[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Visual poem/erasure poem and collage using paper and digital techniques. Images sourced from a contemporary fashion magazine, Wood and Sowerby (1859) The common objects of the sea shore : including hints for an aquarium and an amazing illustration, I'd guess mid (19, showing the open mouths of birds.

Hi-res image and some variations here. If anyone gets a chance to look I'd appreciate feedback on which they think work best as I don't think I've quite realised the colour and shades in this yet.

Placing in art because this is probably more art than poem but the words matter too.

Sarah-Jane

[John Riley]

I used the link and think I prefer the brightest. The last one in the column. It's more medieval, I think, more detached because the body is free of the darker colors, and for me that works best. I'm still working on how I feel about "soft" but the rest of the test is precise and suggestive. Best.

[John Isbell]

Hi Sarah-Jane,

Is that pen nibs? And insect wings, and all kinds of hair? I like it a good deal, taken as is with my bewilderment a part of that, and I love your quote. I get a small frisson!
If I had a suggestion it would be that I find what I take is three sets of hair confusing...

Cheers,
John

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Oh, wow, thank you both. I was beginning to think I'd be sitting down here solitary. Have some mint tea. I promise it's not hairy.

John R, that's the one I'm torn between - it's an earlier version but I like the luminosity of it. Also your concern about 'soft' echoes my own thoughts. That's really helpful. It's difficult with this kind of composite erasure. I can lose 'soft' though.

John I, no, not pen nibs, they're the mouths of birds from the illustration. It's a completely wonderful source material. I probably need to do it more justice than I have here tbh. Also the sonics in 'mouths of birds' is just oooh, too. Yes, about four types of hair, all part of the original hand-collage version. I'll have a think about what to do about that...

Onward! (thank you)

Sarah-Jane

[John Isbell]

I think it's always a gamble posting in some less trafficked threads. I would feel entirely justified in noting the work in more-frequented venues if it were mine. In your Met thread, for instance.

Cheers,
John

PS I really do see pen nibs there! And lots of hair, a bit like Shiva Nataraja. He's a personal fave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataraja

[F.F. Teague]

Hi Sarah-Jane,

This is pretty intriguing; and I enjoyed looking at the variations too. My impulse is to prefer the lightest tones, but that might not be the best fit with 'in the deep', I suppose. The woman seems entirely at ease with being swept away, which I like as it makes me feel at ease with the image. I like the fanned objects and the colours across all the variations. It's quite transporting, like a dream :-)

Best wishes,
Fliss

[Clive Watkins]

A striking image, Sarah-Jane… Of the versions at the link, I prefer the one that seems to be in mid-tones. The lightest is for me rather too stark, though it is clear from it that what in the darker versions do look a bit like pen-nibs are indeed the beaks of birds.

I do have a small cavil. It concerns “tenterhooks”. To be on tenterhooks is to be in a painful state of suspense or expectation, but, as Fliss has pointed out, the woman “seems entirely at ease with being swept away”.

I have another, very local problem—which no doubt will bother no one else at all. From the window of the room I am writing in I can see beyond our garden a late-eighteenth-century weaver’s cottage with its characteristic row of north-facing first-floor windows which, in the heyday of handloom weaving, would have housed perhaps two looms on which wool from sheep pastured on the moors above the village was woven into worsted. Indeed, until about ten years ago our daughter lived in just such a cottage in a village about four miles from here. A key feature of this cottage industry was the tenter-field, where the woven cloth was stretched out to dry on wooden frames called tenters. It was attached to the frame by rows of hooks on its upper and lower rails—the so-called tenterhooks. The plot on which our house stands was used in that period for just this purpose. What is more, I could take you to a number of locations in these parts which incorporate in their name the word “tenter-field”. As I say, this is for me a local problem—but, as you also note in your post, “the words matter too”.

Good luck with this!

Clive

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

John and Fliss, thank you so much.

Clive - thank you - that's brilliant and helpful. I love the tenter-field and those real, material, tenterhooks and I think it's important. I can place them somewhere in the image - add an allusion. It's also interesting - thank you for taking the time to explain.

I agree, too, that there's a kind of dissonance between the idea of tenterhooks and the floating woman. That is a trickier thing, but I agree it needs addressing. An obvious way would be to give her a different head, or a mask, but I think instead I need to find a way to explain the dissonance.

That's a challenge, but a good one. I'll have a think.

Sarah-Jane

[John Isbell]

Hi Sarah-Jane,

I’ve been enjoying your tenterhooks discussion. It would be nice to make them concrete, though as a non-artist I’m concerned it could get busy or cluttered.

I like her dress! Could it be a muslin nightdress, for the dreams, like Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen?

Cheers,
John

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Thanks John,

I will have a think about her dress. For now, here's a revision which declutters a bit (I agree with you that it was getting a bit busy), situates her in the tenter field, with a few images of real tenter hooks.

I've masked her, made her more of a thing of the landscape. Not sure if this works but it is fun trying.

And that is my time to play over and done. I need to write 2000 words of PhD today. I have coffee.



Hi-res version here.