Yesterday was an exciting day for us, as we brought my poems to CCA to be hung! The exhibition opens on Saturday, and it looks AMAZING. Here is a sneak peak!
Iona and I are both so pleased, and so glad to be in great company with the other exhibiting artists, who work in oils, ceramic and steam-bent trugs!
If you have the opportunity to drop in, it runs from Saturday 3rd to 25th March, on Trinity Street in Cambridge. I’d love your feedback, so feel free to get in contact. The gallery is hosting a reading 6-7pm on 15th March, which I am really looking forward to. It will be an opportunity to hear the poems, some fen music created by Dom Howard for the event, incorporating a Fen soundscape, to hear more about the process of collaboration, to meet Iona and I, and a glass of wine. It is FREE but you need to sign up on the website. THERE IS TALK OF FEN THEMED CANAPÉS. So it’s basically an immersive experience of the Fens.
Another way to gain an immersive experience of the Fens is to go for a walk. Iona, Meg the dog and I did just that this morning. It was magical, bleak, and, when the wind blew on us, like swimming in ice.
I’ll be writing more over the next few days about what it’s been like to collaborate with Iona, and what I’ve learned through the process. But for now I’m just going to bask in the pleasure of having been able to realise this amazing opportunity with an artist I greatly admire.
One of my hopes for this year as Fenland Poet Laureate is to collaborate with a fenland artist whose work I love, the esteemed Fine Art Printmaker Iona Howard. From the moment I saw her work I was given a new way to articulate my feelings about the place I was living in. Those massive, stark, uncompromising, beautiful landscapes have haunted me ever since. I recall the (problematic) distinction that Edmund Burke drew between the beautiful and the sublime.
I was delighted when I discovered that Iona was inspired by the same fenland landscape as I am, that is, the one closest to us. It’s the space in which she walks her dog and I (used to!) run. It makes me wonder; what is it about a familiar landscape that calls our attention? Is it knowing a place through different seasons? Is it the repetition that allows us to lose ourselves in thought? Is the rhythm of movement an anchor which holds the ship of the mind in place long enough to notice? Can you become overfamiliar with a place?
Iona and I have started seeking out new places together. We’ve been walking in Kingfishers Bridge nature reserve and seeing what that corner of the Fen has to offer. So far I can’t say I’ve had an epiphany but I did get a powerful electric shock! Here are some images Iona took on the ‘mountain’.
It was windy up there!
Kate Caoimhe Arthur 