Expanding Text and Magical Imagery

my problems are magnified

When I answer a comment, it comes as a very unwelcome surprise to see some of my posts now in HUGE format!  I have been having this problem from time to time, the formatting  just goes haywire (even if I use the smallest possible size – the print  just comes out  HUGE).   So when I spot this, I try to rectify it  if I can.

I noticed this had happened with my John Cooper Clarke post, still don’t know why and have changed it as best as I can.  This also drew my attention to what good fun poetry can be.  I used to write loads of poetry – lots of it very pretentious and flowery, lol!  I was into Tyrannosaurus Rex at the time (NOT T. Rex I might add – the previous band).  I just loved the way Bolan used words for their own sake.  I tried to derive meanings from these poems, but of course they didn’t really have any meaning, they were just – well, beautiful and magical:

A cobra seer with punctured ear, slaughtered a Malayan Sunbear

Night stands erect with bronzen haunches

Zapped the seer and gave the bear back to us

Salamanda Palaganda

Palomino blue

Salamanda Palaganda

June’s buffalo too

In th Parisian  Zoo

Now, I quite like the sound of the seer with punctured ear and the night standing erect on bronzen haunches, conjures up quite a picture.  How about this one (called Consuela)

Consuela, Lady tailor

Weaving deep beneath the sun,

Making things for everything that runs run

Hermitised one  you’re my little summer maid

Orchard eyed one take my love

love love

Consuela, lady tailor

Weaving deep beneath the moon

Quiver mouth casts a crooning moon rune

etc

You can almost see the workings of Bolan’s  word association with this: croon  (crone) hence the quivering mouth.  Plus the crone has to of course ‘cast’ a moon rune.  This is very much like the wyrd sisters (or the Norns, guardians of fate) from Norse Mythology who also protect the runes.  There’s a rich imagination at work amongst these lyrics.  I would always class Bolan a poet in the real sense.

Here he is  singing it with others

Altered book: in the beginning

Just getting started

 

I have been interested in altered books for a few years now.  I even contemplated making one as part of a project at University, but I never got round to it.  There is something magical about transforming the written word into a work of art.  The making of such a book incorporates the use of collage, mixed media, paper, fabric and all the media I like working in.  I started this book about 3 years ago.  I did one page and then forgot all about it until I found it again recently. 

 In one day I managed to do 4 pages: the next day I did 2.  Work on it was very sporadic and I hadn’t been going long before I realised that the print was quite small and was being overwhelmed by the images.  It was important to me that some of the original text was retained.  This could be a word or a sentence of my own choosing.  So I went through the first few pages choosing the text.

  I had absolutely no idea of how the page would look in advance, I responded in an instinctual way: the way the words spoke to me!  After I had chosen my words, I then went through the book adding colour to pages (including those I hadn’t chosen the text of yet) and employed different media, like oil pastel, acrylics, pen and ink.  I ripped, punched and clipped pages wherever I wanted with no thought to how the end product would look, I just knew that I didn’t want it to be ‘pretty’ or like a scrapbook.