Category: Poems

New exhibition! Come and Dream with Us – Opening 17 Nov

Social Dreams, Social Matters: Artistic Affluence in Social Dreaming

Image credit: Bongsu Park, Dreamscape

Join us on Thursday, 17 November, from 5-8pm GMT/UTC, for the Opening of this new art exhibition!

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London

In this exhibition, a range of art works critically explores the generative and performative nature of dreaming. Connecting the richness of artistic responses with the theory and practice of Social Dreaming – a radical exercise in sharing, associating to and working with dreams – this exhibition is not to be missed.

Register here

Come to the opening to speak to artists, researchers, academics, Social Dreaming practitioners, and Group Relations consultants. Come to think and enquire about the power of dreams and their potential to change how we think about ourselves and the wider world.

During the pandemic, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations held weekly online Social Dreaming matrices. Why were they so popular and what did they offer to those who came to them? Join us to find out and to experience the meaning of Social Dreaming yourself… What is the societal unconscious trying to tell us? Listen, see, feel, and sense… Think, envision, imagine, free-associate…

The event is open to all. If you would like to see the exhibition but can’t make the Opening, get in touch with Maria at m.markiewicz@tavinstitute.org to see the artwork another time. We look forward to dreaming with you!

Artist bios:

Bongsu Park is a London-based, multidisciplinary Korean artist and long-term collaborator with the Tavistock Institute. Her recent work is founded on how our innermost thoughts may connect with other people’s and how these can then be shared publicly through dreams. She has exhibited internationally including at Zona Maco Arte Contemporáneo, México, FIAC, France, and The Moving Image Istanbul, Turkey. Her performance work was shown at Camden Arts Centre, Gallery Rosenfeld, and The Coronet Theatre in London.

Marie Beauchamps is an Amsterdam-based poet, creative entrepreneur, and an academic working across humanities, social sciences, and law. She has published extensively on affective politics, national identity, and the politics of movement, now engaging with questions of pedagogy and knowledge-writing practices in their relation to knowledge production. She is an Associate Researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, and one of the pioneering practitioners of the Deepening Creative Practice programme.

Juliet Scott is a visual artist with an interest in still life and object relations, and a social scientist interweaving between these disciplines through her studio research. She oversees organisational curation projects and the creation of dynamic learning environments including as programme director of Deepening Creative Practice with Organisations at the Tavistock Institute.

The event will take place on Thursday 17 November, from 5-8pm GMT, in person, in the Tavistock Institute’s office on Gee Street, London (3rd floor, 63 Gee Street, near Old St tube).

Register here

Shit is such a wondrous waste!

  after the “shit bird” and Dunya Mikhail

No-one gives shit a word of praise, as if shit wasn’t precious. As if shit wouldn’t relieve bodies from toxins and skeletons, brown cores, white bones, orange beaks, and blue feathers. As if shit wouldn’t teach children that stickiness is best when avoided with a sidestep, a jump, a stop. As if shit wouldn’t stage equality between shepherds and wolves, queens and beggars, tyrants and peasants. As if shit wouldn’t seed green trees in grey cities, bringing oxygen to the streets. As if shit wouldn’t release amber smells of other times, feeding silvery flies while flirting with the gods, bringing flowers the strength to burst with pink, lilac, and lavender. As if shit wouldn’t invite life into decay, drawing poets to look at a blank page with the nuances of the nothing that illuminates the day. As if shit wouldn’t bring in patience there where speed was in focus, requesting attention there where habits stiffened. Shit is a wonderous waste, but no-one gives it a word of praise.

Marie Beauchamps

Amsterdam, June 2021

Script

Script: write a list of 10 abstract nouns, then a list of ten concrete nouns. Match them to create metaphors and similes to use in your poem.

  1. Understanding
  2. Knowledge
  3. Freedom
  4. Idea
  5. Beauty
  6. Feeling
  7. Experience
  8. Whish
  9. Fear
  10. Derision
  1. Skin
  2. Eye
  3. Hand
  4. Bird
  5. Water
  6. Mouse
  7. Pen
  8. Table
  9. Ladder
  10. Lamp

I’m so tired I feel my entire body ache like a machine that stood for too long in the cupboard. I embarked on the metaphor exercise but the metaphors seem to work like this unbearable weight upon my body. So I switch gear, thinking I’ll go for the pattern exercise, but the patterns are like a ball of wool rolling down the stairs. What can I follow when there is no energy left to see? Perhaps it’s the metaphors that are still working. Knowledge like a skin that envelops your senses, ready to be shaken off in the midst of a good crisis. Understanding that comes as a hand, leading through the meanders of your own narrative, holding tight then letting go again for you to experience the ladder of your wish. See, I already managed to tell you three of them, and I feel the energy coming back little by little. No longer this eye of derision looking upon my shoulder as I try to craft sentences on the go. Did you notice the fourth one? Perhaps, when we are blocked and shattered by the pen of fear, it is because we don’t allow ourselves to just watch the bird’s beauty, by which I mean: to just stay by the words. In my first draft, bird was linked to feeling as in, it comes and it goes, but the bird’s beauty has the adventage to remind me of the simplicity of colours and the extraordinary expertise of nature to create just the right ones in the right order. I’m not sure which prompt I’m following anymore, but I know that many of my nouns have been matched. The remaining meeting time is one minute and nine seconds and already less than a minute. I’m going to have a cup of tea.

Amsterdam, March, 2021

It’s spring! Perfect time to listen to my poem “Ode to the Eggs”

Find the text of the poem below.
 Ode to the eggs
             after Pablo Neruda
  
 Fields,
 beaches,
 ponds,
 and trees
 sing
 as you
 fall
 on twigs
 and bridles,
 feathers,
 moss,
 sludge,
 and sandbanks.
 You hug
 in groups
 of seven,
 thirteen,
 or fifty-three.
 Fragile
 and immobile,
 you lie
 side by side,
 defying
 your
 hungry
 predators.
 Brown
 patches
 or turquoise
 patterns
 become
 a soft
 embrace,
 an act
 of camouflage
 that protects
 your
 burgeons
 of life
 from
 our greedy
 hands
 and
 growling
 stomachs—
 nothing
 can stop
 our appetite
 for
 the
 vital
 protein
 running
 inside
 the elliptical
 shape
 of your chalky
 beige
 shells.
 In the protected
 space
 of your
 nesting
 nature,
 your viscous
 substance
 creates—
 a
 beating
 heart,
 followed
 by
 blood
 vessels,
 a tail bud,
 wings and legs,
 eyes,
 brains,
 beaks and claws,
 feathers and scales.
 After days
 or weeks
 or months,
 you crack—
 in the fields,
 and in the trees,
 on beaches
 and in the reeds,
 creatures
 crawl,
 squawk
 and walk
 tasting
 the air
 and the
 nourishing
 juice
 of
 food.
 Now
 rack
 and ruin
 you stay
 behind
 as little
 dirty
 white dots,
 composing
 compost,
 sand
 and soil.
 Carried
 along by
 flowing
 water,
 you become
 fertile
 ground,
 sediments,
 and the source
 of a new
 cycle
 of
 life.

Morning Glory

 Morning glory
                 For K.P.
  
 I was queuing this morning to buy bread 
 at the boulangerie, when I saw a 
  
 man dragging his dog; he had done a shit, 
 the man grabbed it, and I watched how he  
  
 absorbed his disgust as he felt the waste’s 
 warmth come through the thin plastic layer shielding 
  
 his skin from the shit, which now stunk 
 inside the blue bag. Further down the street, 
  
 I saw the man stop by a tree. It seemed
 tired, its leaves already in free fall,
  
 leaning against a brick wall covered in 
 moss. Now the man looked around 
  
 anxiously, his brown eyes staring but not 
 seeing me nor the tree; his hands shaking 
  
 faintly in his khaki jacket too big 
 for his body. He dropped the blue plastic 
  
 bag full of shit on the ground, looking around 
 one more time. I wished he had left the shit 
  
 alone. Now it was our own blue shit 
 that I saw, soiling 
  
 the earth by the copper beech tree.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

La terre d’automne est noire, mais nos os sont blancs. Je les entends chanter quand je cours dans le vent

 Nos os se mirent à chanter par un samedi matin embrumé.
 Nous étions sur la route, portant notre poids au-delà de la rivière, tombant sur les pierres. 
  
 Leur chant se mit à gonfler comme une éponge absorbant le sol, aspirant
 le flot, transportant 
 les airs, transformant 
 le vent qui tombait
 sur les branches
 de notre trachée.
  
 Nos os, invisibles à nos yeux, jusqu’à ce que
  
 nous tombions
  
 brisés.
  
 Nos os libérés, nous ne savons plus
 où mettre nos pieds, à qui tenir la main, où poser notre dos
 où se reposer. 
  
 Mais il nous reste l’eau. Elle s’écoule sous notre peau,
 transportant le sel alluvion de tristesse,
 elle vient toucher le rebord sculpté de nos yeux. 
  
 Une larme
 coule. 
  
 Une larme
 sèche.
  
 Trace blanche sédimentaire 
 se souvenant du sol, nos os se mettent à bouger, lentement,
 plus      lent       que      le      soleil       qui    se     lève     à           l’horizon. 
  
 Personne ne les vit bouger, pourtant ils portaient notre image, 
 émergeant dans la brume, ils frappèrent aux carreaux.
  
 Aucun son
  
 n’apparut.  
  
 Nos os se mettent à chanter observant l’intérieur,
 alors que nous dormons, ils suivent les courbes et les lignes
 réconciliant les parts de notre corps brisé.
  
 Nous posons nos pieds nus sur le sol dur et froid,
 et frottons notre dos avec la palme de nos mains.
  
 La fenêtre était ouverte au réveil ce matin.
  
  
 Marie Beauchamps ©2020

Requiem for old souls

While I stand on the hill, the sky grows clear
Above the village the milky way shines
The trees are pitch black against the bright lines
The mountain softens, shadows walking near.
In the distance I see a cat approaching
Wild like a tiger, an enormous monster
It roars and it runs; it is my sister      
Free like a river, untamed and flowing.
 
Against the cold rock, I feel my limbs and heart
The blood rushing deep, moving through my spine
My bones connected to earlier times
Where ancestors rest, rest their souls and art
Autumn soils are black, and their bones were white
I hear them singing walking through the night.


                                   London, November 2020. 
                                   Marie Beauchamps ©

Photograph: Bart Koetsier ©

I left my self at the door

Photograph by Bart Koetsier ©
I left my self at the door this morning    
Slammed the door and walked away      
It is just a regular day, working  
 
The walls are cold and people are yelling             
Didn’t they eat their breakfast on the tray? 
I left my self at the door this morning
 
Twenty-five men enter, crawling
Twenty-five men are washed away
It is just a regular day, working
 
Did I hear the child calling
When her mother started to pray?
I left my self at the door this morning
 
My sister came, dad is moaning
The sky is low, the clouds ash-grey
It is just a regular day, working
 
My neck itches and my legs are falling
On its surface, the skin betrays
I found no-one at the door this evening
Though it was just a regular day, working
 
                                                 
              London, October 2020. Marie Beauchamps ©

Ode to the Eggs

Fields,
beaches,
ponds,
and trees
sing
as you
fall
on twigs
and bridles,
feathers,
moss,
sludge,
and sandbanks.
You hug
in groups
of seven,
thirteen,
or fifty-three.
Fragile
and immobile,
you lie
side by side,
defying
your
hungry
predators.
Brown
patches
or turquoise
patterns
become
a soft
embrace,
an act
of camouflage
that protects
your
burgeons
of life
from
our greedy
hands
and
growling
stomachs—
nothing
can stop
our appetite
for
the
vital
protein
running
inside
the elliptical
shape
of your chalky
beige
shells.
In the protected
space
of your
nesting
nature,
your viscous
substance
creates—
a
beating
heart,
followed
by
blood
vessels,
a tail bud,
wings and legs,
eyes,
brains,
beaks and claws,
feathers and scales.
After days
or weeks
or months,
you crack—
in the fields,
and in the trees,
on beaches
and in the reeds,
creatures
crawl,
squawk
and walk
tasting
the air
and the
nourishing
juice
of
food.
Now
rack
and ruin
you stay
behind
as little
dirty
white dots,
composing
compost,
sand
and soil.
Carried
along by
flowing
water,
you become
fertile
ground,
sediments,
and the source
of a new
cycle
of
life.

London. September 2020. 
Inpired by Pablo Neruda’s Ode to the Tomato and Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market.