You visit this place
You do not stay long
There’s nothing here
that speaks of settlement
Everything you do has an edge
of intensity wet by the weather
sharpened by the clock
If you try to be still
in what passes for shelter
the wind will find you
seek you out
So with the camera your primary tool
begin to collect - image after image after image
Point and click : view and share
Eventually the mark-making begins
though fraught with difficulty
it seems just hopeless this testing out
of the body’s response to what passes
before the scanning eye
Blink
and the image shifts
There is this fierce and on-going campaign
between the near : between the far
What lies at your feet : what decorates the horizon.
After a few hours wrapped round in nature’s vortex
the eye and brain are exhausted by the profusion of it all
wearied by the press of wind, the touch of rain, the glare of sun
Always the problem of what you do
with what you’ve seen
and touched with cold hands
pulling out metal objects from the sand
whose rusted and distressed forms
will lie exposed on the studio table
The place marks you Rain and wind on the face
raise new freckles there’s a salty veneer to the skin
the rub of sand : a wash of seawater
the grasp of pebbles : wood’s chiromatic grain
The lexicon of texture expands under your fingers
changes of temperature : degrees of saturation
and further uncompromising perspectives
unimaginable yet in two dimensions
Beyond beachcombing this is seacoast surgery
Away from it all (and out of the wind)
your memory stretches to the corners of recall
Wandering through a home-centred day
as in a waking dream
knowing you’ve already gathered
all manner of sensory matter
held and stored in the pineal gland
flowing free in Meissner’s corpuscles
Even absorbed in conversation’s company
as you turn away to fill the kettle
you are on the beach back in the wind
scanning the memory tin : priming the future.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 3:54 AM UTC
You visit this place
You do not stay long
There’s nothing here
that speaks of settlement
Everything you do has an edge
of intensity wet by the weather
sharpened by the clock
If you try to be still
in what passes for shelter
the wind will find you
seek you out
So with the camera your primary tool
begin to collect - image after image after image
Point and click : view and share
Eventually the mark-making begins
though fraught with difficulty
it seems just hopeless this testing out
of the body’s response to what passes
before the scanning eye
Blink
and the image shifts
There is this fierce and on-going campaign
between the near : between the far
What lies at your feet : what decorates the horizon.
After a few hours wrapped round in nature’s vortex
the eye and brain are exhausted by the profusion of it all
wearied by the press of wind, the touch of rain, the glare of sun
Always the problem of what you do
with what you’ve seen
and touched with cold hands
pulling out metal objects from the sand
whose rusted and distressed forms
will lie exposed on the studio table
The place marks you Rain and wind on the face
raise new freckles there’s a salty veneer to the skin
the rub of sand : a wash of seawater
the grasp of pebbles : wood’s chiromatic grain
The lexicon of texture expands under your fingers
changes of temperature : degrees of saturation
and further uncompromising perspectives
unimaginable yet in two dimensions
Beyond beachcombing this is seacoast surgery
Away from it all (and out of the wind)
your memory stretches to the corners of recall
Wandering through a home-centred day
as in a waking dream
knowing you’ve already gathered
all manner of sensory matter
held and stored in the pineal gland
flowing free in Meissner’s corpuscles
Even absorbed in conversation’s company
as you turn away to fill the kettle
you are on the beach back in the wind
scanning the memory tin : priming the future.
Spurn Head is a narrow sand spit on the tip of the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England that reaches into the North Sea and forms the north bank of the mouth of the Humber estuary. It is over 3 miles (4.8 km) long, almost half the width of the estuary at that point, and as little as 50 yards (46 m) wide in places. The southernmost tip is known as Spurn Head or Spurn Point and is the home to an RNLI lifeboat station and disused lighthouse. To find out more about this place and the poem go to http://spurnpointartistinresidence.blogspot.co.uk
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