Poem by Peter Malin for 5th October

Object     Ennui, painting by Walter Sickert (1917-18)

Gallery 63      Sickert and his Contemporaries

Poem

All Over

The scene’s mundane, banal; love’s at an end

In this drab room

Whose sickly décor wears the ochre hues

Of autumn’s fading.

Here we view this man, this woman,

Studiously absent from each other’s gaze,

Reiterating their thoughts’ tormented libretti

As the room plays and replays

Its sullen symphony of brown.

SHE: We thought love star-begotten, angel-blest,

Needless of nurture: lovers’ grained-in fault;

And so we squandered starlight unconfessed,

Smudged its bright promise to this yellowed vault

Where, joined but separate in the artist’s eye,

We thank our stars there’s nothing left alive to die.

HE:   My gaze aspires to space’s lightless vault,

Aches for the joy of universal dark,

Thinks to oblivion all that was my fault

In snuffing, quenching, love’s defenceless spark.

The artist’s palette paints our lives to brown,

But cannot limn the void where, lost and deep, we drown.

New poem by Paul Surman for gallery reading on 5 October.

STILL LIFES

A red drift veined in the marble table top,

the plump lustre of those grapes.

Studied inflorescence in a vase,

that knife not carelessly laid down.

The spiralled curl of half-peeled fruit

placed purposely to test the painter's art,

the drop of water that bulges inside

its surface tension. They are not the story.

After obsessive precision, long hours

of patient lingering over details,

they are merely a collection of surfaces,

shine and sheen, transparency and glint.

But painted objects lend weight to the mind

as if they or thought could be grasped

Painting by Claire Peeters 

Room 48

summer school images

Poetry confronting art; update

Just a couple of places left on the summer school at the Ashmolean exploring ekphrastic poetry.

We will be seeking assistance from forces in the unconscious to find a piece of art which moves us and create a poem that does it justice.

The schedule will be flexible, but goes approximately like this.

Day 1  7th August

10.30 welcome with tea/coffee.

10.40 Introducing ourselves

10.50  Presentation: Poetry at the Museum

11.10 Psychological Induction for exploring the museum with a poet's inner eye.

11.30 Finding your art work. Visiting the museum galleries.

12.30  Reconvene  in the lecture theatre. Discussion of the story so far.

12.45 - 1.30 Lunch break; tea and coffee available at 1.30.

1.30 - 3.15 Putting your ideas on paper. Form and content. Shaping words into poetry

3.15 - 3.30 Archetype and image. The core experience of poem and art.

            

 

Day 2.   8th August

10.30 Dream and daydream - sharing creative processes. Tea/coffee

10.40 Using a camera or visual ideas to enhance writing. Poem-picture making. Ekphrastic poetry.

11.00 Revisiting the art in the museum. 

11.30 Your poem takes shape. Individual coaching.

12.45 - 1.30 lunch Tea/coffee on return

1.30 - 3.10 Writing with support.

3.10 - 3.30  Sharing work, feedback and goodbyes.

A few places still available on the summer school

http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=123&catid=938&prodvarid=567

There are just a few places left on the course, poetry confronting art, 7/8 August 2013 at The Ashmolean. There is just time left to apply for a bursary of the full cost of the course if you have signed up. Send an ekphrastic poem about an object in the Ashmolean to me at the e-mail address of this weblog, once you have enrolled. The best poem wins. I am very much looking forward to helping people find inspiration for creative poetry writing. Do remember to bring a camera or smartphone with you to the course if you have one. Don't worry if not, the museum can lend you one. cameras are not essential, but your images can help you develop your work.

Poetry confronting art; a summer school at The Ashmolean Museum 7/8 August

http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=123&catid=938&prodvarid=567

Please contact Nick Owen directly on 07962532478 to learn more about this course.

Diana Moore: Pan and his Pipes

http://www.ashmoleanprints.com/image/383266/italian-padua-inkstand-pan-listening-to-echo

Name of poet:                DIANA MOORE                           date sent in:  3^rd June 2013

Title of poem:   PAN AND HIS PIPES

Name of object in the museum:   PAN LISTENING TO ECHO

Number and name of Gallery in the museum:   WESTERN ART, GALLERY 43

Pan and his pipes.  Pan and his pipes . Pipes, pipes, pipes.

Pan and his pipes.  Pan and his pipes.  Pipes, pipes, pipes.

He’s stopped and he’s stopped in his tracks.  Tracks.

What is it in the air that he lacks?   Lacks, lacks.

I have waited in the meadow with the flowers.  Hours

Sweet are the daisy and cowslip.  Slip

Here in the meadow, alone by and by

I sigh.  Sigh.

Where are you Echo my love?   I Love.

You are my only love. Am I your only one?  Only one.

Here am I for you always, to no other will I go.  Go.

Is that you singing in the leaves, don’t leave me.  Leave me.

Alone, I don’t want to be alone.  Alone.

What say you plants…?

Come Crested dogs-tail.  I ail.

Do you feel low, as I do, Musk mallow?

Are you ill for love, Tormentil?

Here among the Meadow Brome.  I roam

I roam and seek your presence.  Essence.

I have waited in the meadowsweet meadow.  Oh!

Echo, come take my hand.  And

I will wait for you here in the meadow. Oh! Woe!

©Diana Moore

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Diana writes and performs for both children and adults.  Her poetry workshops are fun and interactive.  For further information, or to book an event, please contact Diana via her website or on mobile:  07789 302995.  www.diana-moore.com

Information sourced from the Ashmolean research team.

Pan Listening to Echo

Attributed to DESIDERIO DA FIRENZE

(active Veneto 1532 – 45)

Padua or Venice, 1520 - 30

Long regarded as one of the most poetic small bronzes of the Italian Renaissance, the so-called Pan listening to Echo was the first bronze that Fortnum ever acquired. 

The classical god of the woods and fields is here shown in near-human form, with only his small horns, sharp pointed ears and tuft of tail betraying his true nature.   More commonly depicted in art as a satyr-like figure driven by his animal instincts, Pan is depicted in quite a different light in the story of his vain love for the nymph Echo, which appears in Greek pastoral poetry.  Around the beginning of the sixteenth century, the story enjoyed renewed popularity because of the enormous success of the poem Pan and Echo by the great poet Poliziano, first published in 1494.  These haunting verses, in which the echo responds to the lover’s lament, are a perfect gloss on the bronze and may well have directly inspired it.

Che fai tu Echo mentre chio ti chiamo? Amo.

Ami tu duo/ o pur un solo? un solo.

E io te sol e non altri amo: altri amo

Dunque non ami tu un solo? Un solo

Questo è un dirmi inon tamo: inon tamo

Quel che tu ami: amil tu solo? Solo

Chi tha levato dal mio Amore? Amore

Chef a quello achi porti Amore? Ah more.

Note:  The above is an extract from a longer (two-page) article.

Inspiration for the piece ~ a note from Diana Moore

I was taken with gentleness of Pan in this bronze, as well as the title Pan Listening to Echo.  I was curious as to why he is depicted in this almost human form (he has toes, while the satyr-like Pan god has cloven hooves).  I like the detail and quality (you need to see his back for the muscle detail).  I could see scope to write a musical piece, however, for this occasion, I have experimented with an echo poem.  I met with a native Italian to get a translation of the old poem (above) and this gave me a starting point for my own work.

Greek Mythology

There are a number of stories of Echo in Greek mythology.  Firstly, Echo had her power of speech taken away by Zeus’s wife, Hera  (see the tale of Echo and Hera);  secondly,  Echo fell in love with Narcissus, but Narcissus was only in love with himself.  Thirdly, Pan fell in love with Echo but Echo did not love him back and that is the angle I have chosen to write about, Pan’s vain love for Echo.

There is a more harrowing tale of Pan and Echo in which she is torn to shreds for rejecting Pan, and there is yet another story that suggests Pan and Echo were married and had two children…!