Vanity confronting truth

So, 

this is truth, who has arrested me,

just when I was  trying to escape?

She holds me fast

and forces me to think.

The hairs start rising on my nape.

The artist is a master of 3 D.

I’m gripped

by the illusion;

she reaches out to me.

If truth is beauty,

beauty truth,

what hope remains for those of us

who have let go their youth.

The artist leaves behind no name

and yet his work survives by standing here.

Perhaps she paints herself,

and thus lives on for ever more;

or maybe he, in jest,

immortalised his whore.

My vanity requires that I dwell here.

Let me be famous, not an empty skull;

admired by my friends

and everyone who feels my pull.

I see your face.

It shines astonishingly bright.

I see your face is shining

Even in the confines of my dreams at night.

Is this a Goddess that I see before me,

fingering the frame above my head.

Wait.

I do not see myself.

The mirror just reflects the skull instead.

There’s only darkness where there should be light.

The deepest darkness sits

where I  should find the very brightest light.

That can’t be right.

I’m so afraid that truth

will find me light weight on her scales,

I have reflected me within the picture frame.

I truly think that this might work,

if my poor poem fails.

Copyright      nick owen

The Kore Ignores the Deeds of Artemis

         http://www.flickr.com/photos/29320962@N07/8729609336/in/photolist-eipwHN

I'm supposed to stand impassive
while the arch-eyed Artemis wades
in with shins thick as cedars, stops
the gobs of her horn-eared dogs
with giants' heads. I have averted
my gaze for centuries, as stone sweat
drips from big-men's armipts when
the canines sink into their brains,
and as if by reflex, their index
fingers gouge out eyes. My mouth
is stretched into the most artificial
grin I can muster, my hair done
in braids, my nipples perpetually
raised beneath the muslin-alabaster -
and my arm, knocked off long ago
by some clumsy jobsworth, still
proffers an invisible hare. I do it
by staring without pupils, so I
cannot see the moon. Last night,

I dared to look - and as the giants die,
a bead of blood runs down my inner thigh.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2013. Inspired by a fortuitous juxtaposition in the Cast Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum: a group of Korai (women depicted in the height of late-archaic fashion, with brightly-painted clothes, holding out offerings of small animals) from the Athenian Acropolis, stand opposite an extraordinarily visceral cast from the Great Altar at Pergamon, depicting the battle between the Giants and the Gods.

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.