LOVE CUTS

Once upon a time in 2012 or 2013, when the poplars still stood remembering along the reflection pool at the Hyde Park Cenotaph in Sydney, Richard Tipping and I photographed and wrote about the scarifications into their bark. Mostly it was hearts and initials, sometimes a remembrance of some other kind - the day someone went to court. An arrival or departure. A cock and balls.

Each of the poplars stood like soldiers there. Silent and impassive while the people left their messages, dreams, hopes, jokes, and disasters on their flesh. (The trees have since been taken away and not replaced. Was it because they had become a place of messages? I hope not.)

We made an artists’ book called LOVE CUTS which had pictures of the scars with fragmentary text, and a short essay and poem each at the end. (There are still a very few available)

Here is my concluding poem.

Love Cuts

the poplars stand like soldiers 

they once were their grey flesh 

embodied ghosts of fathers sons who left 

those handsome boys

those mothers' darling sons

those fathers' perfect images

they are quiet in the winter sun

their shadows fall 

                      across the pool

their brave reflections mighty

with their arms raised up

                                 in horror or orison 

                            it's hard to tell

they have laid their bodies

open to the lovers walking past

those apparitions of their dreams

those walking hopes full 

of grief and love       absurd desire 

the lovers stop and smooth their hands 

along the length of that grey flesh and  

being lovers   feel the warmth and beauty

take their knives and cut 

into the flesh   a heart   a name

the poplars take it in   the names of love

at the monument the dark sad

warriors look to the ground caught in

their one act remembering 

the lovers leave 

their mark

the soldiers stay

Definition of a quad by Chris Mansell

Here is a quad - a strict form I invented and which has appeared in two collections (Stung, and Stung More) to date.

Here is the first quad in the Stung collection:

What a quad is:

1. One quad comprises 4 interlinked squares, made up of 15 characters wide x 8 lines deep, exactly. (Obviously the font chosen is fixed width. They were originally composed on a manual typewriter.) 
2. There is no punctuation, at all, including apostrophes. 
3. There are no gaps at the ends of lines
4. There are words within words.
5. The black/red is not accidental. There must be some red characters on each line. 
6. The reds form a (subsidiary) poem in itself, particularly as a sound poem. 
7. The breaks and elisions in words, and the grammatical enjambment are not accidental and contribute to the meaning, imagery, rhythm etc 
8. Subject matter can be anything: straight imagist as here, though surrealism is good.
9. There are no titles, except for perhaps numbers.

AVES

AVES and VERGE form a pair, sometime soon to be joined by a third, small collections of poems. Whereas VERGE contains three small booklets, AVES contains three folders each with a poem on the subject of birds: The Secret Lives of Birds, [five n twenty], and, Aves and Fishes.

Verging on the new!

Here is the latest limited edition publication, Verge. Each copy has three booklet of poetry inside, Ulysses takes to Sea for the first time, The Movement to Spring, and The Question Arriving.
10.5cm x 10.5cm. It is the companion publication to Aves (see www.chrismansell.com)

New out from Kardoorair

Here's the new book out from Kardoorair - more poems from yours truly:

Water

Here's the audio to a brand new one...'Water' aka 'Would Condoleezza Rice...':

bMuze.com
Title: Water Artist: Chris Mansell