A sequence of poems first commissioned by Newham Cambridge addressing a sequence of prints by Judy Chicago based on the 'Song of Songs'. The poems use multiple translations of the Song of Songs. An extract to be translated and published in German.

A collection of lyric verse set on Hampstead Heath looking at the city of London

A sequence of poems first commissioned by Newham Cambridge addressing a sequence of prints by Judy Chicago based on the 'Song of Songs'. The poems use multiple translations of the Song of Songs.

An essay on the complete photographic works of Helen Sear, exploring the poetics of the image through the semiotics of CS Peirce and the poetics of subjectivity using psychoanalytic theory.

Poem on the source of the river Fleet

Poem gloss taken from Plotinus

Poems from the spring section of the collection Gospel Oak addressing multiplicity and unity

Translations into German

This essay, based on a paper given for 'Bilder BeSchreiben,Kassel, 2007, an international conference addressing the polysemic character of the scripto-visual relation, raising questions of signification — how images demand verbal description, words signify images, images signify as fragments of complex multimedia events. At the interface between words, images, sound and music, contemporary art and in particular digital practices, internet e-art and e-poetry, demand an understanding of the status and function of the image as complex, implying an aesthetics capable of integrating various media. In order to bring the verbal and the visual into the same domain of analysis I turn to the general theory of signs as developed by C.S. Peirce, as an alternative to a linguistic model of signification.

poetry set in Wales

Video of spoken poetry with projected video. Set on Hampstead Heath looking at the city, London

The recording of a memory of painting hanging in The Collection, Lincoln, of trees in flower, a field and three cows, for an artwork by Simon Pope.

CYLCH YR YNYS translated here as 'Circle of the Island' takes as its subject the island of Skokholm off the west Wales coast. One of a small group of bird sanctuaries, this particular site of special scientific interest supports one of the main breeding grounds of the Manx Shearwater, Storm Petrel and Auks. Lying in that region termed 'Little England Beyond Wales', the name Skokholm indicates the complex history of successive cultural invasions including that of the Scandinavians in the 8th century. Islands carry projections of 'Paradise', an idealisation often at odds with the daily reality of survival. From Skokholm looking west over the Atlantic, the tiny island of Grassholm lies white on one side, glistening white with Gannets. It is purported to be the island referred to in the Mabinogion as 'Gwales'. There Pryderi and his men spent eighty years in love with feasting and dancing until one of his men opened the forbidden door. They became conscious of their worldly tasks and passed from mythic to historical time through an act of remembrance: 'cofio'. Images filmed during the passing seasons of '91 reveal changes in vegetation and bird life observed through a repetition of viewpoints. The text refers to this breaking of myth through the acts of looking and listening.

A sequence of poems set in France based on various translations of the Hebrew text, 'The Song of Songs' delivered as a performance.

Performance of poetry with music by Andrew Sperling

'Shifting Eyes', presents a re-reading of Freud’s structural theories of the self, through the semiotics of C.S. Peirce. In place of the self split between unconscious representations and the syntax of speech, Peirce’s general sign theory provides an evolutionary account of symbol development within a trichotomy of sign-object relations, icon, index and symbol, as opposed to interpretations of Freud using the linguistic sign which reify the split subject and assimilate unconscious processes to the tropes of language. Peirce’s sign-interpretant relation, is used to re-describe Freud’s account of the shift from narcissism to object relations, from the primary iconic dyad to the subject constructed through the symbol of sexual difference. One class of icons, the hypoicon, is evaluated as a representation of the subject, since the hypoicon, unlike the symbol, does not uphold contradiction. Metaphor, as hypoiconic Third, is compared with Freud’s account of the structure of identification, both in terms of ego development and dream formation. The second part of the thesis uses these concepts to interpret the work of author H.D. and artist-writer Claude Cahun. H.D.’s œuvre - poetry, novels, memoirs and autobiography - lay bare the structure of the subject through the semiotics of the text, in particular transference and the act of naming. The poetry demonstrates the boundary between ego and world, myth and ideals of the ego, as the semiotics of identification. Cahun’s photographic self-portraits raise questions of the relation between body-image and narcissism, ideals and the subject of sexual difference. The last chapter concentrates on 'Aveux non avenus', (1930a) a work which integrates text and image using the principles of collage, juxtaposing photomontages with fragments of dream, fantasy, polemic and fiction as an extension of self-representation. In conclusion, the signifying self, as hypoiconic Third, is related to the body, re-posing the question of desire.

Spoken prose poem of 20 mins duration with actions and object props including a ladder and binoculars exploring distance, literal and metaphorical.

Audio work with spoken and sung text distributed by Audio Arts on cassette

Poetics of the life of memory set on the island of Skokholm off the coast of Pembrokeshire

Poetics of the life of memory set on the island of Skokholm off the coast of Pembrokeshire

A film of the changing year on the island of Skokholm, a nature reserve off the Pembrokeshire coast, exploring the poetics of place.

Two sound works in a collection of sound works by women, edited by Sharon Morris. Financed by the Arts Council and British Telecom.

tape-slide work with text and images of the sea

A series of poems set in the South of France. The text echoes the form and poetics of the biblical 'Song of Songs'.

Live performance with video projection of spoken text, set on Hampstead Heath looking at the city of London

In the tradition of Rosalind Krauss’s essay ‘Notes on the Index’ (1986) I want to re-posit the importance of the indexical status of the work of art and look at how Peirce’s views of aesthetics, his theory of the sign, and his version of phenomenology, can be useful to our understanding of contemporary works of art. The work of art that emerges from reading Peirce is not a representation of an object in the world but a mode of presentation of experience and in particular feeling. Defined as a complex form of icon, a hypoicon, the work of art is not constrained to mimetic representation but engaged in actively re-interpreting our world and our sense of self, cutting through preconceptions by returning us to the present: presentness, and the possibilities of firstness. Peirce’s late discussion on the study of phenomena, phaneroscopy, allows us to understand the work of art both as a part of our experience, and also as giving meaning to our experience: the work of art as a re-staging of the sign on the cusp between possibility and existence.

Set on the island of Skokholm off the coast of Pembrokeshire

Poetics of the life of memory set on the island of Skokholm off the coast of Pembrokeshire

A film of the changing year on the island of Skokholm, a nature reserve off the Pembrokeshire coast, exploring the poetics of place.

A film of the changing year on the island of Skokholm, a nature reserve off the Pembrokeshire coast, exploring the poetics of place.