Writing and visual arts

Recently I've been writing poems. They are absurd and deliberately scan awkwardly, but I'm not sure how/if they fit into a visual art practice. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Here is a little thing what I done jotted down while I gazed over a twilight Glasgow and a highland cow grazed furtively beside me. Its about life and the absurdity of equality and all that hippie nonsense.

GOD’S FINGERPRINT

From up here nothing is as it seems,
Like our colourless daydreams,
Shimmering in and out
Of shadows and light,
In the restless haze
Of a ruminating lout,
And a world awaiting night.

Scale is a hard thing to grasp,
From its constant glissade
Over parades and purlieus,
Like an endless ocean sparkling
With the burgundy hues of dawn
Behind a lurid City sprawling
On the curved horizon.

And its through this blinding liquid,
This glue which ties
To eternal checkmate
The Boreal and the broccoli,
That we wade, each of us alone, irate,
And struggling to see,
Where the beauty lies.

As the eternal balance measures,
All things relate in stance,
But not all pleasures have equal perch,
To strive for such is to strive for death,
So we know, yet still we search
For life’s significance.

And as we searched,
Connections grew and splintered
Branching spontaneously,
Facsimiled anew, though filtered
As you pull back and close in,
To the endless fractal of

By Michael, Aged 21

3 comments:

  1. Hey dude, I'm interested to know why you think poetry may not work in a visual practice?

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  2. Me being me, I'd maybe pass up on properly reading the text in a gallery being unable to concentrate through background noise or too easily distracted by other work (at times it can be a battle to just about get through reading descriptions of works).

    In a gallery context for some reason I'd much prefer to hear the poem being read if you could maybe record it? Though that could perhaps sway the audiences reaction- as the narrator will inevitably state a tone. Perhaps you could simply use the text acting almost as subtitles on a monitor minus the narrator and/or imagery?

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