As part of my activity during lockdown, I’ve used what is to hand to make some booklets of poems. I have revisited a poetry sequence I wrote that drew on guides and instructions for ‘proper’ speech, rules for social and public behaviour, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act led to the partial decriminalistation of homosexuality, and the policing, control or modification of the body in social media. The text is formatted in Big Caslon, with headings in Copperplate. The cover paper comes from a Soviet era book on the buildings of Prague.
This bear ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong, pretty boy!
Residue prizes produce uniformly the same sensations,
buff expanding is where it’s at.
Wherever it may be retiring, not coward but cowherd,
both pretty trash now tbh.
He dances, scissors hands applied palm to palm,
hanging down, lips pouted as he whines. Oh, come on!
Parts of this text formed the basis of the score for the performance Threaded Inserts. First performed as part of Tears in Rain, for Plymouth Art Weekender at Plymouth Athenaeum, September 2017. Threaded Inserts was also presented at the Projectivisms symposium, organised by Wanda O’Connor at Cardiff University, May 2018 and at STREAM: a Series of Transdisciplinary Rituals & Experiments in Art & Music at Dartington in September 2018.