Nazneen’s 12 Women!

Yesterday at the ArtfulScribe book launches (celebrating all of the activity that’s taken part as a result of their work in Southampton’s writing communities) I shared a new poem, the last bit of creative writing from my year-long residency. It was an added poem to the series I’ve made over the year, charting the public events and behind the scenes spaces at John Hansard Gallery.

Back in July, one of the events that I was lucky to be present for was Nazneen Ahmed’s clever and beautifully researched talk, presented as part of the ’12 Women’ series, for which the Gallery had programmed women from different disciplines and careers to respond to Gerhard Richter’s 48 Portraits of men. Nazneen was Writer-in-Residence at Soiuthampton Libraries, while I was the same at John Hansard Gallery and I was glad of the chance to get to know her through joint events and through shared times.

I’ll let the poem (shared below) give you the glimpses into the content Nazneen led us through. She’s a wonderful writer and works hard to support many voices in her workshops and writing, so I’m happy to offer cheers for her own words back to her and to say thanks for the thinking her talk, and our friendship, has encouraged in me.

Nazneen’s 12 women. Fresh from Southampton-envisioning chat with Temple and

carbon nanomolecules, blackpoint chat with Dave Hubble, Elspeth introduces.

Leading UK gallery of 39 years Highfield, includes additional loans

Gerhard Richter’s collection, private, his own thinking, Germany’s own collective

ship of the father-figure. Maybe this means we are looking at mother?

Hidden-gendered, white-washed. Is a historian, many genres a

breather before Nazneen’s big title at Random House: something as a writer that you get to do.

Glad that back I’m in this room. I’m 48 portraits, tapestries, lots of colours. The things he’s doing, I’m doing.

Southampton and London are the ones I’ve worked on. An academic transitioning from a career to a fiction

writer, being dissolved. When I looked round, the difference returned: cannons occupied a space.

Book lists the frightening dissolution in paint Nazneen has seen to in a way I

haven’t. Non-white, non-male aren’t entering the ooft battery. The notion of silencing

too is here in this work. These strangely mute men, even in their profess

head is not given. Homo genus. Plastered in patriarchulinity. When it will bell

be all who may be here that they will well live we may enter the Everyman children’s library:

I definitely didn’t see it myself. I wonder how many children are in the same

kind of a boat. Her favourite part as an embroiderer of colour,

 

 

 

the word-thread in the Persia and Afghanistan record, what we would originally have

called East. Movement and deployment of pigment uncoverer stories than those

used to be, look, your images now are a little bit blurry. Hubble has a

crack, gescribing goes well, the paper structure. Focal face, the one vocal facade that maybe is whiter.

A carnival, the tool of. The two savages, Muslim seafarers worked at merchant

saferer from 17^th century who would jump ship and become absorbed. Empire, its

two thousand Lascar farers in one port at a time in physically gruelling roles.

The streets of London. Why does this parade get lost when it already

had an audience? Who wrests it? Wondering how this relates to the reception of Black Pride

movement? The men spared no trouble. They were makers of work. Clothes

and the mosque. Modelled lilies through an interpreted, a dominating narrative

voice. Even he admires. Awe oddmiration connection. How does this loop to Richter? And this room?

The seafarers had to interview for the Santa Costume Agency. Presenting themselves to authoritative

British poor quality tissue paper because ‘this was no Bombay’. Finally four-thousand-nine-hundred colours, which signifies possibility.

From forty-nine to monochrome, this contrast had to be a way to say that colour was leached,

which is problematic. No one knew that it existed. It could exist. A parallel reimagined

 

 

 

as an actual railroad. Genial speaker, see the Utopian, even within our present. I try. To do. As a child,

a mirror of one of my very favourite books, it had always been there, I couldn’t

see it, The Little Princess. Deep, rich, yellow and light. The temperature change is making me

strange. Queer, little, speaking squeaky. The small monkey he held chattering in his arms

longed for a sight of the sun. She had learned since to know whom a smile is comforting.

When I saw an 1898 etching I went on maternity level. I came with the story up of a novel –

Rework: it’s a transitional feminine. Transnational phenomenon

the P&O ships. Heard beasts, not savage no. That year, no public was

admitted they’d been a lot of violence. Resistance and creativity: it’s an

anglophone list. There are translated works on there. If I was gonna add

I don’t know what that would look like, children’s stories by Tagore.

Sees an interesting, broad and humble, collective project even in this.

Nazneen loves Just So stories. Kipling, that won’t change.

Another kind of mirror, there’s enough resistance to inclusion that the system will replicate

unless we fight. Public spat with Lionel Shriver who is visiting the UK today to

change the narrative around them, needs something that would guide people through it.

 

 

 

When we go to Bombay we pick up picture books. Reminds me of when I dawdled in

the children’s section in Brazil because picture books seemed briefly transportable.

The things you can carry with you, that you can hold, you can bring – contain

on your grasp envelope. Empathy Labs in London. So:Write stories group.

Sore cheek bones and a headache as soon as we think.

What I do, better help her patients cut this bit if I write it in.

Next week Councillor Satvir Kaur understanding, communicating, listening.

Nadia Shireen has been writing some really great books, I also like the Rainbow Bird.

Lead-up to opening for real! Southampton ArtfulScribe residency at John Hansard Gallery

In my last post I wrote about the Sampler week at John Hansard Gallery in February. I next visited in April, and the Gallery was in a funny in-between state, having been open to the public temporarily, but now closed again in preparation for the official ‘proper’ opening of its spaces in May. There was exhilaration in February at having got the doors open. Now in April, there was a sense of taking pains through the detail work with a last chance to get things absolutely nailed down, in some cases literally, before the building was permanently opened.

The installation of the launch exhibition, ARTIST ROOMS: Gerhard Richter, was underway. The work wasn’t on the walls yet, but everywhere the technical team were measuring and making the place ready. I was able to do some writing around the spaces, with the ghosting works of Sampler still visible in some places so that it reminded me of my initial visit to the old John Hansard site on the Highfield campus. Then vinyl from previous shows was redundantly continuing its indication on the wall. This visit though, a site was turning round, rather than winding up.

There was a public reading this visit, with Nazneen Ahmed and Dinos Aristidou, who are the writers-in-residence respectively at Southampton libraries and the Mayflower Theatre. Matt, who as ArtfulScribe is overseeing and facilitating all of our loosely-linked residencies, organised a lunch for the four of us to get together and share experiences. This was really welcome, as we’d been active at slightly different times, and knew about each other’s activities despite not having met. Our reading, that evening at Mettricks, was chaired by Carole Burns, head of the Creative Writing department at Southampton Uni.

Iain Morrison, Nazneen Ahmed, Matt West & Dinos Aristidou

In these and other connections that the residency is allowing me to make, I am grateful for the shared perspectives, whether it’s on practical matters such as good residency programmes and potential funders, or different approaches to the way our work engages with personal narratives. Always interesting to stop and think about your own progress with people who understand the commitments and ambitions you might be balancing as someone making your way as a professional writer.

When I returned to Southampton for my current visit – I’m here now – the mood had lightened. It was the day before the Richter previews, and everything seemed in place, or close enough to in place not to be panic-inducing. It was lovely to see the staff all who had worked so hard towards this moment, all taken complex and personal personal routes to this point, celebrating together and enjoying the attention of  interested and supportive parties like Arts Council England, the University, local politicians, artists and press.

I had my camera out for the previews, recording some footage from peculiar angles for my film poems. As ever I was trying to pull back from the art and the individuals, and capture some of the social feel and the paraphenalia of the event.

still from footage for film-poem in the making

Writing through public speeches was a subtly different prospect from previous note-taking that I’d done; the language being used was so measured and a lot of necessary ritual included. I’m seeing what comes together out of that captured and remixed language in the poem-text I’m putting together to encompass this whole period from the April visit through to this climax point.

On this visit, longer than previous ones, I’ve more time for this nuts and bolts aspects of the writing job. I’ve gathered all my finished and in-progress material to date, and I think the overall structure of the final text is clear. It will start from the December visits to the old gallery, sweep through Sampler and the Richter opening, and end with a final piece of writing from Stephen Foster, the former director’s valedictory show, which opens in September. It will be a palindrome of sorts, or maybe more a mobius band, taking us back to the same place, but somehow on the other side of the page.