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September 2011
Founder-member active in Australia
Poet Lisa D’Onofrio has recently returned to Melbourne after 17 years. She is a literature activist and literacy advocate, and is currently directing the Castlemaine Children’s Literature Festival, as well as running a literacy project for St Luke's. She has recently perfomed in Poetry Idol for the Melbourne Writers Festival. A recent poem can be seen here.
This Poem
This poem wears green eye shadow, and rainbow lipstick
This poem doesn’t own a clock, but knows how one ticks
This poem says – Wham, Bam, Thank You – Sir
This poem sports politically correct faux fur
This poem drives a silver Aston Martin DB4
With fluffy dice, fat wheels and four on the floor
It’s automatic, systematic and culturally clued
This poem rhymes when it doesn’t have to
This poem gives – and gets – oral pleasure
This poem is like, yeah, you know, whatever
This poem is gold-dipped, glitter-dusted and fairy-wanded
It knows a life half lived is a whole life squandered
This poem remembers a time before cellulite
This poem’s a pacifist but loves a good fight
This poem is bound for glory, this poem
Yee haa
This poem salutes irony, sarkiness and farce
This poem swaps showers for long soaks in the bath
This poem eats chocolate, and doesn’t brush its teeth,
This poem swims with dolphins, in the Great Barrier Reef
This poem has a personal trainer, but only for tea
This poem wears a singlet, and watches crap TV
This poem dyes its hair, and shows off its roots
This poem stands on one leg, and plays a small flute
This poem knows
when the writer is locked, and off floats the key
It can be whatever it needs to be.
This poem can fricassee, fillet a fish and quenelle
It’s a plus sized model on the cover of Elle,
It can strip wallpaper, plumb a kitchen and re-invent
But doesn’t give a toss of rocket cos it can only afford to rent
This poem is a greenie eco freaky nerd,
Cos it knows a poem is ultimately just recycled words.
Lisa D'Onofrio
The Painter of the Angels at Barton Turf
Long hours I worked, late into nights
when the milk of the moon lit my hand.
I had a team of painters with me –
bright-eyed youngsters and solid men
calm and capable with their brushes –
but it was my hand that drew the lines
that coaxed the nine orders of angels
into this church set in rippling fields.
One day, it seemed, the angels were empty
shapes; the next dawn they’d arrived
with a whisper of feathers, a hiss of silk,
on the good, strong feet I’d drawn for them.
They came clothed in scarlet feathers,
white ermine, rose damask,
smelling faintly of incense and lilies,
of palm branches and ringing steel:
Seraphim, burning red with love;
golden Cherubim, all-seeing;
green-winged Thrones, Dominions,
blue Virtues; devil-scourging Powers;
Principalities, Archangels in armour,
and Angels guarding naked souls.
All this was eight centuries ago.
but still they glow in dappled light,
listening to prayers, readings and song,
and rooks and sparrows taking flight.
Caroline Gilfillan
Angels at Barton Turf
This summer I was commissioned to write a poem for Art Alive in Churches, a Norfolk initiative linking churches with artistic and community projects. Did you know that Norfolk has more medieval churches and rood screens (which used to separated the chancel and altar from the nave) than any other place in the world? No: neither did I. But, full of curiosity I bowled over to the church or St Michael and All Angels at Barton Turf, to marvel at one of the best preserved rood screens in the country, and wrote a poem (below) to celebrate the painter of the angels that are depicted on the screens. It was exhibited, beside photographs of the rood screen and paintings by Maz Jackson, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist.
June, July and August found me working as poet-in-residence at Natural Surroundings, a small and beautiful nature reserve at Bayfield near Holt. I wrote poems, ran workshops and hosted readings in the café. A beautiful place that deserves your support.
Annette Rolston and I ran a brilliant workshop at Burlingham Hall, in which we combined poetry and print. Run over two days, most of the first was devoted to writing short pieces inspired by the setting, then these poems were combined with artwork to make prints on the second day.
The next few months are going to be busy for me. I’ll be running a Life Writing workshop as part of the COAST Cromer and Sheringham Arts Festival on Wednesday 26 October from 10.00 a.m. to 3.00 pm. Details from www.casaf.co.uk Early October will find me running a reminiscence project with patients of the Mile End Hospital. I’m also offering a memoir writing course in Burnham Market in October and November, on Tuesday mornings. If interested, please email me on Caroline.Gilfillan@btinternet.com
I’ve got my nose stuck into the Diary of Samuel Pepys right now as I’m drafting a series of poems about his life and his family. The poems will appear in my new collection, to be published by Hawthorn Press in 2012. I’m also working on a series of poems based on earlier flings, affairs and great loves (which could be risky, but is certainly interesting).
Click here for Poem commissioned for Art Alive 2011
Caroline Gilfillan
Syleham Light
At Syleham bridge
light from nowhere paints
abstracts on the tree-lined river:
modern art on ancient canvas
A ladder leads into troubled water
and an empty bench waits for the right man
or woman
Not quite angel country
but rumours of a dove persist
somewhere upstream
and the bright white walls of
Tollbridge Cottage
stand sentry for free
as needles weave summer
into patchwork veins
and the usual suspects
pretend to leave
Annette is in fashion
Artist Annette Rolston has moved into the world of fashion and was featured in a full-page article in the Norwich Evening News on September 6. She is collaborating (in the spirit of InPrint) with Lizzie Wenman, a Diss girl fresh out of college, to design a collection for Norwich Fashion Week.
But she says: “I don’t feel that I have made a transition from artist to fashion designer. I regard myself as more of a textile designer, and the move into fashion is a natural development of my work.”
Their designs can be seen at Ethika at the Open Store event, during Norwich Fashion Week, on September 27. For more information, visit the Ethika website and the Norwich Fashion Week website, www.ethika.co.uk and www.en24.co.uk/nfw.
Meanwhile she and fellow InPrint artist Mike Fenton are taking part in the Waveney Springs Open Studios. They are at the Two Fish Gallery, Bridge Green Farm, Gissing Rd, Burston, IP22 5UD. Phone number is 01379 740528
Annette’s artwork is also featured in the new crafts and vintage inspired shop, Purple Door, at 7 Cobbs Yard, Diss, IP22 4EP. Email sarahbush3@yahoo.co.uk
or phone: 01379 651245.
The Modern Menagerie show, in which Annette collaborated with Di Griffiths and bookbinder Judith Ellis, has moved from the Cork Brick gallery in Bungay to the Singing Soul Gallery at Cranbrook in Kent.
Meanwhile poet Caroline Gilfillan has completed her summer as poet-in-residence in the beautiful setting of the Natural Surroundings café and gardens at Bayfield, near Holt. Among other things she is now working with InPrint poet Tim Lenton and others on a new Paston project.
The aim is to produce new poems and artwork for a second book inspired by the Paston letters and history. This will be a lower key affair than the £1000 handmade book produced three years ago and which was on show most recently at Blofield Church on September 10, but the aim is partly to look at the later Pastons as well as the Pastons in Norwich and at Oxnead. If all goes well, the new book will be on sale at Dragon Hall’s Paston Weekend in Norwich in November.
The redesigned Paston website can be found at www.pastonheritage.co.uk.
Tim is at present also involved with the Waveney and Blyth arts project, which is based on the two rivers and surrounding areas. He wrote some poems and took photographs for the Soulscape presentation at the Seagull Theatre in Lowestoft on September 2. He will also be judging a poetry competition.