Urban Swans

Sod London with its urban foxes - in Plymouth we have urban swans. Taken on Friday whilst waiting for my ferry home. They are a bit grubby and one of them glares at dogs whilst the other tidies up the nest.

Why Nikola Tesla is the first superhero

This is from the great BBC series Shock and Awe The Story of Electricity. A visual demonstration of just how extraordinary Tesla was - this is science as adventurer or explorer. He shot lightning from his fingertips! I actually had a go with one of the light tubes when I was at the Tesla museum in Belgrade (god bless Serbian lack of health and safety rules...). This series also had some amazing early electricity experiments in it - when it was science as wonder, more mysterious than any magicians trick (though actually there are links between the history of electricity scientists and magicians - there were certainly electricity parlour tricks - maybe another post..) - I will post the whole first episode here too - I like the experiment involving levitating gold and a swing...
Tesla as superhero:

Episode one on early electricity scientists:

Into the Ice - radio recording online now

The full recording of me and Ana reading part three of The City on the radio in Belgrade. The final version for the cd will be a lot more rehearsed and the music changed a bit, but I'm pretty pleased with this for a first live performance... Music as before by Ryan Norris.

Into the Ice video

Ana has uploaded our recent radio reading to youtube with some photos, though as it was 18 minutes long youtube has cut off the last three bah humbug. However one gets the idea. I am currently trying to upload the full recording to soundcloud but am having some problems, so watch this space. Oh and this is part three of me (Alice Maddicott) and Ana Seferovic's collaborative poetry book The City. Music for this part by Ryan Norris.

Forest in a cave - Hang son doong, Vietnam.

I'm a bit fearful of underground, always liking to be as high up as possible (hence tree house obsession), but if I had to live in a cave I'd want one with a forest - who thought you could have a tree house in a cave?! Hang son doong in Vietnam is the largest cave in the world, with amazing giant caverns you could fit buildings in, but where part of the cave roof fell in many many years ago the light coaxed life out of the previous darkness and now a miniature rainforest thrives. I saw this the other day on the BBC's wonderful "How to grow a planet" documentary. I really recommend seeking this programme out (it might still be on iplayer) as it also had fascinating bits on fossilised forests and tree defences against dinosaurs, as well as a wonderful sequence where the warning communications between plants were filmed (they release an until recently undetectable gas when their leaves are cut to warm others about predatory herbivores). Here's a clip of the cave forest segment.

Here's also a couple of photos courtesy of National Geographic taken by Carsten Peter - there's an article on the caves on their website too that is worth checking out.

We Are Reading

Photos from me and Ana reading on the radio - we look slightly less like Victorian Kraftwerk this time... Link to recording of part three of The City coming soon. Thank you to the Belgrade gang for a lovely evening.

The City - reading on radio this Friday

Me and the wonderful Ana Seferovic will be reading from our poetry book The City, as well as other bits and pieces, with lovely musicians this Friday 27th January. The show starts at 9pm Belgrade time (8pm GMT)and will be broadcast in front of a live audience. You can listen in for free at http://nofm.rs

Here is a little blurb about the project (and a silly picture of me and Ana...)

The City.

The city seeks to poetically excavate the concept of urban space from a priori concrete ideas to personal memory - the hidden rather than the monumentally enforced stories of a place. The foundations are laid by two poets, Alice Maddicott (UK) and Ana Seferovic (Serbia), working in close collaboration to deconstruct cities of personal memory to form one constantly evolving city; seeking out atmosphere and the intangible as much as streets and buildings, to create an intrinsic sense of place that can communicate universally.

Created in three movements from architectural facts, through intimate and post-apocalyptic visions, to an ultimate losing of oneself to space and the absence of recognisable place, the project is a distillation of the essence of a city rather than its physical building blocks. These foundations will be built upon by other artists, in the first instance by musicians Manja Ristic (Serbia) and Ryan Norris (USA), who are creating a score in three parts in response to the atmosphere of different areas within the poem.

The first stage of the project sees the publication of a book, CD and archaeological poetry map by the organisation Auropolis. The intention is to follow this with an exhibition, recreating the poem in physical space with the collaboration of visual artists, as well as a series of performances. The project brings together writers, musicians and artists from across the world, all of who will bring their own sense of place to the work as it continues to be built.

I would also direct you to the Supernova Poetry website for more on me and Ana and the poetry work Auropolis does.

I'm off to Belgrade...

So in honour of the trip and the work me and Ana are going to do there, here's a short story/poem about one of our more bizarre days out in that city...

Ada lake, Gypsy Island.

We walked through torrents
Lapped deeper water
As drums struck
Promises of fire

Round the corner
Past stubborn swans
The fishing champions laughed and
Gave us cigarettes for beer

I don’t think they heard
The reflections dripping hints
Of what was really going on

We followed rhythms
Across the coming night
Stumbled through a lost village
With houses too small and covered
With flowers
For real people

I held her hand and tried
To catch the whispered
Laughter dark
On the softened wind

It would lead us there if we were careful
Listened out and followed
Puffs of potential parties
Blown in waves of frothy
Promises of misadventure

We sought them out
Giggled and clapped our hands
Sped up through sinking mud
Past floating houses
Treading water to reach the
Safety of overhung trees and
Tied up plastic bags

We snatched them so
They flew out behind us
Like sodden flags of rubbish
Torn from where it should

Go

Grow now

The pedalos waited in silence
Past an abandoned sports court
Blaring music that
Confused us
With burnt out expectations
Glowing neon in the too bright light

We kept going till we heard a different tune
A song so old it broke its heart
All over the lake
Bled minor chords in trickles
That floated, shining -
A slick of tortured treacle
Calling hidden rainbows
To the moonlight

The old man in the bar
Sitting behind a bleared clear curtain
Of fattened clingfilm
Beckoned wistfully with wafts of smoke
From falling ash
His other hand curved round a beer
He wanted us to join him for

We did not stop
As the songs crept backwards in time.
Tripped past the concrete bunker
That looked out
Just as a mystery
Watched us as our
Shoes filled up with puddles
And confessions till the other side

Unwoken we walked through
Folds of places
Hiding in a different layer
Sweating secrets
Of this city.

My Tree, My Community at Eden 2011.

I was really thrilled to be working with Darite school on the edge of Bodmin Moor for The Eden Project's wonderful My Tree, My Community project this year. Here's a snapshot from start to finish. And yes I own magic dust so I can put children to sleep to dream about Christmas past. It's a useful teaching aid... Thanks to the lovely teachers, helpers, kids and Dan at Eden.

Tree house of the day 2

This was built by a man named Horace Burgess as an anniversary present for his wife. It took him 15 years. A very good way to a woman's heart in my opinion. And it is a particular favourite of mine due to Tbilisi style balconies! Sigh...

Treehouse of the day

Designed by blue forest

Castles of rock and sand - today I want to live here...

And then after lunch I would swim over to the beach and build this:

I keep getting loads of views of this so I hate to be a spoil sport but I do believe the first photo is not a real place... Though I think imaginary places can be just as amazing so it never bothered me...

Ukrainian Floating Barn

I've always been a fan of barns in general, but really I wish more people would think about how buildings are improved if they have the floating in an invisible tree vibe...

Spider web tree clouds

Some of the most amazing photos I've seen for a while (courtesy of Russell Watkins - more can be seen on the National Geographic website). In Sindh, Pakistan in 2010 after terrible monsoon rains the spiders ascended to the trees to avoid the floodwater - quite beautiful (though depending on the spider type I imagine quite scary to be standing under...). I guess this is my dreamy post-Halloween contribution...

Shoe box world (in memory of lost games)

Site-specific diorama and oral history inspired story, London, secret pathway.

Miniature book in situ, Notting Hill

This is one for the library of the lost not found... I sometimes wonder where the ones I don't get back go - whether they have a new home or have drifted away to biodegrade back to the earth with their secrets...

Imaginary farm of London past

Handmade secret history book (to be completed by viewer) and animal sound modules, Ladbroke Grove, 2007. There was actually a farm here once so I like the idea that the ghosts of geese and cows and sheep and pigs are talking back through my recordings - the sound pads like spiritualist portals...

Bridge mobile for ghosts

Embroidery, Ladbroke Grove, 2007.

Grimwith Reservoir Workshop Carvings

I just got sent some photos of the stones that were carved with words created in the workshops I ran for children and adults at Grimwith Reservoir for the 60th anniversary of the Yorkshire Dales being founded as a national park. It's so lovely to see them in situ!

Mary's Birthday (1951)

Lotte Reiniger does flower fairies and flies plotting in the pub and multicoloured germ massacres. My Mum's called Mary and would have been 3 when this came out - she also had an Aunt Peggy, so I like to pretend this was made for her...

Anonymous Bench Memorial

Ukichiro Nakaya grows snow on rabbit hair

straight from the den: archive: photostory

straight from the den: archive: photostory

Astrid just posted this from our trip to Iceland (where we were writing a travel journal for university about land art AND vikings) what is alarmingly something like 11 years ago now!

Owls and bluebells

Two of my favourite things from the best wildlife documentary of last year "The Wild Places of Essex". If you can find it in full do watch it - strange poetry of the everyday... And I love Robert Macfarlane (read his book The Wild Places - I was recently given it as a present and fell in love instantly - it has the atmosphere of a Samuel Palmer painting and reads like Ted Hughes).

Elephant Swimming Cup - Thailand

Norwegian Stave Churches

My new architectural love...

I believe in the dark churches,
the ones that still stand like tarred pyres in the woods
and like deep red roses carry a fragrance
from times that perhaps had more love.
Those jet-black towers I believe in: the ones that smell of
the sun's heat
and old incense burnt in by the centuries.
Laudate pueri Dominum, laudate nomen Domini.

Axes shaped them and silver bells rang in them.
Someone carved dreams in and gave them wings so they'd wander
out across ages and mountains - which surge up around them
like breakers.
Now they are ships, with crow's nests turned toward East India...

(extract from Stave Churches by Rolf Jacobsen, translation Roger Greenwald.)

Supernova Poetry is online!

The website for the Supernova Poetry project I was lucky to be involved with in Belgrade is now online. You can read poems from the anthology and there's a live recording of me reading with the wonderful Manja Ristic and co playing music. Go to www.supernovapoetry.net - to reach my stuff click on English UK (the anthology included poets from an amazing array of languages all translated in Serbian too), then click on my name - you can turn the pages like a book, so flick on one page from my profile to reach the audio stuff (or you can reach it straight from the homepage). I would recommend reading and listening to the whole website though!

St Nicholas of Bari Rebuking the Storm

I found a post card of this in the depths of my somewhat overcrowded room and remembered how excited I was when I first saw this painting when I was little and noticed the mermaid had legs. This was painted by Bacci di Lorenzo in the days when mermaids were very much involved in the causing of storms. It's in the Ashmolean in Oxford which is a truly fabulous museum (if memory serves me they also have a beautiful Samuel Palmer landscape). I also like how it sheds some light on St Nicholas's posthumous activities before he became Father Christmas. And how he arrives in a wake of stars (I think you can buy rather lovely Christmas cards of this moment)...

Rail pod regeneration

I always get frustrated with city regeneration projects in the UK - when will town planners realise that shopping centres are not the only way to revitalise a town, and actually don't really regenerate them at all? And don't even start me on the Olympics and how that money could be better spent for East London... However on a more cheerful note here is a fantastic idea that recently won third prize in a competition to regenerate the Norwegian (gotta love that country) town of Andalsnes. It was proposed by the Swedish architects Jagnafalt Milton (who these images are courtesy of). Andalsnes is a city with a lot of disused rail infrastructure and the proposal utilised these rails to make portable modules that could be moved around as was convenient.

I love the idea of having a miniature pod house that you can move to a better location depending on season etc. They remind me of the sort of places you would imagine living in as a child when playing survival games of where you would build if all the adults disappeared. I would hide in my greenhouse at the bottom of the garden in storms and imagine that this was my home from now on. There's something about this design that reminds me of that childhood magic of the aftermath of a gentle apocalypse. They also remind me of the tradition of making houses out of railway carriages - something that was definitely common in the past down here in Cornwall. When doing research for a community project recently I was thrilled to find out about this way of life where the carriage homes were seen as the step between homelessness and a 'normal' house. They were really beautiful and I desperately want one as a study... I would like a Norwegian railway pod house too, though sadly the design did not win so they will not for now be built. At least they'll be in the great company of all the utopian housing schemes that nearly were, and thanks to modern technology, these days we have photos so in some kind of dimension they do exist...