A  June walk - thinking about projective verse ,

with The Garden Gate community project in Margate. 

The Walking with the Waste Land group in collaboration with members of the Garden Gate community in Margate have decided to embark on one walk a month in the garden and the surrounding area of Northdown Park. We started our walks in April, so this was our third walk.

                                                     

 For this walk we decided to try to experiment with projective verse.

An example of projective verse:

s h a d o w s ,  b i r d s,                            

     wake up

  birch trees
 in the wind's web

       before what minutes, exposition
               of mankind

              stony light turned

                    how much
                          the number

               the vague soon again

                  what change in the parts 

© 1968, Larry Eigner, courtesy of the Eigner Estate
From: Poetry, Vol. 111, No. 6, March, 1968

  

about projective verse:

Olson argues against a lazy reliance on simile and description, which can drain a poem of energy, and proposes that syntax be shaped by sound rather than sense, with nuances of breath and motion to be conveyed to the reader through typographical means.


.

We began by walking and pausing to compile words associated with place. Charlotte acted as our scribe.



some  words:

                                                                                                                     Vibrant

 pigeon 

                                                                    cooing, concrete slabs,

 birds
                chirping tall trees,

                                                                                                                     formal paper petals, 

                                                   sundial, pom noms,

                                                                                                                                       organised, wild berries, snappy

                           

       Green seagulls,
                                                                                        Grass sticks, funghi cones, 

                           

                                                                                     

playing, baby sycamore puppies

                                                                        rest                                lavender, blue,Lavsih  bees. ,

                                                           
 talking ladders, umbrella tree, standing 

                                                                       drilling, fox poo, stones, car tracks, bench 

clock 

                             view, high horizon,

dog
swaying                             2 crows
scarf

                                                                                        wind
                                                                                        clock.       flea darts

Time

using the sundial with many thanks to Margaret for her wonderful contribution (we walked past this in our last two walks and didn't even notice it!) and also thanks to  Charlotte for brilliant participation.

                         Timelessness:

                         blowing a dandelion

With many thanks to all who contributed to this walk. I hope you will join us on our next one,  July 12th. meet at the Garden Gate at 10am finish 12 pm.

If you have any ideas you would like to develop please feel free to suggest!

Walking with ‘The Waste Land’ is a community group founded by artist Elspeth Penfold in 2014. The group use walking as a research tool for locating TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and selected other poems in Margate. The group works closely with Turner Contemporary’s Waste Land Research Group who are developing Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, Turner Contemporary’s first major exhibition of 2018, which will be on show from 3^rd February – 20^th May 2018, focused on connections between Eliot’s poem and the visual arts.

For more about the Garden Gate Community project please visit their Facebook page :https://www.facebook.com/TheGardenGateProject/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED