Here is the other poem which I wrote for the Family Matters Exhibition, and here is the image which inspired it.  This sculpture called to me across a crowded room.  It’s still calling to me now.

The House of Thorns
after Alice Maher

It takes no more than a word
for a flame to stir in its womb
for smoke to rise and push at the walls
like a trapped and injured beast.

There is no chimney, no window,
no gasps of air, so the fire that’s grown
too big for the hearth
will die before it eats up the room.

Here is a bed for the wolf,
here is a chair burst at the seams
and here’s the little pot
that will cook and cook and cook.

*

It’s hard to imagine a path from this house
when you can’t imagine a door.
The roof is braced against all four winds,
you’re swaddled inside a coat of thorns.

There are stories about spring mornings,
about dew-soaked grass,
the signature of your footsteps;
you, the only child on earth.

The house is blind to romance;
makes you pin down your tongue;
rocks you till you fall asleep
hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye.

*

When the seeds are planted
and the roses are grown
mature enough for a harvest of thorns
and all the effort of building a home
tattoos neat scratches
on your parents’ hands,
now, think of a house.

Think of another house
a house of your own,
cut from the cloth of your very own skin.
The thought rises up
like a singing clock;
its bird constructed
of feathers and springs.

I’ve recently been commissioned to write for the Family Matters exhibition which is at the Castle Museum in Norwich at the moment, and part of the Great British Art Debate. Today, George Szirtes, Andrea Holland, Martin Figura and myself went along to an event in the Castle to read the poems and talk about the writing of them and the exhibition. I think the poems will also be presented in some way as part of the exhibition.

The two pieces I chose to write about fed straight into my existing work which is inspired by folk tales. Not fairytales which are the versions of the stories presented to children by Perrault as didactic tools, or those versions dressed up by Disney to entertain.

One of the pieces I wrote from is Anna Gaskell’s  photograph Hide, which was part of a series of images born from the Donkeyskin story, which is basically a tale of incest.  The Queen dies, the King casts around to find another wife, and looks no further than his daughter.  In the story, the girl asks for more and more impossible things to stave off the marriage.  I changed the donkey to a dog, because it seemed to fit better in the poem.

And here is the poem:

Hide

My father made me a dress
from patches of sky
on my mother’s old sewing machine.
He stitched them together
with lengths of her hair
and carved all the buttons
from her neat white teeth
but I would not give him my heart.

My father made me a dress
from the light of the moon
pinned into place
with her fine finger bones.
He made me a dress as bright as the sun
and sewed her gold wedding ring
into the hem
but I would not give him my hand.

My father offered me
the pelt of his dog —
how quickly his knife
freed that beast from its skin.
I climbed inside while it was still warm,
zipped it up tight
then walked into the fire
so he could not give me his love.

Here’s another thing.  The hands are cast in resin plaster which is a deeper white and more dense than the non-resin type.  The eye should be inside a doll’s head.  One of those creepy ‘First Born’ things which really really look like babies.   I think the poetry in this (if poetry is to be found) is the play between words and image.  If I were to write some kind of manifesto for the entire series I’ve been working on, it  would extrapolate on that idea.  This piece was also made under the influence of Michael Donaghy’s poem ‘Machines’ http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=151

I am going to be making some postcards of some of these images, and also some prints.  Some people have expressed the desire to buy them, which is very flattering.  I am also going to be registering for the Open Studios thing we have here in Norfolk.  Like a proper artist.  Yowser! (said the poet) Poet? (said the Helen).

I tend to think of these boxes as shadow theatres, so imagine my delight when I came across instructions on how to make one in the Mee Encyclopedia.  It didn’t say to do this, of course – it was more involved with card and paper cut-out shapes.  I am struck here by what Charles Simic wrote in Dime- Store Alchemy, his gorgeous ekphrastic book on Joseph Cornell: “In my childhood, toy shops sold miniature theatres made of cardboard…My own theatre did not come from a store.  It consisted of a few broken toy soldiers made of clay..and other objects…my stage was a table…there was little to do but imagine.’

Here’s another one of the ‘landscape on its head’ canvas shapes, which should probably be called called ‘portrait’.  It’s too long and skinny for me to think of it as a ‘portrait’ though.  If I were a practical person, the clock would be ticking in this image, and I could sell it as a practical kitschy object.  But I am not.  The time is stuck at the turn of the day, thus working ironically with the ‘quickening’ the title suggests. Indeed. And so it came to pass. Whatever it was.

Adding moths to the eyes of this head were essentially a problem-solving exercise.  You have a doll with holes for eyes, which looks too spooky.  You try to add some actual dolls eyes, and then she looks too normal.  So you light on the idea of moths for eyes, rifle through Arthur Mee’s Encyclopedia, and Bob’s your uncle.  See how I add romance to my art with these little commentaries….