Collaborative Poetry

Memories (Luton Fun Palace 3)

As part of the Luton Fun Palace, 2014, Fay Roberts and Sophia Walker took part in a found-poetry/ collaborative poetry/ beat poetry experiment to encapsulate the day in word form, accompanied by the band that had inspired the art that had inspired the graffiti that had inspired the poetry, and accompanied by dancers inspired by the music. With us so far?! :)

All the poems combine work by both poets. The third (and final) one is below:

Memories

Every wall is a gateway,

Every picture a window,

Electrons dance

And eyes multiply.

We branch,

Fractal acts of truthful fiction.

Metal light as paper,

Resin heavy with history,

Voices raised in clarion,

Giving back feelings from

Before they were born

And breathed the same air.

Downstairs, someone put big dreams

On top the TV next to a sign saying

‘Draw what you remember’

I’ll remember this.

When I’m 86 and drooling in a nursing

Home, it won’t be traffic jams, council tax

And the day I got promoted.

It’ll be the days like this,

The days we got up and did.

The sum of a life is the moments

You lived: it’s the first time a 5

Year old made snow, a lemonade

Bottle turned tornado, Hey mum!

Look mum! Someone drew a body

On the wall!!!

I remember every village fete,

I can’t remember the colour of

My first iphone but in 70 years

I’ll still know what I wore in

Every Halloween parade.

The costumes were home-made -

It’s amazing how much imagination

You can make from cardboard,

From being bored, get on board

The best thing we ever do

Is get involved.

I will not grow old as expected

Life is not a check-list

The beauty’s in the messes,

The best bits, fulfilling of

The senses

I said I’d remember this, at least

The sense of it: community,

Free-form creativity, hanging out

Collaboratively…

We are busy building memories

We hear this advice:

Strip mining will not suffice;

If you go in a straight line,

You’ll never find life.

And, on the other side,

In an intimate shrine,

We touch big dreams,

While beams play

And these rays graze

More than our eyes.

We have absorbed random,

We are ready for the next step.

[Instrumental]

And now?

We have eschewed the

Sandtraps of nostalgia,

Gathering what we had

And sharing it with hope,

Standing on the shoulders

Of those who loved and laboured,

So that we - in turn -

Can take our gazes higher

And, with busy hands

And bright eyes,

Clasp the span of ages,

And swing into a new dance

When our day is done.

Science (Luton Fun Palace 2)

Science

Science is defined as “the pursuit and application

Of knowledge and understanding of the natural

And social world following a systematic

Methodology based on evidence”

I never knew I was a scientist.

Living in black and white,

Strutting the stage of order,

We are more colourful

Than any art,

Imparting the wisdom of laughter.

In between mustaches we are told

To enjoy the wondrous Mad Hatter’s

Party offering. I am intrigued by the

Word “wondrous”, which I suppose

Makes the poster right.

Dial vibration through a lens;

Rainbow music blesses

Chess squares,

Synaptic diagrams and laughter,

Laughter everywhere.

Absorbing random we are told to relax. #LOL

An intimate shrine is displayed on the wall,

Someone’s big dreams lit up in technicolour

Strobe next to a wall proclaiming:

Music to drive through the night

Ironic. The room is almost silent.

Maybe the pictures on the wall do the talking.

Maybe that’s what we’re here for.

We telegraph in hashtags,

Grab bags of tiny science,

Bright as bubbles;

A floating forest of colour

Kaleidoscopes gently…

The artwork looks like

My grandmother’s sofa,

All 60s psychedelic.

More irony. My gran…

There was no one

Further from drugs

We bend to new uses,

We choose a new life,

Striving for a note shared

Across time.

What moved once now graces

In wriggling stillness;

Monuments broken into tools,

Blue notes transmuted into light;

Yesterday gifts tomorrow insight,

And everywhere even the tiniest life

Surprises.

Connections (Luton Fun Palace 1)

Connections

I reach to my older self,

Awash in lights;

History is eyes of honeycomb,

Streets billow into monochrome.

Though the factory’s long passed

Fun Palace brings its history back

Like fresh plucked new feathers

Thrust in old caps

We are mining for craft,

And art, and cards,

Finding thirteen new ways to play,

Manufacturing new friends,

Blissed in music

[Musical break]

And news.

Accruing facts,

And hats.

So many hats!

Making loom bands while in back

The band jams. Funny, families

Gathered round the loom meant

Something different years back.

No bridge to gap, we’re a long time

From past, we’re past that, past

Hats, they passed the hat, turned

Factory into gallery, I passed back.

To hats, stacked on a table - Bare,

Awaiting decoration

I always thought the only bareness

In hats was on the heads they protected.

Never before thought of objects as naked,

But then no one ever thinks of naked,

Til you’re told you are.

We are a train of doors,

A lively bridging of

Test tubes and crayons.

The calligraphy of chromosomes

Dances in many-legged splendour.

We leave our fingerprints

In snow and ink and diamonds.

A casual corpse lingers, incidental.

Remember me?

On the wall there is a chalked outline of a body

Opposite, an empty page says “fill me”, says

“Found a corpse in the river. So yeah”

The page involves no river, that wall never

Asked to be drawn on. The link exists

In similarity over distance.

We link fingers in parallel;

Strands of rubber,

Of metal,

Of smiles,

Of history,

Of viruses,

Of the life in every thread.

And we beckon melodies

Across looms of friendship;

The present warps across

Past weft and we are

Woven together.