Ghosts in the Landscape
It was an icy, misty night by the river when eleven of us met to consider Tereza Zelenkova’s haunting landscapes and portraits of hidden places taken in her native Czech Republic. We took the opportunity to absorb the unhomely atmosphere of her dark stories and images and read together The Witches Song from Macbeth:
Double, Double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble…
We also read The Listeners by Walter de la Mare taking lines one voice at a time rather than collectively:
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller
Knocking on the moonlit door…
It would not have surprised any of us if the Traveller had stopped within one of Tereza’s landscapes, within the forest.
From Rae Armantrout’s poem Djinn we contemplated the lines:
Many whisper
white lies
to the dead.
“The boys are doing really well”
Some think
nothing is so
until it has been witnessed…
We dreamed our own memories out of Louise Gluck’s poem All Hallows
…. Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.
Each one of us chose one picture that called to us or struck us in some way – why or how is difficult to articulate but there were certain images that touched us collectively: the four women with covered heads around the table, the rock with a creaturely face, the tree growing around the crucifix. All of us were affected by the mysteries and plaintive qualities of Tereza’s work.
We collaborated on a written response to Tereza’s ideas of homeland by contemplating what a portrait of Britain might look like:
A Portrait of My Home Country
Home is buttered toast
under a blanket, in bed.
No one hears the young
men on the street trying
to sleep in bags,
asking for change.
On the Wirral, lost, I listen
seek with my ears the voice
of the Green Knight.
A proud past long since
gone, future unsure, we are
of today.
Cold but bright, busy
but happy
with river-laced arsenic
choking ionide streams.
A two-way mirror
splattered with slime.
Forgotten unwanted industry,
forgotten unwanted people
steel faces, steel cities, steel nerves
a modern dockland clings to history.
A group poem by:
James Borner, Louise Stewart, Susan Comer, Paula Frew, Megan Holt,
Marielle Matthee, Lewis Johnson, Paula Pritchard, Louis Tuckman, Brendan Curtis.
Poems we read for Ghosts in the Landscape:
Witches Song – from Macbeth
https://allpoetry.com/Witches’-Chant-(from-Macbeth)
The Traveller by Walter de la Mare
http://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/wp/poem/the-listeners/
Djinn by Rae Armantrout: http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/18005
All Hallows by Louise Gluck
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49605
