POETRY TO PIGS

Turnpike Lane No1

Mans in transit vans 
Windowless cans
Remind me of gripping hands 
And the heat of a body that 
Stands
Just that bit too close

Heavy lingering eyes 
Your stare is hot 
But not hot as in alluring 
But hot as in disturbing 
Furrow my brow far too early this morning 
Feel the cold tingle of my skin, 
At 7:45 in the morning 
And you pin me down as some kind of awning 
Adorning the sweat of last night’s performing 
Performance just having a dance
Don’t try inject unwanted romance 

Keep your eyes on the road man
And your hand out your pants

Forgone Conclusion

Childish wonder,
Your foolish blunder,
Warped plunder,
You sent me under.
Submerged,
Undisturbed,
Consciously blurred,
Not perturbed
But perplexed.
At the way your little toe flexed
And your voice grumbled next,
To me.
Fixed
our eyes met,
A lacklustre charge but a charge I’ll bet.
Is it love at first sight?
Or just a bed before first light?
The two can be confused after a night
Like tonight.

And so the days continue on comfy and warm,
Pottering along from dusk to dawn,
Easier to bullet count then recount
The yawn to yawn.
Mediocrity is hypocrisy
An incorrect conspiracy
It has a tendency
To create redundancy
Or job loss,
Where the love was.
Or where the lust is.
My hand in his.
Is this what love is?
Because my hand feels clammy,
Less of lover and more ami.
Because I feel like a nook and he’s for sure a cranny.
But opposites attract, a phrase that’s handy
Helps stop the wave of doubts,
Maybe it feels like a tsunami.
Or some kind of pestering army.
Lining up to disarm me,
Marching me down a recollection safari,
Finally giving that rose tint back to barbie.
The question of who are we,
We are lonely
Only as a pair.
And it thins my hair.

At the beginning of 2020 I focused on the idea of 'audience'. At a time when the notion of audience has drastically changed and the face to face performance can no longer occur, how should the reception of the performance be processed? Spending lockdown on my farm at home made my most immediate audience the animals that inhabit the farm and the content of my work became predominately poetry due to my lack of access to workshops and a studio. I dressed appropriately for the performance and took on the persona of a ‘professional poet’ to create the same consideration for pigs as I would do for a crowd of people. The pigs were very receptive. Covid has raised questions of the ways in which performance art encounters an audience as now there is a very real yet invisible element forcing separation between people creating a paranoia around bodies. I want to explore this idea of separation between audience and performer and what it provides to a performance.