Imperishable? Imperishable.
alchemical notes #12
(Derek Jarman as Miss Crêpe Suzette, wining the Alternative Miss World in 1975. Photograph: Barry Lategan)
an anne boyer poem from her new pamphlet, money city sick as fuck (order a copy here!)
a radio show on the music of new weird britain? idk quite how i feel about this whole strain of things, being interested very much in folklore and history and not at all in nationalism or damaging national mythologies… but i’m interested to listen.
zefyr lisowski ‘s poem ‘POEM IN WHICH NOTHING HAPPENS, AUGUST 3RD, 1892’, which features this diagram:
one of my neural network poems got read out on night call last week? it’s my favourite podcast and so this was Very Exciting.
someone needs to assemble an anthology of poems in dialogue with star trek. include this poem by dayna patterson, and bianca stone’s poem ‘You Were Lost in the Delta Quadrant’, a version of which is the second poem here.
(still from daughters of the dust, dir. julie dash)
where to submit for june, july, and august. i find these lists pretty overwhelming so i tend to recommend juct clicking on a few that you are drawn to, reading the website a bit, and then considering applying if you like the stuff there? but some people might prefer to make their way through methodically. idk, you do whatever works best for you.
These three poems by Emily Pérez which play with language in a wonderful way:
I submerged my hands in the frozen pond,
If I could hold myself prone on smoldering coals,
I could mold your father’s half prayer into one half of a son.Hans my Hedgehog, Hans my Hoped For, Hans One Half of my Heart.
(still from Beau Travail, dir. claire denis)
I have a portfolio of poems in the next issue of the white review, and you can read two of the poems online here.
i’m also reading at the next white review issue launch on the 20th june, in peckham. it’s a joint white review and n+1 party, which is extremely fancy in a deeply hilarious way, and i will probably embarrass myself, but please come along if you’re in london and free.
Last Sunday, I went with my family (hi, mum!) and Tom to Kew Gardens. I’d never been before, and although I wore unsuitable shoes and became fairly tired from the walking around, I really loved it.
Not many of the orchids were out yet. I was walking through a section of a glasshouse dedicated to them and heard a young woman telling her mum about the orchids she’d seen this year in the wild - which had started to bloom already. And I thought: How do I get to see more, later in the summer? Probably not Kew again. But I bet there are places closer to home.
We don’t have a garden. We keep killing pot plants. But we do have one pink flower on our kitchen windowsill that was blooming all winter, and it kept going all spring, and it’s really enjoying the start of summer weather too.
I feel like the stereotype of nature writing is that it’s a lot of people writing about flowers. And obviously, people doing nature writing, ecological writing, environmental writing… are covering so much about the world, and most of that is not flowers. But yet. They are astonishing and moving to look at. As are non-flowering plants and fungi… At one point I came across a mimosa plant and got VERY excited in the middle of the glasshouse. “These plants can learn! No, really!”
(these are not mimosas)
Anyway - it was an illuminating day and I wish I could go there more, but it’s expensive and on the other side of London from me, so it’s a pain to get to. Still, easier to visit than the Eden Project. But it has made me think more about walking outside and going out of my way to see more gardens this summer: maybe even ones that aren’t largely kept in glasshouses.
I wanted butterflies and caterpillars. I understand why they don’t want them in the glasshouse, feeding on the rare plants! But I want to see them all the same. It’s the difference between a closed system, behind glass, and… a system existing in the world, more freely (depending on things like pesticides, etc.)
I don’t have a real summation, or a way to really tie this back to poetry. Other than to say I’m interested in reading about flowers, and plants in general - both on their own, under glass, and… out there. Being eaten by caterpillars. And the world. Growing anyway. I would attach a photo of the pink flower, but it’s not going to be very impressive to people other than me and Tom, I don’t think. But at least it’s not dead yet? I’ll report back in the autumn. Cross your fingers for us. 🌸
(from little folks in Busy-land, 1916)
Writing Prompt: Make a list of kitchen appliances, crockery, cutlery, and any other small objects you find useful around the house. Now pick a handful of them. Write a poem made up of descriptions of flowers that are mimicking these appliances and objects. What would a screwdriver orchid look like? What about a spoon lily? How would they smell?
Writing Prompt: Write a recipe poem, or a spell poem. Start off with a recipe or a spell that you know well, then start to change it. Replace half of the ingredients. Inverse the instructions. Swap the order around. List more ingredients at the end. Choose the end product by some kind of random process - by browsing the dictionary, or Brewer’s Phrase and Fable, or some other compendium. Try not to think about it too much, and please don’t aim for any kind of internal coherency. Come back to it a week or two later, and read with fresh eyes. Are there still threads you can follow? Do instructions ever make sense? What kind of magic will this conjure when read out loud, or posted online?