A note on : my writing for The Origin by Ben Judd at Stanley Picker

For the last six months or so I’ve been collaborating with the brilliant London-based artist Ben Judd. http://benjudd.com/ Ben very generously commissioned me to be part of his Stanley Picker Gallery Fellowship which is entitled The Origin. I’m writing new texts and engaging in others ways with Ben’s remarkable project, which will see a floating structure appear on the Thames. It’s a complex and generous enterprise, fundamentally about community, with more here… https://www.stanleypickergallery.org/exhibitions/theorigin/?_thumbnail_id=54880

The Origin will consider the importance of community within a large city and facilitate meaningful exchanges between strangers, aiming to reconnect people both to each other and to their environment. Prior to the physical version, an online version will run for six weeks throughout June and July on these pages.

For the online version, I am contributing works for one week, with writer’s I’ve asked, who often participate in Writers Centre Kingston (Julia Rose Lewis, Simon Tyrrell, Silje Ree, Maria Val De Los Rios) and writers from The Bradbury, an over 55s wellbeing centre in Kingston. Our texts are available to view here https://www.stanleypickergallery.org/uncategorised/week-2/

A note on: The Long White Thread - poems for John Berger

Delighted to have a new poem, dedicated to the man himself, in this new anthology released for John Berger's 90th birthday by Smokestack Books. http://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=124

"Novelist, draughtsman, film-maker, essayist and critic – John Berger is one of the major European intellectuals of our time. Since the 1950s he has been challenging the way we see the world and how we think about it in books like Ways of Seeing, Permanent Red, To the Wedding, A Painter of Our Time, Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag, A Seventh Man, Pages of the Wound and From A to X. In 1972 he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize for his novel G. In 2009 he was awarded the Golden PEN award by London PEN for a lifetime’s contribution to literature. His Collected Poems was published in 2014. The Long White Thread of Words is a celebration of John Berger’s ninetieth birthday by poets from all over the world. Edited by Amarjit Chandan, Gareth Evans and Yasmin Gunarat nam, it features poets from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cuba, France, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Kenya, Macedonia, Nigeria, Palestine, Spain, Turkey, the USA and the UK"

The bear stands upon its hind legs - SJ Fowler

Metaphor is needed. Metaphor is temporary. It does not replace theory.
            John Berger A Seventh Man

Doubt is the product of a book.

At this point in the film, not believing he’d done it, the interviewer asks the executive whether the project will harm people? Everything in the wrong dose will harm people is the reply....