various insects skimmed or hummed over the surface.

This was a new world to me. I stumbled, the blue sky, green earth and limpid pond threatening to spin. Next thing I knew I was sitting in the kitchen with diluted orange in my hands being instructed to ‘take a good glug’. The mother neighbour was chatting confidentially to my own as she hovered around me. I was sitting. That was good.

“Our May went through the same thing when we first came up – she was sick for a week.”

“Were you stung?” My mother pulled at my clothes embarrassingly, looking for a welt at the neck, waist and thigh. Short trousers.

I shook my head, immediately regretting it.

“God, the inquisition I put our May through about that. No matter how many times she said no–”

“What is it?”

“Oh I sorry, I forgot how frantic I got back then. It’s the air, dear.”

“What?”

“It’s so much cleaner and richer up here – that’s what the doctor told me – that their wee lungs aren’t used to it. It’s like hyperventilating!”

There was a lot more conversation after that, but I was too busy trying to finish off the juice before surrendering to the sudden tiredness.

“Overexcited as well, he reckoned,” the neighbour continued. “He’ll be alright in an hour or so. They just have to take it slow.”

Her words faded into my dream of exploration beneath the leafy boughs of the sycamore, oak, and poplar I had noticed at the bottom of that mysterious lane. I wondered what it would feel like to paddle up through the little brook to the hills beyond.

I wondered … and slept.

Susan Lloy – Vita

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Vita
by Susan Lloy

They say when you’re going to die your life flashes before you, yet this isn’t quite so. It’s rather like a film, reedited from scraps on the floor and put back together with the plot and characters all mixed up in one last fusion. At least, that’s what it’s been like for me and even though we’re all taking some train to personalized destinations, now that I’ve nearly reached my own stop, I kind of wish I was still a few stations back.

I’ve managed to remain at home with a nurse checking in on me twice a day and I feel lucky for this. She’ll be here soon and I’m waiting for my big hit of pain medication. My tumor has spread like a burst star and now I wait to die; my neurons still transmit, but more like anarchists or an ambushed Morse code whose sender is tapping some unknown beat that only he can dance to.

 
I look around the space and it’s filled with photographs, mostly my own, yet blended with other admired works of my contemporaries, which hang on the walls and grace the sideboards. I had been a photojournalist, documenting the social imprint of each generation, whether it was political or cultural. That is, until I got sick. In recent years I had cut back the travel and worked on a collection for a book and a documentary. They both got quite a bit of attention with a good payout and this is how I’m able to remain here with additional homecare.

I hear the key in the door and I know it’s Hazel. Hazel is young and hot and has an old-fashioned name for a fresh face and a mod flair. She’s good at this sort of thing and isn’t uneasy. She doesn’t show up in a uniform. She appears in casual, non-provocative clothing. But, sometimes I get a glimpse. A peek at her arm through her sleeveless shirt and what lies beyond; a firm breast, the hardness of the clavicle, the long ballerina neck.

“Hi, hi Arthur.”

“Hi, Hazel.”

She bursts into my living room with a bouquet of just picked flowers and tells me about her night out. Some guy had pursued her at a bar, not taking no for an answer and she ended up getting the bouncer to pitch him out. He had waited for her in his car when she spilt a couple of hours later. Fortunately, she hadn’t been alone and her male companion gave the guy a stern talking to, but now she is fearful of her favourite watering hole and is leery of going back.

 
I like these little stories and listen intently while she prepares my hit. Her hair is tied back and she rubs my vein, her lovely green eyes taking in all of me as the needle finds its trail. I feel the heat and then see the classic tunnel. It’s dark and there’s warm light at the far end. I want to enter and I guess this is it for me, but when I reach it I hear hard music and see punks drenched in colour dancing in some hip club that perhaps I had once frequented in New York or Berlin. It has the sense of the familiar, something I innately know. The energy is frenzied and I feel at home, cozy, as if this is my heaven. Or is it hell? I always imagined hell would be some cool scene like this, with the doorman picking out the hipsters from the sidewalk creating a fine collection of skin and sweat. I hear the old songs of my youth and they make me feel bulletproof. Pumped.

 
An edgy girl comes to me and whispers in my ear. I feel her warm breath and the cold of her nose chain against my face. The music makes her words unrecognizable and she takes my arm, leading me to an outside corridor. It has long glass walls on each side with installations of living, exotic animals. In a blue hued room off to the side there is a wall with two sharks. I feel sorry for them as they bang into the side of the huge tank, their sonar corrupted by percussion and screaming guitars. She indicates that she wants me to follow her, and I do, although I don’t know why. She shows me a prehistoric bird pecking at the glass. Its huge tongue licks the barrier. I turn to her, but she’s gone and I hear the glass shatter into a thousand fragments.

I awake and the vase of flowers has fallen from the coffee table. Daisies and brown-eyed Susan’s are scattered on the floor. I’m not immobile yet and slowly rise from my hospital bed, as I don’t want to leave this mess for Hazel. She’s left me some soup in a thermos and I drink it wishing I were back in my dream or flashback, which is becoming harder to differentiate.

 
My dreams are laced with memories, and often I can’t tell what is real or not. The disease has ambushed my brain and now things are scrambled like a great break on a pool table with all the balls diverged to the four corners of the earth. I can still do a few things; but mostly I lie here, dreaming and watching television.

Hazel gets me all the movies and series that I like and currently I’m on a run of Berlin Alexanderplatz. It’s the Berlin I once knew, the many times I visited, weaved within that particular slice of time shadowed by the Wall. Driving in a fat, square Mercedes down wide boulevards, drinking and sniffing the evenings away in alternative cafes, engaging with the cool nocturnal creatures that roamed the Berlin nights. Following this dark tale I plan to watch I, Claudius and all the Cassavetes’ films, with sagas of murder, poison and treachery; and to remember New York when it was down and dirty. When garbage drifted throughout the streets like urban angles and when one didn’t get ticketed for drinking a beer on a stoop. I guess by now you realize that I’m no spring chicken, just a guy who lived amongst the wild ones when disorder prevailed. I miss those days.

Rita, my housekeeper, comes three times a week to freshen up and prepare meals, mostly soups and light dishes. She’s a good cook and isn’t offended when often they’re left untouched. This concoction is a mix of varied greens, garlic and minced chicken. It’s good and I sip it slowly watching the white linen curtains sway in the afternoon breeze. I see the hollyhocks swaying in the garden.

It’s summer and the weather remains warm. As I close my eyes I’m startled by a loud bang from a backfiring truck. Afghanistan. I’m here because there’s been a kill, the accidental bombing of a small village. Silhouetted against a mountain and feet set firmly on the ground, my shutter snaps at the speed of light. A woman and four children lay severed in multiple directions. The husband is too shocked to cry, but cannot take his eyes away from his family who just minutes ago took their steps and breaths along with him. I record the misery and carnage. I feel like a voyeur, still someone has to do it. Black helicopters approach off the horizon. A small doll smiles at me from the rubble. A dog cries in the distance.

 
I’ve always been a bachelor; never creating enough time to stay in one place and put my feet up or gather a partner. There were a few serious loves in my life, though for one reason or another, none sustained and time has made them fussy in my mind like a long, dead someone. I bought this house not so long ago as a sort of beacon, somewhere to hang my lens in this tireless world. I ended back to where I started from, in a little town on the wild Atlantic coast where I summer vacationed as a small boy.

I feel a shiver run my spine and I see myself jumping the broken ice on the shoreline, step-stoning to reach the solid mass. I miss my mark and my foot gets wet, but there’s an extra woolen sock in my skate. I’m free and travel with my shadow on the cold crystal. The sun sparkling off my blade.

“Arthur…hi Arthur. You look peaceful seems like a crime to wake you.”
Hazel lets herself in and tidies up the area around my bed. I used to sleep upstairs under the peaked ceiling and miss the pounding of the rain on the roof, the wind banging on the window, the coziness of the enclosed space. It reminds me of a tent, which was often my home on assignment. Down here I feel vulnerable. Exposed.

 
I’m not afraid to die and now that I can’t do much except lie here and attempt to hold on to a slice of reality between injections, I’m sort of looking forward to it. I imagine it to be a deep sleep without interruptions or dreams.

“Arthur. Let’s transfer you to the chair so that I can change your sheets. The change in position will be good for you.”
Hazel assists me, adjusting my legs to the side of the bed and pivots me to the chair, fluffing the pillow behind my back. She examines my skin for breakdown and so far it’s holding out.

“You know, Arthur, that guy that was stalking me at the bar showed up again. I went right up to him and told him to stay out of my face. He said he thought I was someone he knew. Not sure if I believe him, nevertheless I feel relieved.”

“That’s good, Hazel. I’m sure it was just an honest misunderstanding.”
Hazel runs around like someone on the clock and I guess she is, as she has other patients to visit on her rounds. She heats up some soup and pours it in a thermos along with a few fresh-baked tea biscuits that Rita made. She sets it on the bedside table.

Sometimes Hazel discusses her other patients. She delivers little jokes and anecdotes and I’m sure her reasoning is to let me know that I’m not alone with my condition. She tells me about a young mother, an older woman and a fisherman who’s on his last catch. She puts the tourniquet on my arm and my vein swells. I’m back in bed now and my thoughts melt into each other.

 
It’s Daleighla. She’s in a field dotted with red poppies. I loved her in my youth. I think I still do… She’s running and I want to catch her. She calls my name, “Arthur, come!” I try, but I can’t catch up and she dissolves into the forest up ahead. I fall into the long grass the colour of wheat and close my eyes, feeling every little piece of me make a break to parts unknown.

Iain Matheson – Marks on Paper: Writing Music, Writing Poetry

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Marks on Paper: Writing Music, Writing Poetry
An Interview with Iain Matheson
by Bryan R. Monte
Copyright © 2016 by Bryan R. Monte and Iain Matheson. All rights reserved.

Iain Matheson is a Scottish composer and poet, born, raised and educated in Glasgow, who lives in Edinburgh. His musical compositions have been performed in countries such as the Netherlands, France, Scotland, Spain and New Zealand by groups such as the Hebrides Ensemble, the New Zealand String Quartet and the Luxembourg Sinfonietta. His poetry has appeared in The Scotman newspaper, in Gutter, and in Amsterdam Quarterly. Recently, AQ had the opportunity to interview Matheson about his background, how he composes, what types of pieces he writes, the style of his compositions and the relationship in his creative life between his poetry and his music.

Bryan R. Monte: When did you first start to write poetry and music?

Iain Matheson: I started to write music at school, so around age 15; though of course I didn’t have public performances till much later. I wrote a few poems in my teens, a few more in my 30s. I’ve been writing poetry seriously since age 50 (I’ve just turned 60). I think of myself as an experienced musician, but still quite new to poetry.

BRM: So you’ve been writing music longer than poetry seriously?

IM: Yes.

BRM: How much longer?

IM: About 15 years longer.

BRM: What type of music do you write?

IM: I’ve always composed in the classical genre – an unhelpfully vague term nowadays, I know.

BRM: Could you define classical? Whose music is your music similar to?

IM: For me “classical” means, firstly, music that’s completely written down; and then, the potential for formal complexity and experimentation implied in that. The music is transferable: it goes from inside the composer’s head, via marks on paper, to the minds and bodies of performers. As soon as you work with written music, you’re part of a 1,000-year tradition, beginning with people who invented a way to represent music on a page: and you have to decide how you’ll relate to that.

A composer is probably the last person to ask: “Whose is your music similar to?” The answer will probably be someone whose work, or whose name, most
people don’t know. To me, my music is similar to (at least, it comes about through a similar process to) the music of Arnold Schoenberg. It may be more useful to say WHAT it sounds like: people have told me it sounds like tree frogs, or water dripping into a jar.

BRM: What type of poetry do you write?

IM: From the start I was interested in writing formal poetry: I started, as I suppose many people do, with tight shapes and rhymes: ballads, sonnets, sestinas.

BRM: Was there a specific event that inspired you to start writing poetry/music or did you just start writing poetry/music after hearing or reading poetry/music? For example, I remember listening to a poet at my second form read one of his poems whose rhythm imitated that of a tennis ball being volleyed back and forth across the net and I thought—I can do that—and I did.

IM: I played the piano and studied music at school and university, and it seemed obvious to me that I should try to write music, to help me understand what Bach and Beethoven were doing. I’m better at composing than performing; I’m happy to leave the playing to others.

I’ve always enjoyed reading, and writing words seemed a natural way of finding out how real writers put them together. At the time I didn’t question why I wrote poetry rather than prose: I think now that, because I understood the tiny details of moving musical notes around, the distilled language of poetry seemed similar. I’ve begun to think of writing words as a more direct form of creativity than composing – no need to find a performer once the poem is written. But in my mind I’m a composer who sometimes writes poetry: that’s the emphasis.

BRM: What type of music do you generally write?

IM: I usually write in lines (so-called counterpoint) rather than chords: horizontal rather than vertical. I’ve written a lot of chamber music (up to four instruments) as that’s the most practical to find ensembles and performance opportunities. It’s rare to find an orchestra eager to try new music; if only because rehearsing an orchestra is so expensive.

BRM: What type of poetry do you generally write?

IM: I write quite abstract, formal poems: usually taking off from the sound of a word, which leads to other words with similar sounds. I don’t set out to write a poem “about” a particular subject: the subject emerges, if at all, in the writing process. Lately I’ve been writing in syllabics: each line a fixed number of syllables.

BRM: Who are three of your favourite composers and their pieces how have they inspired you?

IM: Scriabin’s music speaks a revolutionary harmonic language within quite traditional forms. Especially in his piano music, the theosophical extravagance of his philosophical ideas leads him to imagine completely new sounds such as in Piano Sonata #9. Haydn’s music is elegant and deceptively straightforward; but he’s always trying something new, taking himself by surprise. He’s a master of silence in music in String Quartet op.50/6. Webern’s music has very clear patterns, and he attends to every tiny detail. He composes in very tight shapes, with just a few notes, inventing restrictions for himself. Again, silence is vital: at times the music seems like a frame for silence as in Canons op.16 for soprano and clarinets.

BRM: Who are three of your favourite poets and their poems how have they inspired you?

IM: I enjoy John Donne’s poetry, especially the late sonnets: flamboyant imagery crowded into very economical shapes. “Holy Sonnet X: Death be not proud.” I’ve heard Kay Ryan reading in Scotland a few times. Her willingness to follow the sound of the words and let meaning take second place is delicious: on paper, short lines make the shape of her poems fascinating in “Blue China Doorknob”. W. S. Graham was a Scottish poet, maybe not well-known in other countries. Many of his poems touch on the process of writing poems, and remind the reader that a poem is a constructed thing such as in “Dear Bryan Winter.”

BRM: How is writing a poem different from writing a piece of music?

IM: I don’t know that writing a poem, in the way I write one, is very different: the difference is in the awareness of how others may read it. Because a poem uses words that people know, they often expect a “meaning” in the way that doesn’t apply when they hear a new piece of music.

BRM: Let me rephrase that question. How is starting to write a poem, different from how you begin to write a piece of music? Do you start with a phrase or an image with a poem, for example, and a series of sounds for music?

IM: I see what you mean. For me, they both start with sound. A poem usually starts with a word, which I take apart to see what sounds are contained within it, and what other words its sound might suggest. A piece of music often begins with an interval (the distance between two notes, one higher, one lower): but that’s almost inseparable from the sound of whichever instrument I know will be playing the piece.

BRM: In what ways are poetry and music similar?

IM: They are comparable systems of making marks on paper: musical notation on the one hand, writing on the other. They can contain similar formal patterns: line lengths, rhythms, repetitions. They can use different sounds (instrumental sounds, or vowels and consonants) to make a specific sound world for each work. They can incorporate silence as a formal and expressive element. They can make the flow of time seem erratic. They can have titles that lead or mislead. They can combine contrasting elements, and invite the audience to find a way in which they relate to each other. Probably these things are true of any two art forms, not just music and poetry.

BRM: How long does it usually take you to compose a piece of music?

IM: It depends on the length of the piece, and the number of instruments. Maybe six months.

BRM: How long does it take you to compose a poem?

IM: Four to six weeks. After that it’s usually clear that something isn’t worth pursuing: though there are some that lie around for months and years and never give up. There’s a difference, though. It’s very seldom that anyone asks me to write a poem: at most, there may be a submission deadline.

BRM: Do your compositions (poems/music) tend to be more organic in that you start with a line or a musical phrase that comes to you and you add to it from there or are your compositions more formal (like a sonnet or a minuet) where you know the restrictions ahead of time and then you plan how you can fit this phrase and other variations or counter arguments into that form to make a complete poetic/musical statement.

IM: Knowing how long a piece of music is to be, is important: once I know that, I can organise the proportions of it, see where certain things will be placed. (For reasons of programming, most performers are looking for music between 5 – 15 minutes.) The instruments involved usually suggest the musical material in some way – highest or lowest note, how they make a sound, how long can they sustain a note, that sort of thing. I seldom start writing anything (music or poem) at the beginning.

My poems tend to be short, maybe a dozen lines. If I’m not given restrictions by (e.g.) a magazine’s submission guidelines, I invent my own. More than with music, I usually write a lot then pare it away till there’s a poem left. I don’t write in established forms now, such sestinas or villanelles, except as an exercise. (Just as, in music, I don’t write fugues or in classical sonata form). I do, however, try to arrive at the shape of a poem early on. That’s usually a case of shuffling and reordering fragments—single lines, couplets—until a pattern comes together.

BRM: What have been your most adventurous piece of music and poem and why?

IM: “Equal Parts” is a small piano concerto, for piano solo and eleven instruments. The length (10’00”), the size of ensemble, and the relatively large number of ideas to be kept in balance made it quite a complex piece to write. You can hear it on my website at www.iainmatheson.co.uk

I don’t think any one of my poems is more adventurous than others. Since writing is sufficiently new to me, each is an adventure. There’s a competition at the moment for a poem up to 80 lines: that’ll be a new sort of adventure if I can do it.

BRM: What are two of the most recent poems and musical compositions that you have written?

IM: I’ve recently completed a string trio for violin, viola and cello. I wrote it without a commission, and it’s still looking for a first performance. A short violin piece “Slow” had its first performance in April. I wrote a poem called “About” since people sometimes ask what my poems are about. I think my poem “Web” is finished, but it needs to lie in a drawer for a couple of weeks.

BRM: How is listening to one of your poems or pieces being performed by someone else different from how you imagined it how when you wrote it?

IM: I try to notate my music quite precisely, so that performers can see what’s meant, and there aren’t big surprises (I don’t use improvisation in my scores). But there are always welcome variables: for instance the relationship between players and audience, and the size of the venue, which affects things like volume and speed. Sometimes the comparative volume level of instruments has to be adjusted.

I haven’t heard many of my poems read in public by another reader: only two, I think. It’s the nature of poetry readings that you don’t often hear poems read by anyone except yourself, which to me seems a pity. I sometimes ask a friend to read a poem aloud for me, in private, to test whether the “notation” is clear. When people read a poem in a magazine or on a website, they have nothing to go on but the layout on the page, so I try to make that as clear as I can. But other readers always bring something different; not least, the sound of their voice. Music notation usually includes a direction about speed: poetic notation usually doesn’t, and other readers can have quite a different idea of how fast something should go.

BRM: Where are some of the places your music and poetry has been performed and published?

IM: My music has been played throughout the UK and Europe (the Netherlands, Spain, France etc.): also in the USA and New Zealand. Performers have included the Hebrides Ensemble, New Zealand String Quartet, Kevin Bowyer, Luxembourg Sinfonietta. There are a couple of pieces on CD, and one bass clarinet piece published in Belgium. Here is a link to a performance of Next for solo violin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3KZoLNg634 .

I’ve read my poems at various events in Scotland; in particular, in 2013 I was glad to be invited to read at Shore Poets, which is a monthly poetry event in Edinburgh. Some are published in Scottish magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and some on websites; I was pleased to have poems selected for Gutter, which describes itself as “an award-winning, high quality, printed journal for fiction and poetry from writers born or living in Scotland”. Here is On read by me at Jupiter Artland: https://soundcloud.com/jupiterartland/on-iain-matheson. There’s a print copy of it on this page (click on “Dowload the shortlist” and it’s #14): https://www.jupiterartland.org/learning/writingcompetition

BRM: Where can people find a list of your compositions/poems?

IM: You can find a list of my music compositions, and some recordings, on my website: http://iainmatheson.co.uk/index.php . The only list of my poems is on my computer…AQ is a major publisher! Four at the last count: Her friend finds cheese in his pocket, (AQ4), Interval, (AQ6), What it is (AQ12), and Inspire (AQ14).

BRM: Where will some of your pieces be performed/published in the next six months?

IM: My pieces, Three and Conversation, will be played along with work by five other composers by the Ensemble Ruspoli on 19 June, in Arnhem, the Netherlands at the Lutherse Kerk, Spoorwegstraat 8, at 3.00 PM. Entree is 10 euros. My piece for organ, Imaginary Music is due to be played in Dundee (Scotland), but the date and venue aren’t yet confirmed. Poems will probably be published, if at all, online and therefore internationally… I’ll let AQ know of any other upcoming performances, publications or readings.

BRM: Iain Matheson, composer and poet, thank you for your time.

IM: You’re very welcome, Bryan