From These Windows: Online Collection – a selection of writing and art inspired by the collections of the V&A Museums. It’s unsettling―Emmanuel Frémiet’s Gorilla Defeating a Gladiator. That’s what the card on the wall will tell you, but you don’t need to be told. In this gloomy corner you’re face-to-face with a fiend — his Read More
Displaced Drifting through a little hall of renaissance pieces, the frames of gold, green and grey only hold me briefly. There, on the left-hand side of the gallery from the entrance. Untitled, 1975. Four or five brush strokes create a curtain-thick concrete wall of translucent paint. Over it, a spill. Deeper black, latching on with Read More
Passing over the delicate blooms, looking radiant in its flight, the blue monarch lands on a honeysuckle, the air filled by the aroma. Serene, it pauses for a moment before it flutters again. Undecided, it glides onto another bloom, this time a rose. The rose – ivory and silky disguises an ominous secret. Looking angelic, Read More
Forwards opening, backwards closing desire widening, hours leaking, words as poems, poems as prayers: time home love. So many ways of seeing the forward thrust of desire, the steady backward tug of time, beating, knowing, not knowing. © Geraldine Gould From A Cabinet of Curiosities: Reimagining Rare Books. A disparate trove of pieces created by students of Read More
With an osprey on his back, in full flyte, and looking as if he might leave: an abruption in nature. Instead, offering further anecdotes, he crosses over into other territories not covered by his map of words; accosting a soldier with questions of how it feels to kill. The osprey on my own back surges Read More
The night is unkind and I won’t go home to it. I hide until the building empties. Security might think I’m here or they may not; either way there is no challenge. My wandering begins when the building is silent. My feet find a path through the book stacks and I let them, though I Read More
The hard chew, the too bitter pill to swallow, wash down, digest. To accept mouthy murder, Inflict linguistic lacerations only time can heal. I broke teeth and severed tongue. I lived with a mouth, ulcers clustered. My roof collapsed but truth lay underneath, buried and lost. I bet if I retched right, regurgitated, I could Read More
The cruel hands of wicked men, made me their prey. I can do nothing but peer between fingers into wicked eyes. Throw the word ‘laws’ into the silence and pray. © Nicole Gemine From A Cabinet of Curiosities: Reimagining Rare Books. A disparate trove of pieces created by students of Writing Practice and Study, inspired by their work Read More
Prickly all over, but for spider silk blooms. Thorns studding stems, give purchase even for earthbound aluxob — any height might be scaled. No barrier built keeps them out these bearers of cures and dreams. Like their cousins everywhere, supple skirts spread to reveal baby rattle pod which, when finally split, spills myriad tiny balls. Read More