Showing posts with label cut up poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cut up poems. Show all posts

Saturday, 7 October 2017

HOUSE WITHOUT WALLS - Berlin exhibition


MIGRATION OF WHALES = MIGRATION OF PEOPLE /
BUT WE CANNOT RETURN TO OUR SUMMER HOMES

HOUSE WITHOUT WALLS (EIN ZUHAUSE OHNE WÄNDE)
Press Release

House without Walls is an exhibition of drawings by refugee children in Berlin, made with British visual poet Philip Davenport, from arthur+martha. The exhibition opens 13 October, at Paul-Schneider-Haus in Spandau, Berlin, and continues until 23 November (Mon-Fri 10-6).

The drawings show a child's everyday, but with the sharpness of war punching through. A policeman with a truncheon hides in one corner of 'A normal day'. A mother walks through a field equally divided between trees and explosions. Several of the drawings have been made into "poster poems", with responses from parents and adults in their community incorporated into the designs.

The poster poems, made in collaboration with Syrian designer Deya Nemo, are a gentle, sideways look at the human cost of war, the subtle losses, including childhood itself. The text layers three languages together: Arabic, German and English, a diverse echoing of voices. The naivety of the drawings contrast with the questioning of adults. Sharp and cynical, though still child-like, these conversation pieces between children and adults continually ask: where are we now?

Exhibition poster

Davenport's workshops took place in the busy corridor of the Staakener Strasse asylum seekers' shelter in Spandau, Berlin. He directed weekly sessions, over a period of 6 months, getting the children’s energy down on paper, an act of creation and of release. They attacked the paper on occasions. One boy had such shaky hands that his drawings were almost those of an old man.

Davenport describes the workshops: "A blast of energy, full of delight, mischief - but a certain brittleness too. As I slowly got to know the children I began to understand the cost of the epic life journey they'd taken, to reach safety here in Berlin..."

Davenport also interviewed many older members of the community at Staakener Strasse, weaving their thoughts into the work. The interviews and a diary of the project are at this link

The 21st-century is a time of instability. Political change, climate change, economic change, bring unprecedented human movement. But some of the most sensitive witnesses have not been consulted...

Funded by The British Council/Arts Council England.

Supported by Paul Schneider Haus, Gemeinwesenverein Haselhorst e.V., EFRE, Gemeinschaftsunterkunft Staakener Straße, Spandau, Berlin, arthur+martha U.K. 

Translations by Deya Nemo, Lisa Langer and Aurelie Maurin.  

Thanks to all at Gemeinschaftsunterkunft Staakener Straße, Barbara Caveng and Dachil Sado at Kunstasyl, Wiebke Ehrenstein at Paul-Schneider-Haus, Elke Ritt at The British Council in Berlin, and poets Alistair Noon, Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour.

An arthur+martha international outreach project.

Monday, 5 June 2017

Quilts with a story to tell


PRESS RELEASE


QUILTS WITH A STORY TO TELL AT BUXTON MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

A pair of quilts embroidered with the wartime history of Derbyshire is set to go on display. History arts project, Stitching the Wars, opens at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery on 7June, 1-3pm


Cover of the book complementing the project 'Stitching the Wars'

This award-winning project combines history, poetry and embroidery by older people living in rural Derbyshire, including many with dementia. The two quilts are embroidered with testimony from older people who survived two world wars.


Councillor Barry Lewis, Leader of Derbyshire County Council and Designate Cabinet Member for Strategic Leadership, Culture and Tourism said: “These beautiful quilts, and the memories behind them, make for a fascinating and moving exhibition. They are a lovely demonstration of the value of projects that combine community and local history to create art.”

Artist Lois Blackburn from the arts organisation arthur+martha is behind the collaborative community quilts. Ms Blackburn said: "This is touchable history, quilts hand-stitched by over 400 older people with fragments of their stories. One of the great joys of the project has been to witness the pleasure of people with dementia who have taken part, turning memory from a thing to be feared to a thing to be relished."


The opening event, on 7 June from 1pm to 3pm, will also see the launch of an accompanying book, containing photos, stories and poems. One of the quilts 'Fresh Air and Poverty', will remain on display until 30th September.

The project received grants totalling £38,880 from Arts Council England, Foundation Derbyshire, Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Dales Council, Age UK, The Alzheimer's Society and The Farming Life Centre. 


For media enquiries please contact the DCC communications office on 01629 538205.

Saturday, 7 January 2017

Poetry archive

Updating and gently editing the poetry archive is a joyous thing to do,  revisiting old friends. I can hear the voices who originally spoke them, see their faces, witness the struggle it took for some  to write them- with a shaking hand from Parkinson's, or one distorted by arthritis. The fragility of the person facing an un-certain future in hospital.

Most poems on the blog are written by older people, there is poignancy here. At the time these were written the poet was in care of one form or another, either sheltered housing, hospital or care home. Many won't be here any more, but their poems and artworks are left on the page.

http://arthur-and-martha-poems.blogspot.co.uk/

Many thing

I know full well we’ll never leave this place
there’s a law in chemistry that says
you can never create or destroy matter, no matter
if they cremate or bury – your remains
will become part of the strata of the rains
and winds will blow you across
the face of the agnostic earth
you the atoms cannot be destroyed
will be here doubting Thomas for millions of years

perhaps we are all the figment of someone

don’t need to dig down if you
drop by a graveyard
the bacteria come up to become
more stars in the sky than there are
grains of sand in the
oceans are not burning
me it’s an overcoat for your spirit:
do I believe in anything, do
I believe in many things?

(I never go to bed ‘til I’ve said me prayers at night:
whisper that)

David Smith, Harry Wantling, Phyllis Hollinshead, Hilda Hewitt
2007

 

















sitting looking out
the windowaiting
for them to come
hurry up
hurry up
minutes
hours
days
it seems
forever


Pauleen Eaton
2007


Over the next few months I continue the long overdue job of posting poems on the blog from the last couple of years, poems from more older people and homeless people living in Greater Manchester and Derbyshire. You can follow the progress here: http://arthur-and-martha-poems.blogspot.co.uk/

Monday, 23 May 2016

UNIQUE HOMELESS LIBRARY EXHIBITION TO OPEN IN PARLIAMENT

Homeless people in Greater Manchester and Stockport have handmade the first history of British homelessness, which will debut at the Houses of Parliament next week.


Ann Coffey, MP for Stockport, and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, will open the exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall of the House of Commons at 3pm on May 24, 2016. The exhibition will be on display in Parliament for the rest of the week and then go on to public exhibition at the Southbank Festival of Love, 9 July-18 September and will tour venues in NW England. 

The Homeless Library has been made by local homeless people and opens up previously untold stories of the lives of homeless people through interviews, artworks, poems and handmade books. This unique and unprecedented history of British homelessness has been devised by arts organisation arthur+martha, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.


Ms Coffey said: 

"This project is both a piece of history and an art piece. I don't think I've ever come across anything like it before. It's beautiful. These are fascinating stories that need to be heard. Being heard is something that everybody needs, it makes us a society. Maybe these books are something we can all learn from - and maybe we can help the storytellers." 

Many homeless people live and die as ‘invisibles’. When they die their very existence sometimes leaves no mark. This project opens up an untold chronicle, that exists off the pages of official history books.

Instead, it is a history based on conversations: people's descriptions of their own lives, as told by contemporary homeless people and also older people who witnessed homelessness from the 1930s onwards. Along with interviews, there are artworks and poems. Many people involved found that these discussions and making the artworks and poems were a transformative experience.

Each book in the Library is handmade - often recycling secondhand books, which were customised and handwritten. Recycled secondhand books make the point that homeless history has been crowded out by other voices.

The Homeless Library is supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund and partnered with The Booth Centre, The Wellspring, and Bury Art Museum. Alongside photos of the handwritten books, you can read the interviews at The Homeless Library page on Facebook and blogspot

Friday, 8 January 2016

Daydreaming on the night-shift

To shut eyes
Past memories that have been awoke
To perceive
Encounters in
The most inaccessible regions
Music from my past
Of the seen and never-seen.

Anonymous


Philip writes:

A downpour of icy rain and ankle deep puddles mark the first session of the year for The Homeless Library. I arrive at the Booth Centre soaked through, shivering and sneezing. I have been in the rain for approximately one hour. Many of the people around me drinking cups of steaming tea or hunched over baked beans on toast have been out all night for many, many nights.  They blink themselves into activity in the bright lights and noise of the canteen.

Phil and Paddy

The workshop starts. This is the beginning of the new term as it were. The plan for today is to be playful and gentle. Lois has brought in a set of postcards for collaging, which people take great delight in subverting, tweaking and generally messing with. We start things in as light a way as we can at the beginning of a run of workshops. Humour is preferable to heaviness and optimism beats the cynical. Our helpers Juliet and Christine are amazing cheerleaders for the upbeat.


I ask people to write about their dreams. Just a line or two. These are then cut up put into lines, put in a hat and taken out one by one to be read as a surrealist poem. It's a nice party trick and a rich if well-worn technique to bring to creative writing. It also produces some genuinely lovely lines - and some juxtapositions so outrageous they make people gasp. We try another tack. I invite people to write a description of a recurring dream down one half of a piece of paper and a Salvador Dali quote down the other half. Dali's words intertwine with their own; it's a potent cocktail.


These little poetic pieces are rewritten onto the back of the collage postcards. A wish you were here card from the subconscious.

As with many of our sessions the morning passes in a rush and a push. The people involved are sometimes in a very volatile state. There's a lot of goodnatured banter but also some more destructive undercurrents. And some sad glimpses. One person I was talking to mentioned that their recurring dream was of being raped by their father over and over again, as they had been during their childhood.

Reading the poems later as I type them up for our records, I am struck by the melancholy that so many of them contain.


From the top of the mountain to the bottom of the sea thru the snow and thru the wind and thru the dust all-a all-a lone lone - a boat, no one on it...

"Paddy"


In amongst the word play and phantasmagoria are little snapshots of people trying to make sense of their lives, looking for a path to acceptance. But how do you make sense of your life story when the scriptwriter is so harsh?


Daydreaming on the night shift
Forgetting all the moaning of the morning
That mushroomed into the afternoon
Still not believing in the evening.

"Riff Raff"





The Homeless Library project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund





Monday, 2 November 2015

The Red Door


For the project The Homeless Library we are very lucky to be working with artist Jeni McConnell. The following is her account of a session together.

Early in September I spent a day working with Lois, one half of arthur+martha on the Homeless Library project.  We were in Bury at the Red Door Drop In centre, part of St Joseph's Catholic Church.

The day began with unpacking my book making goodies from my trolley and boxes. Lois had a similar stash - we must have looked quite curious to the people in the centre when we first arrived - they'd seen Lois before of course, and Philip, but not me - or the huge rolls of book binding cloth I was carting around with me.

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https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEito4yDNkDsAPeiyAf2j2SoqkwoxnCEK6Pio3ogz5QMHQ91guf0GivOVD2diEwNiHb6xn7GmPAheCOLk2iiRXXwS-JFVeUmMaHczckWLqvtxfsyXW71xSKMjCQhfmuIqeqJRUI-_h5ro9cG/s400/IMG_20150901_200125.jpg
Artist book collaboration Justin and Jeni for The Homeless Library. 

The centre was bright and full of chatter and busy activity, we sat in the main space, quite a small room in which it seemed most things happened.  Quite a few people busied themselves in and out, it was a beautiful dry day, with the sun peeping through the white (and some darkening) clouds.

Lois and I sat inside at the central multi-purpose table so we could have a look and chat through some of the work made, and to do our own quick skills sharing session with some quick book making techniques.

There are many stories that have been shared so far in the project, some as poetry, some hand written, some typed.  These have been intertwined within the folded pages of books, print work and other papery structures produced in earlier workshops.  There is an excitement building about this project, I'm keen to see how it unfolds along the rest of the way, and to read more of the stories too.

For this session I took some of the already printed stories to explore book ideas with. Reading through any of the texts I find there are certain words that stand out - almost as if I was going through with a highlight pen - they needed to be said a little clearer and I played with ways of doing this.

Justin came to join me, he'd been working with Lois in an earlier session and had some of his own words already written, but first he helped me work through the idea with the bits I had. We shared thoughts and ideas as we went along.  I do love the process of sharing something I can do with others, it's such a pleasure to see anyone's confidence grow as they pick up a new technique and working with Justin was just that.

We cut a story into thin same sized sections, there was an odd pleasure in it dividing the story so evenly and we cut the same sized pieces of tracing paper to use together. Justin read through the story and underlined words he felt were important, that needed highlighting, that needed to be shared in a more visible way.  There were cut out and stuck onto the tracing paper as a separate layer.

Conversations drifted on the air, "I found someone in me lounge this morning, I had to get out before I punched him. Why would someone be in my lounge? I came here".


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Justin and I talked about reading other people's stories, about whether it was easy to find the right words to cut out, to in some way raise the status of.  We agreed it was - things just pop up and feel important.

As he reads he intermittently tells me stories of his Mum and his twin sister, who has recently died.  His Mum was a child-minder, but she also showed other people how to child-mind too; she shared her skills with others. He smiled as he explained they always had old cardboard, empty loo rolls and used tubs ready to make things, she was always making stuff with him. He seems to be really connected back to that time, he talks quite fast, an excitement about the memory perhaps.
Then, the now of the task in hand stops him short, "I need to concentrate, I'll shut up". We glue and cut in silence.

My ears again become aware of the others in the room, a tiny front room type space, a sort of flat with a living and dining area, as well as a kitchen. All one space, with a busy washing machine in too.  Here folks sit and natter, watch TV, get help and advice from the staff.

I know I smell, I can't have a bath
I'm not right, I'm not with it
It's these tablets ...

We've cut out all the words and they are glued on to the tracing paper. I'm pleased with the result and Justin thinks it's a good idea too; we carry on.  He makes the decisions on cover and inner paper we can use and we being to make the book covers.  Making holes is hard, we could do with a hammer but it's not safe to have one so we sort of struggle along, but enjoy the challenge of a little bit of making do too.


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After lunch Justin starts to work on his own text, cutting it into sections to go with his story.  We talk about plans for his book and we work together on the table for quite a while, until it's time for me to go.  His book isn't quite finished, but he is clear with what he needs to do and I leave him all the materials he needs and tools he can keep too.

He promises to finish his book; I hope he manages it!




Tuesday, 26 May 2015

UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL - shamanic ritual in art

THE PRACTICAL SENIOR TEACHER, a book made jointly by "our Phil" from arthur+martha and his sister Finella over the course of 25 years, has a rare public showing at exhibition UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL.

UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL / PRESS RELEASE 
EXHIBITION: THE STOREY GALLERY, LANCASTER 26 MAY-27 JUNE 

UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL, at The Storey, is an exploration of shamanism in contemporary art, featuring the work of 13 practitioners, including Gaye Black (formerly Gaye Advert, of punk band The Adverts) and renowned poet Jerome Rothenberg. 

Artist/curator Pete Flowers is searching for deeper instinct in the rites of the artist: “UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL challenges current ideas of process to show how much contemporary art is shot through with the more ancient spirit of shamanism. Western art in the 21st Century may appear to be surgically detached from spirituality - but is it actually part of the shamanic tradition?”


Kate Eggleston-Wirtz installing HENNY-PENNY
Collaged pages by Phil and Finella as museum fodder
A performer in a vulnerable white dress attempts to transfer black ink between bottles; a tapestry is stitched with fruit, wax, notes for “remembering a soul”; the head of a doll flowers into life; a hen pulls a Romany gypsy caravan; a drawing casts spells; a cabinet receives the blessings of the public… the exhibition sees a shamanic shape in these new ceremonies.


Sue Flowers hanging stitched works by Sally Payne

ARTISTS INCLUDE: Darren Andrews, Gaye Black, Kate Eggleston-Wirtz, Pete Flowers, Sue Flowers, Adam Gregory & Gillian Jane Lees, Geoff Parr, Jerome Rothenberg, Sumit Sarkar, Sally Slade Payne & The Gingerbread Tree (Finella & Philip Davenport).

FOR MORE INFORMATION contact Green Close www.greenclose.org
Telephone 015242 21233
Exhibition open Tues-Fri 12-6pm at The Storey, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster,
LA1 1TH, Telephone: 01524 582394 Email: Lancastervic@lancaster.gov.uk

For those who can't get to Lancaster, The Gingerbread Tree have constructed a virtual MARGARET THATCHER MUSEUM of "ethnographic materials from the 1980s" as a YouTube playlist.

Sue and Pete Flowers hang ink-splashed white dresses, Constants & Variables, by Gillian Jane Lees and Adam Gregory

Sunday, 26 April 2015

MY PAINTINGS ARE INVISIBLE



MY PAINTINGS ARE INVISIBLE  is a poem for people who have gone missing. Made by Phil in Chongqing, China 2009-10, it was written onto a series of large semi-transparent sheets of paper and hung up on washing lines through the city, in parks, building sites, tea houses.

The poem posters are showing at Bury Sculpture Centre until 9 May, as part of the ReMix exhibition. If you can't get to Bury, the video gives a flavour.

Each poster is an 8-word verse, which remixes ancient Chinese poems with lines from contemporary text artists. Written onto large pieces of semi-transparent paper, one side scripted in English the other Chinese – they mingle calligraphies, meanings, histories. Principal artists involved as calligraphers and translators: Wang Jun, Mao Yanyang, Xu Guang Fu, Dan Dan, Deng Chuan and Yan Yan.

ReMix brings together artists from China and from the UK. The basis of their relationship is a curatorial exchange that has existed between Platform China, the artist run space in Beijing, and the British curator David Thorp. Alongside Philip Davenport, other UK based artists in the exhibition are David Blandy, A K Dolven and Richard Wilson.

MY PAINTINGS ARE INVISIBLE poster on a washing line in Chongqing, 2009

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Happy Mothers Day

Shakespeare Cut-up poem printed onto Concertina Book, Anon, March 2015

The Homeless Library, The Wellspring, March 2015

One of the themes that comes up time and time again in conversations with the men and women at the Wellspring Stockport is the life-long effects of Dysfunctional families and loss on their lives. I have spoken to people who lost parents as children, (one who held their dying dad in his arms) the devastation child abuse can reap for a lifetime, parents with substance abuse, many who have been in the care system the list goes on and unfortunately the pain goes on to. The woman who wrote her thoughts in one of our new handmade books summed up the battle with her past and hopes for the future: 'held down by responsibility. Dysfunctional families. Unencumbered (thats the right direction)' 

Have a Happy Mothers Day, if you can give your mum a hug.


Detail of Concertina Book, The Wellspring, Stockport, March 2015

Thursday, 6 November 2014

A route map to Atlantis


Phil has been working with Blackpool Arts for Health on pieces for the new mental health facility The Harbour, which is being built on the edge of Blackpool. Over the next few days, we will post excerpts from Phil's Blackpool blogs from this summer and autumn. A complete set of the blogs and photos is at the Blackpool Arts for Health blogsite.

October 2014

Phil writes:


Should storms drive you to anchor
seek a place of quiet calm, like the ruins of Atlantis.
Gather up what still remains
the friends who stand beside you
are the means to sail again.
Find in the companionship of the sea
a shining reflection of a brilliant promise.
Calendo, O sea of screaming rage
hush and listen to the breathing world
see the glassy horizon glow.

(Anon)

The myth of Atlantis, the lost city, is the stuff of legend and poetry and occasional B-movies. Archaeologists - I am told - have found the site of the old city in a volcano crater under the sea. But the myth remains intact because it calls to a deep part of us all, with the allure of something that can never really be reached.

We are working on a sequence of images and poems that also hunt for an elusive thing, a definition of happiness. The pieces are for the corridor of The Harbour mental health facility in Blackpool and our idea is that they help make the journey along the corridor a happy one - but also gently question what happiness might be.

Today, the group worked on a collective poem about the hunt for Atlantis, as a metaphor for the journey through life. It is a story about the struggle through the human storms and shipwrecks that we all encounter as we travel through time - and what we hope to find at the end. The morning and afternoon groups both contributed to Atlantis, so it is a many voiced tale. In writing their individual verses the group worked tremendously hard. I've dotted this blog with verses (each written by a different person) from our group's Atlantis:


I leave behind me

all that has destroyed me
farewell dear friend, farewell; may
Hermes master of the roads
comfort me as I journey to
the island forests I dream.
(What will I see as I go by
birds flying high in a horse-tailed sky?) 
Sweetly caressing tones stroke 
softly on my face.

(Anon)

The greatest block to all was self-criticism which in some cases was so harsh that the writers came to a dead stop. We talked about the reasons for stopping and very often behind the self-judgement was a history of harshness, particularly the viciousness of teachers or parents encountered in childhood. Some of these stories were heartbreakingly sad. As people worked, they talked, reporting how they felt and the poem gradually grew, incorporating some of the conversation. Writing it became a journey in itself. The greatest pleasure for me was to see that the group coming out of their shells - like cautious sea creatures - and supporting one another, listening to each other's needs.


Interleaved with our poem are fragments of WH Auden's wonderful poem Atlantis, and Sea Fever by John Masefield, which was a staple of British classrooms for decades. Auden was struggling with his life journey and the poem has the emotional openness of someone in crisis: it is a sad, sarcastic, yet hopeful piece that looks for deliverance with tired eyes. When it finally arrives at its ending, it carries the relief of a long, hard voyage finally done. My hope is that we will carry some of the same spirit in our work and gift it to the people who will live with it.


All the little household gods

request that we listen today
to the call "ATLANTIS"
the light of their countenance.
The thrashing waves and foamy rush
where waves meet in high
briney smell and spray so fine
is sight for tired eyes. And all I
hear is the wind flowing out and roaring in
a quiet sleep and a sweet dream.

(Anon)

Friday, 26 September 2014

Needed at home

What follows is the 2nd poem made by one of the members of the Rural Craft Group at the Farming Life Centre, for the project Stitching the Wars, a wonderful example of the humour we see in every session:



Grandad was undertaker, beautiful cape and bonnet made out of a shroud
"Don't put the lid on, don't put the lid on!"
He put me in the coffin once, he was a joker
Loved to see him in his splendid top hat
Mum went with him to lay out the bodies
Put me in the coffin once, he was a joker
They wouldn't let him fight, he was needed at home
"Don't put the lid on, don't put the lid on!"

Tricia
Farming Life Centre (Rural Craft Group)
24 Sept 2014


fabric waiting to be sewn into the quilt

Thursday, 25 September 2014

From Sewing to Sowing

The Farming Life Centre run various groups, yesterday we had the joy of working with the Rural Craft group in the morning and The Social Group in the afternoon (more on that later)

Phil worked with members of the group to create poems based on their reminiscence for the project Stitching the Wars:


From Sewing to Sowing


Trousers, the seams full of lice
My father in the 14-18 war, in the trenches, like many
Seams binding sad memories, seams binding good
Trousers, the seams full of lice
Trench dirt, everything impure
Camouflage nets, weaving strips in a set pattern and then
My wedding dress made from parachute silk
From sewing to sowing
A town girl marrying a farmer
Trousers the seams full of lice
Seams binding sad memories, seams binding good
Life carrying on, to be sewing
Sowing the seed, new crops, new life.

Barbara and Chris
Farming Life Centre
Sept 24 2014

Chris with her mother Barbara's wedding dress, made from parachute silk. 

The day started with a moving reading of Barbara's fathers poems written whilst in the trenches during the 1st World War. There was a constant hum of conversation inspired by the themes of Stitching the Wars as the group sewed their individual embroidered artworks into the quilt. With consideration, thought, skill and at times alarming speed the quilt grew and took form.

Mary and her orchard embroidery

The group adding their embroderies

A big thank you goes to all the members of the group who have donated their time, skill and ideas to help with the Stitching the Wars quilt whilst additionally providing Phil, Melanie and myself with tea and biscuits.  We look forward to working with you again next year.

Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Belle Vue Aces

Our project Making Memories touches on the theme of high days and holidays this year. One of the highest days you could get, in many Mancunian people's experience, was an outing to Belle Vue, a kind of prototype theme park which opened in the 1930s and continued to be an iconic part of many lives until late 20th Century. Here, a group conversation about Belle Vue is made into a cut-up poem. The writer, Michael, has a visual impairment and so arranged many of the cut-up lines by touch (see our blogs about cut-up earlier this year). The result has all the hurly and hustle of a busy fairground...


Belle Vue Aces

motor racing, wrestling
a scenic railway
a rowing boat
all the rides and that
only a kid
speedway Saturday night, Saturday night a shilling
bikes speeding Saturday evening happiness
(I like dancing but he was hopeless)
Belle Vue Aces, hotdogs yeah
went with school
get the tram to see the animals
two fellas knocking hell out of each other
a lot of things to do when I was a kid
10 Pin Bowling, Slot Palace, Miniature Railway
in a cone, ice creams, cheap in them days
last century
performing animals, people chatting
amusement park, know  what I mean?
big building with music inside
reserved seats, undercover
International Wrestling 7pm, a bar
Slot Palace, remember Speedway
Huge Fun, amuse
me brother, me sister, me dad, me
in the 1970s a bit of sugar, a movie show
all the attractions colourful, noisy
Daleks flashing lights
a red machine, sat inside
a full day out, morning til evening

Michael
13 February 2014
The Grange, Oldham