I am fascinated by the art of Victor Hugo, recently seen at the RA. Here is a link to my essay on his work and that of Alexander Cozens. Modern Art is Over: Embrace Deep Art
There is also an article about his work in the New Statesman.
I don’t see Hugo’s work as “modern art”. The first use I can find of the word “modern”, applied to a creative act, is George Meredith’s brilliant sequence of sonnets – “Modern Love”.
This is a sequence of fifty 16-line sonnets about the failure of a marriage, an episodic verse narrative that has been described as “a novella in verse”. It first appeared in 1862. I get the sense that it was Meredith’s intention to bring love “up to date”. This notion has persisted. Modern art is up to date – it’s the latest thing, and it always has been. Neither Cozens nor Hugo seem to have been interested in being up to date. If anything their work is nostalgic, harking back to a more gothic age, a romantic notion that had already faded.
The trouble is, today, being up to date is in itself dated. Modern art has simply come to mean trendy art; more aligned to the world of fashion than to artistic aspiration. Today, genuine originality will often seem unfashionable, out on its own bizarre limb.
Very pleased to see this work by The Theatre of Mistakes on the front cover of Gazeta Grupy 404 – an arts magazine from Poznan in Poland.
Design by Maciej Koziowski.
It features a brilliant article on the relationship of art and propaganda, as well as poetry and other great pieces of writing, much of it in English as well as in Polish.
Why Runiad as the title of the epic poem I have just completed?
Rune is a word which may be translated as ‘a secret, a mystery, a rumour or a whisper’. It can also suggest an enigmatic or incantatory line of verse. I chose Runiad as a contrast to the term “Ruliad” – which is a mathematical term defined as the sum of all possible theorems. My Runiad is therefore intended as an imaginary sum, the sum of all possible rumours, spells and charms. I wrote the poem over the years 2023 to 2025. It traces certain of my own experiences during that time, as well as the gossip heard, the rumours circulating during that time, the so-called conspiracy theories (as opposed to provable theorems).
When I began it, I had no further clue as to what its content might be. I knew that there would be twenty-four books, each twenty-three pages long, with three seven-line verses per page (except for the last page, which could have between one to three verses on it). This would bring it out to being the same length as the Odyssey. It was clear that I needed to know no more than this structure, to have no preconceived notion as to the poem’s content and to only “half-know” what it was I was writing. I wanted the poem to discover its content as it was being written. In a sense I wrote it as if I were a ‘seer’, or, in the sense used by William Burroughs, an antenna; picking up the lines as if they were vibrations or airwaves.
Shiva, the god of balance, was a guiding force – so I tried to balance art with science, legend with fact, love with war, dryness with juiciness, journalism with conjecture. It is intended to be read aloud, and to be read on the page.
The complete poem can be found by clicking on this Heyzine link.
It can be read from start to finish, or it can be read by choosing a book – or even a page – at random. John Ashbery referred to a system of prognostication called “Sortes Virgilae” – by which a personal reading was obtained by opening a page of Virgil’s Aeniad at random. The same method could be applied to the Runiad.
This is one of the best poem/films I have come across. It often uses a constant moving image (reeds moving, waves breaking etc) which I have always found the ideal backdrop for focusing on the language, and Kristian Evans – who I have never heard of before – seems to me an excellent poet.
The final draft of my epic poem the Runiad is now completed. Click on the link to read Books 1 to 24:
This link above opens the final version with my own illustrations. Since they are done with graphite on a black ground, these illustrations will be difficult to reproduce in book form.
Thank you to the 2000 readers who have accompanied me as I have been writing it.
I suggest expanding the image and turning off the sound. Click the bottom corner of the page to turn the pages, and the bar below the book allows you to scroll to whichever book you want to read. Contents pages at the beginning tell you the page number of each book.
It’s great to read aloud, and I welcome invitations to come and read from it. Peter Jay is designing a printed version which will be available in 2026.
It is always the same window, one out of which they have climbed
Into the garden; leaving the house to its dreams at the fringes of sleep:
Out of it by the back stairs or in by my half of the bedroom;
Always the same low window in a corner of that parlour into which
And out of which they have climbed in bare feet in the moonlight.
Water their dreams in the back of the parlour with its low window
Opening onto that wing of the garden which has the forest branches hanging over it.
x
That aria in the parlour which is climbing up and up to the bedroom
By the window then opening so freshly onto that sleep into which they glide
Is climbing in through a low window and then up the back stairs
To the door of the guest bedroom or to that of the Moorish bedroom
Next to it. The window-sill is merely a “has been” following the secluded smells
With the same edge of that water which Boy and then Igor, Burhardt, Rudi and Eric
All pronounce bare to the moonlight. The back door of the garden
x
The guest so obscured is through the next window up the stairs.
Jenny and Arja – all pronounce it “Aria” – wash their feet in the house, or wash my feet
Where the smells of the wing in the moonlight are hung
In the parlour opening onto that secluded corner half obscured
By a rhododendron. Always the same back window climbed. Always,
Always the same low pair of branches out of which they wing,
To glide up the stairs and into the forest. Burhardt is bare and, boy,
x
They are in through that window, getting their legs over Arja and Jeanne;
Rudi is hanging over the stairs next to the Moorish ghost which hides in the wall.
The lawn slopes up to the edge of the low brickwork where the window
Is always the same; the opening, out of which they have climbed onto the fringes
Of kilims where the lawn slopes up to it, a window into and
Out of which they have climbed, Giacomo and Jeanne, getting
Their legs over the sill, or following a ghost which is merely a pair
x
Of split pantaloons up the back stairs to the guest bedroom which has been
Freshly decorated or to the Moorish one next door where the walls are hung
With kilims, one of which hides the door to the bedroom. Which? The one
Next door. Then it is Igor and Eric, at wing in the moonlight, is bare brickwork
Which has feet in it, low in the wall where the walls of the house are hung
With decorated Moorish pantaloons, and into the garden next door
To the window Jenny and Giacomo climbed through – or they split a guest in.
x
This is a poem I call a “Statheron”. In it all the words must be used an equal number of times – that is, a word cannot be used once, or an odd number of times. Here, “rhododendron” is used once, but also appears as the title. The poem can be found in my collection “ABSTRACTIONS” – which is published on this Heyzine link and can be read for free
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