[F.F. Teague]

Hi Sarah-Jane,

W.-B. and I don't feel obliged at all! We are very interested in this project and happy to help in any way :-) :>)

Yes, very warm in Cheltenham; humid, really. I don't have a hammock :-( but I do have a lovely view of the sky from where I sit in the studio office, close to my very wide window; and I often like to watch the moon ascend while listening to jazz, for some reason.

Yes also, good news about the admin assistant. I feel I can relax a bit, for a change.

We'll be back :-) :>)

[F.F. Teague]

... and here we are :-) :>)

Sarah-Jane, I'm afraid we're a bit later than anticipated and I actually have double vision, lol, but we can start by saying you have four beats rather than five in S1 L1; easily corrected, I'm sure. More soon :>x

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Thanks Fliss, and that was late (I was hammocked. I think I'll end up sleeping outside in this weather).

I will go tweak. And I want to re-order the images to see how they work with the IP in that order.

Sarah-Jane

[F.F. Teague]

You're welcome, Sarah-Jane; yes, fairly late! And I was a bit hot at the time, but today I've got the fan working so I am feeling fresher. I'm lucky that my bedroom has a north window, otherwise I'd be tempted to take to the gardens, lol.

The tweak is effective. Here's a quick try at the poems:

These unreal ancients, from their starry stage,
present ideas through risograph machines.
They sing of throstle-nests, and seas, faint echo-
chambers filled with silk and keys and dreams.

Now here's a hive of sulky wayward bees
that feast on hot blue stars and hyacinth.
We watch them buzzing through the starry floor
to drizzle honeyed deadlines through our door.

A land as deep as stone that held a well
now holds a whale, fair Subterranea.
She sends her thoughts, of amethyst and loss,
for us to view through salt-tinged vaping clouds.

Within this second bathroom? Deity
of hybrids, twilight, fur and embouchures.
Ambiguously half-divine, they bathe
themselves in dry white wine and muscatel.

Next, shush! for Diaphora, private god
of underwear and immaterial.
Within her licit chamber, she creates
precise taxonomies for silken drawers.

Meet Simeon, a rakish exquisite,
the god of inept conversationalists.
He sends us tiny snips of winning words
in blurred Morse code through moonlit glitterballs.

Druantia, that lost imagina-
ry deity of hares and damson stones,
we scry your thoughts in weather vanes. Your hedge-
row words run wilder than the eyes of owls.

Now lost in Lucent chambers of the night
above the fossil tombs of trilobites,
we leave the gods of flying fish to drift
like moths and dust, space unperturbed by myth.

That's a first go, anyway, and there aren't many changes; it just took a few minutes, so feel free as a bird to take/toss. I've left a little variation in there, but if you 'd like me to sharpen up, just say. And hopefully Cameron will return with some suggestions :-)

Best wishes,
Fliss

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Fliss, thank you.

That's extremely helpful. I love some of your edits, too - particularly the loss of 'socks'. I wasn't super-keen on nylon socks (although I do quite like the idea of a jellyfish goddess of underwear waving stray ones from the washing machine) but the only alternative I could think of was 'thong'. And I didn't want a thong in the poem. 'Silken drawers' is perfect.

Here's where I am now -

These unreal ancients, from their starry stage
present ideas through risograph machines.
They sing of throstle-nests, and seas, faint echo-
chambers filled with silk and keys and dreams.

Now here’s a hive of sulky wayward bees,
that feast on hot blue stars and hyacinth,
We watch them buzzing through the starry floor
To drizzle honeyed deadlines through our door.

A land as deep as stone that held a well
now holds a whale, fair Subterranea.
She sends her thoughts, of amethyst and loss,
for us to view through salt-tinged vaping clouds.

Within this second bathroom? Deity
of hybrids, twilight, fur and embouchures
Ambiguously half-divine they bathe
themselves in dry white wine and muscatel.

Next, shush! For Diaphora, cloistered god
of underwear and immaterial culture.
Within her licit chamber she creates
precise taxonomies for silken drawers.

Meet Simeon, a rakish exquisite,
the god of inept conversationalists.
He sends us tiny snips of winning words
in blurred morse code through moonlit glitterballs.

Druantia, imaginary god
of hedgerow, hares and wolves and damson stones,
We scry your thoughts through rain in weathervanes.
Your words run wilder than the eyes of owls.

Though lost in Lucent chambers of the night
above the fossil tombs of trilobites
we leave the gods of flying fish to drift
like moths and dust, space unperturbed by myth.

I've decided that the text will fit at the bottom of each square image. I'm playing with animation - the new photoshop has an animation programme I've not used, but it's better than the basic stop-motion I've used before. Just tiny movements in each image. I feel like it's at the point where everything is starting to come together, which is cool.

And here's a small 'thank you' for you and WB : )

[F.F. Teague]

You're welcome, Sarah-Jane :-)

Oh good; I'm happy to have helped, particularly re. 'silken drawers' as I did think about that for a little longer before returning to the laptop to post my suggestions for your excellent poems.

Where you are now is looking great. The line 'of underwear and immaterial culture' feels long, maybe? I think I might be lingering too long through the syllables, though. It might be worth checking the punctuation, but I think you might be using it differently from me, e.g. using the space at the end of a line.

And thank you very much for your gift for me and W.-B.! I've been a bit beaten up at work recently, so it's pleasant to be heralded 'Felicitous', lol. I like the movement in the foreground, while the backdrop scene is beautiful, not unlike Winchcombe's Sudeley Castle yet with even more trees. And I still love your 'deer lady'.

It's been hot again here today; hope you're as comfortable as possible in your hammock!

Best wishes,
Fliss & W.-B. :>x

[W T Clark]

Hello, Sarah, I do like l2, its idiosyncracy sounds very much in keeping with your art here and work overall, l1 less so. What I worry a little with these is that at times you're forced to add modifiers to get the beat up to five. Example, here and later on, "starry" is quite a Romantic, dare I say almost outworn way of describing gods (I've just read through a long selected poems of Shelley, and "starry" repeats itself there like a slogan), it doesn't sit well with the more destabilising, surrealistic mode I associate with your work.
I like your break on "echo/champber" even though it does create a headless l4. I'd cut "Here", to my ear it sounds to self-consciously tour-guide-esque. Considering all this, I wonder if you need this much description at all, is the poetry doing the work that the images are already? "hot blues stars and hyacinth", sounds much better, stronger, more strange as "feast on stars and hyacinth", beware of over-writing here I think, especially with ekphrastics.
"words run wilder than the eyes of owls" is all over the place metrically, one too many substitutions. You might consider cleaning it up a little.

I do like these, but I also wonder at their purpose. Why do you need such heavy description when you have the pictures? At their best they are revealing something we would not understand from mere viewing, like the god of underwear and immaterial culture (a real highlight), but I wonder if the lines could be improved by making them sparser and less heavily descriptive.

Hope this helps.

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Thanks Cameron,

I like the idea of cutting this back and making it more surreal. I'll have a play with that (I'll enjoy it).

I like the idea of some kind of narration linking the images together, like a surreal play. It's weird, because I know that the found text works, and I know that external people will like the found text. But I have that annoying urge to experiment beyond the cut-ups - see where it goes.

Exploding what I've got to see what happens could be just the thing.

Thanks again,


Sarah-Jane

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Latest edition of experiment. I basically used some surrealist techniques on the IP. I like the craziness of the theatrical of the old series so I think this will probably lead to another set of images. So the IP will stay with the old images, and I'll use the erasures in a set of new pieces with the exploded IP. I like the way the text is working on this one, anyway. You may disagree.

[John Isbell]

Hi Sarah-Jane,

Just a quick, hasty note - I am hopeful it is only preliminary - to say I find your aesthetics here really magnificent. It is splendid stuff, dreamlike and compelling. I'm glad to have discovered them and expect to return.

Cheers,
John