Dear Roo (blossom, alphabet)

Inger Christensen’s alphabet, the pastoral, a poem

Dear Roo,

Hope you’re doing good! How funny was it the other day when Julia was staying and she sent you a photo of Inger Christensen’s alphabet? Twintuition? (Thanks so much for the book by the way, god it’s good.)

Inger’s so right, ‘as tree after tree foams up in / early summer, a passion, passion in it all, / as if in the air's play with elm keys falling / like manna there existed a simply sketched design’

Outside our window, Bethnal Green

These lines are taken from the L section, and the word ‘passion’ in Danish is lidenskab — I’d love to know if they use this word for ‘The Passion of the Christ’ in Denmark. (I can picture you on your iPad googling this cross-legged next to the fireplace at xmas.) In English, I can’t help but recall George Shaw’s Scenes from the Passion: the Blossomiest Blossom, and also feel that Ailbhe Darcy’s description of the poem’s ‘prayerfulness’ is exactly right; ‘it expresses the leap of faith involved in thinking about a horror that is happening now but not here’.

George Shaw, Scenes from the Passion: Blossomiest Blossom 2001

Now but not here. Here but not yet.

Timothy Morton refers to an “information dump mode” in writing about ecology and environment, and argues that we employ this mode because—like Freudian PTSD dreamers—we are trying to locate ourselves “at a fictional point in time before global warming happened. We are trying to anticipate something inside which we already find ourselves”.

Rings true to me! Anyway, below is my own little recent riff on Alphabet (that’s why it was near the top of the books pile when Julia found it). I would literally love it if someone described one of my poems as Freudian PTSD info dumping haha; maybe I’ll have to dump out a few more.

Just a Key Change In Your Father’s Hold Music


m is for the public square
too good to pause so the fish
appear in medical grade canals

Read the rest 
                        or just look at the pictures i won't judge

Photograph: Andrea Pattaro/AFP via Getty Images. Source: The Guardian

Gianluca @lucadb

Venice hasn't seen clear canal water in a very long time. Dolphins showing up too. Nature just hit the reset button on us

Shona McAndrew, Stacy, 2019 paper mâché, aluminium, acrylic paint, and wig. Source: ArtPlugged

Lots of love,

Sammi x