word & unword
no signs without meaning – no meaning without
signs
foreshadowing my upcoming exhibition at
WORD X IMAGE GALLERY
445 High Street, Maitland 2320
Key Dates:
OPENING: SATURDAY 20th APRIL – 3 pm – 5 pm
Exhibition opened by Dr Josh Stenberg
Poetry Reading by Kit Kelen
FLYING ISLANDS WORKSHOP READINGS:
SATURDAY 4th May – 2 pm – 5 pm
CLOSING JAM & READING
SATURDAY 25th MAY – 3 pm – 6 pm
featuring Richard Tipping, Chris Mansell, Ed Wright
word & unword
The work on the wall in this show consists of (sometimes epigrammatic) handscripted fragments of poems, balanced against abstract calligraphic works. These (magnetically attached) works on paper are all about crossing and blurring lines between text and image, between what is intelligible as script in one language or another, and what might be prototypical of writing.
The work is also an exploration of what we discover of ourselves and the world when we come to the borders of sense. What’s over that border? The reader/viewer of this exhibition is led along from known words to semblances of words, to symbols, into scrawl that can never quite be meaningless. Along with the paper work on the wall are a slidewell on the floor, and a poem/music fragmented soundscape, these also distracting and de/familiarizing the viewer/listener’s expectations of presence to image and text.
The experience for anyone attempting to pay attention is that of being lost in a territory of strange lines and signs, or, conversely of coming on a journey from a wilderness of scribble into meaning/s that can be recognized and understood. In either case, a participant in the work is tasked with finding their own way, and, in fact making their own poem and meaning. One must work/ play randomly/whimsically, just as the eye is carried, or by some unknowable method, as suits.
Meaning is something humans can’t help. In defiance of a so-called
‘asemic’ orthodoxy, the hope of this walk-in work is to provide a demonstration
of the maxim –
no signs without meaning – no meaning without signs.
in dreams, unworded
for the dream journal
see where I’m not
and out of time
toss turn
a bird knocks
so the window’s
there
luggage left
tickets stray
it’s all foretelling
the past
all are otherworldly
and still slept on
soon see
we only build ruins
here
so much we can account animal
the teeth for a
start
the mood prehensile
most marks we make
unwitting
so many places in a
day
and all just where
we are
finding language lost
a word by where we are
have been
playing in the mind
all afternoon
and the undaub, too
the undaunt
words lost
where we lost
our selves
perhaps a long way off
I am not what the words are
here to memorize
what I won’t remember
in other words
good as gone
a ghost wherever I am
clocks dot day
breeze is birded
ants crawl in
how else?
the future
never to be expected
and yet we are all
there
immersed in our one
world
to swim
so silken the air
and we are
prophetic
are there things you
cannot dream?
writing too small to
read
and where I’ve gone
none follow
few skins thicker
over our heads
under heaven
there needs to be
somewhere the eye can go
that’s for a first
principle
paint
don’t ask
the question and the
answer
we call the future a
fact
.
nobody owns a word
not the first take
they were before we
were
and yet among
belongings
the fire in the tree
in the bird
all I say gone
now already said
words dear
and my departed
I dig them out
I clean the bones
still haunting with
me here
I write
I write from a
corner
less than a speck
in a certain light
at this temperature
in such a season
I come from a vanishing
so it must be with
you
I am writing a way
out
from the loss
to the lost
I am writing from
sleep
by heart
depths
and heights
the same
I am chiming in
sounding off
from under the eye
of eternity
I am writing a way
away
as if from out of
the mouths of babes
to you who so many
years hence
must as absent to
me
as I to you
it’s just in these
lines here
you won’t see me
again
words/unwords
those aching on
of the gone
lost with us
yet
and yet
mistake
misspell
miscegenate
and you can trust
the pawprints all over
take up the day
such a song of them
struggle to stumble
to fit
now face about
spew forth
cracked words
of the swerve
sly surreptitious
haunch high
poised
bend to my will
run widdershins
time has it over
and far from what is
you’ll not call them back
this is the place
you’re here
all together
I think you know
what I mean
how heedless of us
they
for godsbother
but all about their business go
except to bite
and nothing personal in that
six legs, two wings, and more
in something unjointed, like time
tucked under day and cloud and storm
uncreated
undesigned
unintended too
for all that
brighter than before
think them tellings of the weather
each to a special knowledge –
how to
by trail foredoomed
or tangent of flight
will we say they nothing doubt?
when here’s the hesitation
hail fellow, well met
all twitch antennae
so like, unlike
as we
and they come to their stillness too
go to Earth
all do
splendid
unaware
rigardu la poemon kaj ĝi kreskas
la tutan someron
supretrejnita tra ŝtormoj
mia humiligo
rigardu la poemon
laŭte
ĝi kreskas
ĝi bezonas farbon
venas el maldekstra kampo
frazo plibeliganta la agon
ĉar vi rigardis alidirekten
freŝa vetero
la flanka rigardo malkaŝas
evangelion, kiun neniu finis
falintaj folioj
ĝi faras belan fajron poste
pli granda ol iu ajn vivo
nur ĉar vi spiris
flaris laŭ trako
rigardu la poemon
ĝi kreskas
aŭskultu en la spegulo
sonĝu, ke ĝi estu tiel
look at the poem and it grows
all summer
trellised through storms
my humbling
look at the poem
outloud
it grows
it needs a lick of paint
left field
phrase embellishing the act
because you looked another way
fresh weather
the sideways glance reveals
a gospel no one finished
fallen leaves
it makes a fine fire later on
larger than any life
just because you breathed
sniff along a track
look at the poem
it grows
listen in the mirror
dream it to be so
there is a book of
the night lost lines
for the dream journal
picture pond top with sky
how all have swum to be
for a little while remember
that fancy far godshead
lie still if
all bodies heavenly thus deep
and fall to flower
dream is the finding place
lines lie there to net
we’re all so secret
tell self so you’ll know
the good news
a dream supplies all that’s required
and half the story too
do tell it
on stone
in the wings
by anything that shines
if there were other lives
we must still live them here
here’s help
in the form of a set of questions
for wise surprise
a page
blank beautiful
just as with the illusion of silence
it’s your job to wreck
to make habitation, message
a place of signs and forms
you have to ask yourself
who else?
ask
what do you want to tell the world?
what difference in words will you make?
o pointless, everything’s been said?
but no one’s been here before
you think
answers are all known?
it’s a lie!
think to be for a simple proof?
Descartes lacked ambition
we are here to discover how it is to be here
headlong, by the moment
together alone
we are the creatures for meaning
maybe you think no one is listening?
that’s the best time to sing
here’s the day coming
it hasn’t been
we live to tell
nothing meant
but we make it so
sometimes it is necessary to unscrew the head
just follow the trail by which you came
that’s the strength of it
kit yourself out with all the words given
allow!
that is the key
let leaf rise
let the rain soak in
dance with a breeze
spare a thought for gravity
let the first thing thought
have its way
let possum play up to night
deflate the heart and pump again
note
how it’s still Christmas in my socks
nothing’s killed me yet
ask
what is purpose today?
whom must we defeat?
what is it you see right now
no one else can?
what is it you never knew before?
believe that you are
and so can be
truth is a moment
let it come to you
there was never anyone ever like you
there never will be again
if you don’t think this is important
you’ll never think anything is
this is the frond’s unfurl, the flower’s
the tree decked with stars come on
it’s like the full breath of the wave
look up and let the sky in
you won’t need religion now
a thousand pictures
in a word
for wise surprise
through so many lips
heart pressed
mist flimsy
so you’ll see half through
an under over ache
trumpet bright
here’s my meadow
gnarl and gambol
take walls and in a chink
come whisper
see back
glass darkly
as through the grave
a whistle up dither
there was none in the beginning
and once there were
then never just one
centipede trail
clear as a bell
wrung of
and here the occasion rises
by breast so called
inward thump
sweat out and skate
brave bears among
by inkling alone, go
scream and fish glimmer
tangle trail treetops too
take sky from an open hand
here then goes the eye with the bird
just as per old fascination
and memory
the colour arc
any as sacred as each
little dance to
take your breath
this isn’t over yet
how far will I fail
today?
for wise surprise
until the
telling of the rain
a kookaburra
quip
and leafing
through these trees
translated
to keep up
make time
as far as
unsleep
and if I
throw the question
by terminal
velocity
off of this
great cliff I’ve built
against all
expectation
just as far
as I’m concerned
fodder and
fallow
how will I
fail?
the trail
before me followed
nor may we
invent
dizzying
weather too
must
misrepresent
surrounded
with world
as sure as we
are
a little slip
a bloodrush
misdigestion
these riches
for embarrassment
stand alone
in such socks to guess
with half
words
idea
incomplete
you couldn’t
make up
these
failures to see
a fashion for
the simple round
hole I’ll
crawl back in
I’m sharing
this with you
opus
nomu ĝin ĝardeno
ĝi trokreskas
devas esti tranĉita
vortoj, vi scias, estas speco de grundo
semo, kiu birdo kantas
estas aĉa senkulpeco
tiel brila!
ĉu mi diros
ĝi estas la suno
ĉu estas la pluvo?
mi sarkas la poemon
mi mulĉas la poemon
rastas ĝin tiamaniere
turnas ĝin sur forko
mi denove transformas ĝin en kompoŝton
tiom per kaprico
kiel kun atento
iuj aferoj kreskas nur neintence
iuj aferoj pli dolĉaj
en mia propra malapero
ĝardeno
ankoraŭ vortoj fuĝas
opus
call
it a garden
it
overgrows
has
to be cut back
words,
you know, are a sort of soil
seed,
a bird sings
there’s
a vicious innocence
so
shone!
will
I say
it’s
the sun
it’s
the rain?
I
am weeding the poem
mulching
the poem
rake
it this way
turn
it on a fork
I
am turning it into compost again
as
much by whim
as
with attention
some
things grow only unintended
some
things sweeter
in
my own vanishing
a
garden
still
words get away
all the seasons in a word
and sing before the
court of life
each to its own
gathers light
some are gigantic
and tackle the
cracks
a word is roar
material
flimsy on the tongue
translates
they’ll turn it over
with a stick
say other side is
best
though every word is
worlding
there are far stars
too
and some are said to
go
they are
tip of the tongue
ABOUT THE GALLERY
WordXimage presents cross-overs between images and words, exploring relationships between poetry, art and sound; text and picture-making; publishing and exhibiting. Wordximage is the studio gallery of poet/artist Richard Kelly Tipping, with a programme of avant-unguarded shows presenting uncertain art for certain people.
WXI (pronounced 'WiXI') is a small shopfront exhibition space located in the main street of Maitland, a historic town in New South Wales, Australia, two and a half hour's drive north of Sydney or thirty minutes from Newcastle. Join the mailing list to be alerted to openings and events on Saturday afternoons once a month. Or drop by and look through the window anytime. Sometimes open by appointment.
Contact: wordximage at gmail.com 445 High Street, Maitland 2320
Exhibition sponsored by AMF Magnetics
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