Some pages from Mesopotamia, 1987. Due for re-publication. (Text is part of Twentieth Century Blues and also in History or Sleep.)
Mesopotamia was written in 1985 and first published
with images, the photocopymontages of Patrica Farrell, one of our many Ship of
Fools collaborative publications. The text used found images and my great
uncle’s contact prints from the First World War that were too faint for
Patricia to collage into her images, but other photographs were used (we shared
some, but not all) for both image and text, but they possess a relative
autonomy in the final product. The prose text, though, is extremely collaged:
One step backwards, and you’re
gone, waking to a dream of dawn, over which wild cat’s eyes, carved into the
arm of the chair, close her head. She turns away to reveal a veined neck, set
between the cool brass. No, that was somebody trying to locate the morning – my
chest covered with flies – a history of sensation on the streets. You’re here
because that same courtyard, or so I fancied, was the studied flight of stairs
until I can take only one sentence at a time. The peep show stilled at the word
halting.
Visit the hub post to take you to all the posts concerning the Ship of Fools exhibition here.
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| A print made by Patricia re-using some of the images and words from the booklet. |
