Belonging

Here's the redraft of the poem written at Manchester Museum

Belonging

We came from somewhere and now we are not there - 

we journeyed across the miles, the centuries

and over the strange lands of our own lives,

sometimes with nothing more than our names, our faces - 

the death mask, the label and the few things

we  fastened to ourselves with buckles we crafted

from iron or gold. We pinned ourselves 

to the world around us by our naming of it. 

We remembered ourselves in the stories

we shared, in wolves and forests. 

Like tea or cotton we belonged not to the land,

the trader, the user, but to ourselves, though collected

and dispersed. Alongside dodos, tree-frogs, moths,

we belonged to places and the place changed. 

We carried the few coins it seemed we owned

until they left our hands for the hands of others. 

We made ourselves in things, in the guard for a sword,

in paper, in gold. We watered crops, collected butterflies,

heard ourselves in bird song, and caged the birds.

We became the coin, the buckle, the dagger. 

We made sanctuary for small pulsing amphibians

in tanks. We try, somehow, to hold the world

together, with small buckles and bandages as we bind

our dispersing bodies with cloth. We buried our coins

and our dead to keep them close. We named the place. 

But we are always leaving, like exhibits in crates,

cases lying empty, waiting for work to be done –

until it seems that where was never the thing at all. 

Belonging... at Manchester Museum

Today I've visited Manchester Museum to write a poem with the help of Dmitri, filmed by Mollie. I used a methodology that Claire Collinson shared from her work at Kettle's Yard.

Dmitri and I had previously discussed both the themes - Migration and Water - at quite some length, so I took the notes from those discussions and came up with two lists of 10 words.

Water: Pollution, Transport, Flood, Power, Sewage, Life, Clouds, Pond, Boundary, Thawing.

Migration: House, Money, Community, Belonging, Banishment, Symbols, Home, Smuggling, Settling, Survival.

I picked one randomly as a starting point - Belonging and then we went on a tour of several galleries, through archaeology, ancient worlds, the Manchester Gallery, natural history and up to the vivarium. As we went I looked for objects which related to the theme and to the object before, creating a chain of words on post it notes. Mollie filmed me at each other objections, chatting about my choice.

We took the post-its back and Mollie filmed Dmitri and I discussing them and then I went off for coffee and bruschetta and to make a first draft. Mollie then filmed me reading it (from many different directions!).

It'll be a little while before Mollie has the film finished - and I still need to work on my draft. But here it is for now.

Belonging

We all came from somewhere and now we are not there - 

we have journeyed across the miles, the centuries

and over the strange lands of our own lives. 

We brought nothing more than our names, our faces - 

the death mask, the label. We gathered our few things

round and fastened them to us with buckles 

we craftedfrom iron or gold. We pinned ourselves 

to the world around us by our naming of it. 

We carried a few coins, it seemed  we owned 

them until they left our hands for the hands of others. 

We remembered ourselves in our stories

in the wolves and forests of our origins. 

We found ourselves in others, we shared

our names with them, and our faces.

We were gathered and we were dispersed, 

collected and cast out. Like tea or cotton

we belonged not to the land, the trader, the user, 

but to ourselves. Like a dodo, tree-frog, moth

we belonged to a place and the place changed. 

We made ourselves in things, in the guard

for a sword, in paper, in coin. We watered crops

and collected butterflies. We heard ourselves

in bird song and caged birds to hold them to us. 

We became the coin, the buckle, the dagger. 

We longed for sanctuary. Sometimes we built it

for small pulsing amphibians in tanks. We are trying

somehow to hold the world together with small buckles

and bandages as we bind our dispersing bodies

with cloth. We buried our coins and our dead

to keep them close. We named the place. 

But we are always leaving, like exhibits

in packaging crates, cases lying empty, waiting

for work to do done - until it seems that where

was never the thing at all. 

Review - Under the Radar

Delighted to read this wonderful review by Alison Brackenbury in Under the Radar

Entomology Launch 11th December

Entomology will be launched on Thursday 11th December 6pm at Manchester Museum, Oxford Street, Manchester. There will be readings and the delightful Dr Dmitri will be there to deliver pearls of Entomological wisdom. There'll be tea and coffee and I'm baking cookies in the shape of insects.

Meet the Insects - Rose Aphid

Rose Aphid Wikipedia Creative Commmon Karl 432

For a long time I've been both fascinated and repulsed by parthenogenesis - the process by which a female insect (or plant, or maybe even a reptile, amphibian or fish) creates offspring on her own, without any input from a male. The young are formed from an unfertilised egg which somehow is triggered to divide. In humans it's fertilisation, the fusing of the egg and sperm which triggers the cell divisions that eventually form a child. When Dolly the sheep was made the nucleus from an udder cell was placed inside the an egg cell so that had the nucleus removed. This cell was triggered to divide by an electric shock. Mary Shelley wasn't so far off with Frankenstein and galvanism.

Partly it's Frankenstein that haunts us. "Curiosity killed the cat" a student said to me in our Frankenscience Project.  But with parthenogenesis it's more. The thought of all those identical insects horrifies me - perhaps because like most human beings I prize, perhaps even over-invest in my individuality. Identical twins don't horrify me, perhaps because human experience never allows anyone to stay the same for long.

It's also the fear of the plague, the fear of reproduction out of control. It's the dread of every other American Senator apparently - the fear of women's sexuality and fertility out of control.

But I don't think that's my deep down horror (thankfully). I think it's all these generations of females each indistinguishable from the mother, the grandmother, the great grandmother. Freud, or maybe Lacan would have a field day.

Launch Event

Meet the Insects - Solitary Bee

Osmia bicolor. Wikicommons. Jeffdelonge.

I bought one of these for my solitary bees. They have eschewed it. Not chewed it. (Sorry, getting carried away).

Instead they have found homes in the uncemented stone walls I built around my raised vegetable beds and I love them all the more for it.

They won't be organised into apparatchik tower blocks - unlike the lovely folk of Paradise Moscow. They live with me in the way they chose and like little anarchists build their lives from the earth and their own labour, thinking for themselves, acting freely, and living fully.

We're used to bees being a symbol of organised society, but solitary bees don't quite fit.

They look like honey bees but you can tell them apart by the pollen brush (look at this one - and check out the rest of the blog - amazing pictures!). Unlike the honey bees, they don't feed their young - they build or find nests and leave them there.

There are over 200 species, including miner bees that dig into the ground, and mason bees (like Osmia) that find holes in stonework - or snail shells or any other bits and pieces. I think of mason bees as being the hermit crabs of the insect world. There are also cuckoo bees that do unto bumble bees what cuckoos do to other birds. Leaf cutter bees cut neat circles from leaves and petals and use them to build nests in dead plant stems or plant pots.

They're  really important pollinators, so if you're worried about bees you could do worse than buy or make a bee house, but most importantly allow a little disorder into your outside space. Like most of nature they're shut out by our need for neatness, our desire to straighten the edges and fill in the gaps. They like the messy places in between, the unexpected cranny, the forgotten corners, the kind of places we all need to live and create as we chose.