Frances-Ann Norton: Poetry

Paternoster Part 2 What is my world of pain? Just thinking about it, riding round and round the Paternoster. It is the pain of remembrance. The feelings, the thoughts, the understanding The knowing what I have felt has a word, phrase. Yet not quite having the language to express it. Like Helen Keller with her hand in the water Letters, urgently, in rapid succession written on the other hand. W-A-T-E-R. And through the fog bank of realization comes a reflection of a conception of what it is. Having the experience of that event in my mind, to express the inner narrative, speaking the words out loud, I am not there yet. I have a taxonomy of all the words associated with that emotion Listed in my innerness, Someday soon I will speak the spoken the words out loud, Bring innerness to birth into the outside world. This is the start. Having the letters strung into words and phrases which make up the once secret, Now de-coded language, ...

Dream Poem 105: The Paternoster In an elevator, there are two women. Each in their world of pain. Each unable to help the other. image: http://charmbtrippin.com/goats-at-the-prague-lucerna-rooftop/

Diary Poem 2 Spinning in Silence A slice of silent contemplation the sky today is ice-cream blue rose candied pink with peach syrup clouds architecture is crisp in silhouette, sharp cold cut-outs, a paper stage in foam board and ink Stage of my play. Players coming in from stage left and stage right. And I’m lost up in the gods looking down and wondering when my cue might be. Momentary blip as I stand between Two posts. In the mouth of the goal But not back of the net. In a void of sound and input In a singular moment of stasis. Frozen in time. Briar Rose before everyone else wakes up A ghost who no one sees. Bustling past late looks Blond plait bobs by Curious looks. Locking doors Unlocking doors. A heated impassioned argument on the mobile In the corridor And all the while the reflection of myself looks on in white Crumpled linen. Reflected in the surface of a video Repetitious spinni...

Dream Poem 97: Anno Domini Running down stairs There is no time to pack We have to go The children will just have to keep up. A moment ago I was poring over ledgers and old photographs Now we have to run. We are in the shop named Anno Domini in the back room Going up the stairs.

Dream Poem 82: Clothes Mountain In Ikea but it’s a megastore, even bigger Looking at lampshades and glass vases There is a swimming pool with different levels Kids are swimming I can see through the shop window down into the pool area There are escalators and I find I have stored many clothes there There is a cupboard and crates of clothes I start going through them seeing which ones I want and don’t want which ones fit and there are so many I haven’t looked in for years after looking at a few I decide to take them home with me and clear out the whole lot, move it all home I try to remember where I have parked the car and I see there is a wardrobe, cupboard and draws full of clothes and I think Here we go again Moving more stuff And I realise I have clothes at another location too and that will needs clearing too.  (plate by F. Norton, called 'Bless This House)

Generative Drawing In my studio.. I cannot write this anymore I want to draw. Later In my studio once I was in the middle of the ‘sashiko Stitich ‘drawings. I would stay late drawing and drawing into the night. Repetitive action With dip pen and ink Some black Some gold ink. That was before A long time before the tempera work, the ‘Interrupted Pattern’ series Seven years difference. The repetitive action of process drawing or as Louise Hopkins calls it Generative drawing Altering boundaries and transforming territories . The use of gold The Rococo Minimalism Why process drawing? Creating lines of text-like marks Bands of drawn scripts with very slight variation A ripple through the sequence. For the lapis and the gold Hand drawn matrices For the structure of slight discrepancy, an oscillation Again a slight undulation in the skeleton Which show subtly in the skin. A sea swell A disparity in the surface not see...

The Change Part 8: Life Model As if turning a tap off the black stopped  It no longer worked This grief I’d cooked up had no flavour. Eight weeks of looking at a life size Black and white photo of my father In nothing but his underpants and a trombone Posing for the camera There is was hung. Outside my office Passing it back and forth, to class, to lunch on my break, back and forth Past dad – say Hi, be nice Made his death so real. Grief was a burned pudding Burned and bitter and black Toffee stuck to the bottom of the pan Black and gritty Ad Reinhardt had it The prismatic colours of black are a spare beauty, the matrix of red black, green black, grey black, blue black, yellow black, purple black, arranged and formed into a perfect unwholesomeness. Delicious chargrilled stone baked bottom blackened black rye loaf A blackberry and squid ink spaghetti Burned Humiliated Shamed, Ignored, Stumbling embarrassment. ...

The Change Part 7: Cocoon Curled in the nautilus of my imagination Foetal yet full grown The time of gestation A holding period Inside fingernail pink The shell walls glow in the sun Inside is a spiral staircase In a library In the fingernail room I lodged in black, waiting. Longing, yearning for the time to be up so I could leave So I can transform like Le Cain’s Cabbage Princess. Back into my real, authentic, true self. At tropical world the cocoons of rare and oversized moths and butterflies hang on a dowel In a humidor They hang, like last years leaves Tatty and brown A crumpled felt hat from the dressing up draw A discarded single brown suede glove from the 1940’s. The humidor has a glass front so I can witness the transformation. Daphne into a laurel tree Princess into a cabbage Well to ill Life to death to death to life. Once I saw the exact moment The moth emerged from its cocoon And fell to the metal mesh floor...

Dream Poem 96: Trousers At the corner of a street at night in a closed shop doorway. It has been a Christmas party and our small group composed of The hippy, the ballerina, the tiny enthusiast and the photographer. The round bouncer on the door of the Club has told us “he’s not coming in wearing jeans” We maintained that his presence is necessary to our happiness. It is decided the ballerina and the photographer will swap trousers. He takes off his trousers So she can put them on. This suits them both very well. We are admitted through the dark, smokey doorway.

Dream Poem 94: Clever Artists Here is a massive famous Art Museum. Some artists break in the dead of night and take a painting. They use the famous old and venerable painting to make a new one. They break back in the next night And rehang it back in its usual place in the gallery. They wait for it to open. And watch for the public and the curators to see how clever they were. (image, Cardinal Sin, by Banksy, Liverpool Museum.)

Dream Poem 94: Liquid Mud I open my mouth to scream. And it is choked up with liquid mud. It fills my mouth and throat, gagging me, stifling my cry.

Dream Poem 86: The Capturers Choosing coloured pencils from the library shop at college to use with students on a trip to a museum. The pencils are non-uniform very dirty  but the pigment in them is very good. We go out, myself and the students to the museum another group is there, they are dangerous. They capture victims to hurt them. We try and escape by hiding in a room in a tiny shop. We are gathering so we can go out in the street together Playing music and singing. But the capturers are coming  and we hide in a room. A man and woman are already hiding when I try and squeeze in with them. A handsome man in a shirt decides to brave it on the street. Slips out of the door and mingles with the crowd He is successful And returns later dressed as a woman.

Dream poem 84: Long Dress and a Sword Two teams of us On both sides of the hall To take games The game was to take on a new personality And act out that personality I was in love with someone on the opposite side In every game they were on the opposite side I tried to explain this to them one day but it was wasted words We were never meant to be. Fighting a battle Long dress and a sword I always win but I wonder if I will win this time and why me? A grandma and baby are at the play ground Grandma injures her neck and I hold the baby and go to ring an ambulance. I don’t want to dial the number so I get someone else to do it the baby is tiny And starts rooting at my breast and crying. But I tell it “I’ve no milk anymore” Meanwhile the grandma who should be lying flat is playing on the park. I’m opponents with another kingdom Although I’ve won many times before With my long dress and sword I wonder if I will win thi...

Dream Poem 91: Not Worth Pursuing An office of glass and concrete It’s a bank. There is some funny business going on – a scam A suitcase of money is handed over for investment but it is an inside job which is discovered at the last minute and the man has to grab the money and run. We already know he will get away with it. We knew it was happening but it was worth the risk and in the long run it is not worth pursuing. The elders of the bank have allowed it to happen. (images of the Seagram Building New York. Built in 1958 by Modernist Bauhaus trained Architects   Mies van der Rohe  and    Philip Johnson  who designed the four seasons restaurant.)

                                            Dream poem 81: Princess Stroppy Princess stroppy In a campsite By a reservoir A princess in regal state gown, sewn all over with jewels, pearls, crystals, gold. We have to keep her happy But it’s a campsite Basic and dirty There seems to be lots trailing about in the dirt. she is not happy, no Allerlierauh is she. (illustration: princess DonkeySkin by Kay Nielsen.)

Dream Poem 54: 1920's Bed At a night class I’m teaching,  there are three students,  a man on a bike and an older woman. The class is next to the canal, People have drowned there  we discuss their motivation for drowning. It’s the end of term and the whole college is getting together for a ceremony. There is a bed in an office. I go for a lie down feeling tired. It is a 1920’s bed,  Art Deco in colour and style  ash trays in the wall next to each side. All around are sky scrapers I feel very small and insignificant.                         

The Waterwheel Once Again: Mrs Rochester’s Story Drawn as I am to it I fear it too Its dark beauty and power Black with age and use Cups again and again the soft water. Made mild by dale and stone The drip, drip, drip of Mother Shipton’s cave Petrifying a hat, a ballet shoe An umbrella Hanging like excavated Pompeian Artefacts. There is no wheel there in the Garlic forest up in the hills A damp cave for a home. Driven from town as a witch she was feared and saught. This wheel is an attraction so great I abhor it. It has a pull on me. The rhythm of its rhyme, the rhythm of its rhyme, the rhyme of its rhythm A repeated phrase In mechanical shouts And watery gutturals The crank and grind of it The burden of industrial weight  The insolent preponderance of it pulls my eyes unwillingly to its black presence Its perpetual motion Hypnotic Wavering on a precipice How easy, how freeing just to let go ...

Ode to Pina Pina and her dancers Joy and abandon Pure physicality of space And shape. Dance with Water Earth A forest An open cast mine A Modernist glass building. loose hair And long dresses And their bodies move with grace and staccato In minimalist repetitions. And I recognize my own body in this form and saw my body strong and flexible it too could work like this with this hair and this dress I too can be Pina in her hat and wellies.

Dream Poem 92: 1960’s Classroom Affair A 1960s film, very stylized The relationship between a woman teacher and a late teen boy He is blond and overweight by todays fashion standards She is dark and tanned, hair cut in a bob, beautifully cut clothes. She is in line with the young man and is fighting her feelings. She sits in her apartment in the evening. All in white, white YSL dress, white Mary Quant shoes She sits at white plastic furniture leafing through a copy of Paris Vogue. It is a very modern roof top terrace There are high windows all done in the Modernist Bauhaus style. West Side Story – a doomed love affair. The next shot is In the class room There is an info graphics film about the physiognomic difference between a man and a teenager. With kooky drawings and comparison measurements. The next scene, He is there at her flat She is trying to tell him to leave But cannot help crying He wants to comfort her But conv...

The Change part 6: In the Fall-Out of Chernobyl, Black is Inapposite She is in her black as usual. Black coat and bag Black bra and knickers and slip Black dress All black, every day. Saying – he is dead and I am sorry The semiotics of the outfit. She is in her black dress at the doctor’s waiting room In the hospital Surrounded by women like her. Some crying silently, anxiously, some dead eyed, exhausted with an IV of nuclear-ness drip, drip, dripping into their bodies. With husbands With women friends With mothers, with daughters. She is alone, and happily so she needs a break from the well intentioned baggage of others. She looks at herself And she says “This narrative has to change”. This event marks a way stone, a departure from the path she thought she was going on. Her agency in this new reality asserts itself and says, “Dump the black, Live. This is your time now. He has had his slice of mourning, ...