Just before midnight, in the unpreventable moment
my mother woke up to give birth to me,
I jumped out and spilt her blood on the floor.
My first angry poem, scream at the top of my lungs,
in the pale room.
A dormant city blessed the muddy wreath above the cradle
and
asked me to keep the noise down.
Mother went back to bed.
The following day I learnt to
write on white walls with red letters.
The exhibition for the Open Studios, Stroud Arts Festival, May 2014 is now open to the public in Stroud (http://www.sitefestival.org.uk) and it will be open the following two weekends in Rita Fenning’s studio. (http://ritafenning13.wix.com/ritafenning-web)
The address is: Fieldside, Brimscombe GL5 2SW, Stroud.
You will see a selection of installations, collages, artist books Rita has produced inspired by my poems ‘Birthday Present’, ‘Family Photograph, ‘Lesson of Admiration’, ‘Games’ and ‘The Warm Bones’.
You can watch a video I made and listen to me reading the poems, with a selection of photographs produced by John Stadnicki (http://www.johnstadnicki.co.uk/Site/Welcome.html) for my collection ‘A Short Story about War’.
Here is a preview with some of the exhibited art work and a fragment with my reading. The video contains photographs produced by the artist John Stadnicki.
Many thanks to the sound manager Marc Fairclough from South Gloucestershire and Stroud College and to the video editor, the artist Clare Bottomley. (http://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/149322)
Games The Warm Bones project-rita1
Poems: Maria Butunoi
Installations: Rita Fenning
The exhibition will be open during the Open Studios Festival, May 2014.
The 18th edition of The Site Festival, Stroud Gloucestershire, starts on the 1st May 2014 and it will bring a dynamic programme of visual arts, performance, music, screening and open studios. The artist-led festival promotes collaborations and projects including a wide range of visual media, ceramics, textiles and poetry.
http://www.sitefestival.org.uk
My collaboration with the artist Rita Fenning for the Open Studios http://ritafenning13.wix.com/ritafenning-web explores the concepts of ‘memory’ and ‘identity’, in an attempt to define and compare childhood stories and games in two different cultures, British and Romanian during the Cold War.
Rita has produced a series of artist books and installations as well as a doll’s house which will be the centre of a new exhibition open to the public in her studio. The exhibition is part of The Open Studios Festival which will be launched on Friday, 9th May 2014.
http://www.sitefestival.org.uk/2014%20support%20material/OS%20Directory%202014%20for%20Web%20v2.pdf
The exhibition in Rita’s studio will be open to the public on 10th, 11th, 17th and 18th May 2014.
A preview with some of the included work and video clip, to follow shortly.
My mother used to say that
the yellow marks on my face
reflected the sun.
Sometimes she asked me to
sit still on the cold stone
just to prove that point.
I would refuse to see, eat,
for a day or two,
just to prove mine.
I would, instead, run to the river,
orphan but free.
The world stayed locked,
barely watching the colours through
a yellow window
until the day when
in a careless moment of joy
the poetry gave birth to me
under the candle light.
Yellow, ferocious birds escaped into the wild.
Flying away, small parts of my body.
Nobody-could-recognise-me-anymore.
I was new, alone with the sun,
big yellow eyes.
