Reading on Perception (3): 'Objects and Enquiry' (E12), Sunday 15th November 2020, 3-4pm
Our host for this event is Paul Stephenson
Objects and Enquiry
Objects can have a powerful hold over us. An old rug can be just an everyday object or it can hold a world of memories in its threadbare patterns. We all look at, and understand them, in different ways – finding memories, secrets, fears and surprises. Olivia Dawson’s poems relate to how we perceive objects to which we are sentimentally attached. ‘Unfolded’ is a poetry pamphlet whose theme evolved through the discovery of a box of antique hand fans belonging to her father. The poems play with the fabulous words relating to fans and also explore how we reveal, or hide ourselves, with what we put on display. Richard Skinner’s fourth collection Invisible Sun sets out to release ‘the potential of inanimate objects’. A marbled egg, white balloons, unopened boxes, a Greek island, numbers, a yellow yo-yo—nothing in this book is quite what it seems. Julia Bird and Mike Sims sent each other mystery objects in the post and then wrote a lot of unexpected poems which became Paper Trail. “To open Paper Trail is to embark on a joyous journey through the debris of many decades. No artefact is too surreal or too small to be overlooked on this adventure – fragments of a meteor, an Aeroflot wet wipe, an artist’s business card, an empty case box that once held a mixtape […] The result is an exuberant tangle of words and images that celebrates the way we live now surrounded by ephemera, eavesdropping and aesthetic echoes” (Nancy Campbell).
