Today I lay down in the street (outside Pret). Haven’t lain down in the street since performance art events in the 70s. Must say it felt very good!
Young people are realising that protest is a bonding. It energises. Nippers are having fun waving flags and chanting. As the Gaza demonstrations get bigger and bigger, a whole new generation, more than one generation, of activists is being brought to life. The lion of the people has awoken at last. Bystanders are cheering, lots of vehicles are hooting their encouragement. This bodes well for the future.
We seem to have entered into a time of lean years. I feel that the horrors of our time cannot be ignored.
Seeking to deal with my anxiety in art, I created several slide-show videos using drawings I made with my eyes shut. The first of these was a short video sketch called WAR
Then (also with my eyes shut – as with all slideshow videos on this post) I made another video called LOVE, INDUSTRY and WAR
Both these videos found poetic expression in The Runiad book 1 – which deals with the relationship between Venus and her husband Vulcan and her affair with Mars (to use the Latin names).
This dealt with the story of Samson and his destruction of Gaza. This finds poetic expression in Book 2 of the Runiad. Here is a link to the Heyzine online book of this work THE RUNIAD
Click on the smaller images to see a better resolution view.
There is a link at the end of that post to previous extracts (from books 1-4) that The Fortnightly has posted.
There is a link in the post’s introduction to the Complete Heyzine flipbook version of Books 1-7 – which can also be accessed here. Actually it is better to use this link, as the poem is constantly being worked on, altered, improved, and this links to the latest version of the whole.
On the Heyzine page, I suggest turning off the sound and enlarging the text. Pages can be turned by clicking on the arrow at the foot of the page to the right, while clicking to the left turns the pages the other way.
3 pm Sunday October 6. Featuring Michelene Wandor and Anthony Howell
Hosted by Marian Eastwood and Patricia Ahern
*
The Room, 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale/Bruce Grove
London N17 9AS – enquiries: 0208 801 8577
Open mike. BYO – suggested contribution £5 – all contributions go to the featured poets. Bring your books to display.
Michelene Wandor is a dramatist, poet, cultural commentator and musician. She has written countless (well, over 60!) plays and dramatisations for Radios 3 and 4, as well as books about theatre and gender and Creative Writing. Her most recent poetry is ‘Ergo’ (Arc Publications, 2024), and, with her early music group, ‘Siena’, she made the first UK CD of the secular and sacred music of Salamone Rossi, the early 17th-century composer and contemporary of Monteverdi. The Italian world of the latter also forms the subject of her first novel, ‘Orfeo’s Last Act’, short-listed for the Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Prize.
Anthony Howell is a poet and novelist whose first collection of poems, Inside the Castle was brought out in 1969. In 1986 his novel In the Company of Others was published by Marion Boyars. Another novel Oblivion has recently been published by Grey Suit editions. He was invited to the International Writers Program, University of Iowa in 1971. His Selected Poems came out from Anvil, and his Analysis of Performance Art is published by Routledge. His poems have appeared in The New Statesman, The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement.His articles on visual art, dance, performance and poetry have appeared in many journals and magazines including Artscribe, Art Monthly, The London Magazine, and Harpers & Queen. In 1997 he was short-listed for a Paul Hamlyn Award for his poetry. His versions of the Silvae of Statius have been well received and Plague Lands, his versions of the poems of Iraqi poet Fawzi Karim, were a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for 2011.
anthonyhowelljournal 