Frances-Ann Norton: Poetry

Double Poignard Red Rage The falling feeling Of dizzy connectedness And the snip, snip, snipping Of the tiny cuticle scissors. Small enough to hide in my hand Instrument Of impotent rage Inexpressible anger Frustration Shame. Sent to my room for some Post-Victorian infringement Completely incomprehensible. What do these bloody parents want? Really? My 3 year old self has no idea. Once again Tucked under her arm Fighting Thrown onto my bed Door slammed I rip books Scribble in them, throw them. But now I have the scissors Its tiny blades Don’t make hacking rents That I want to see They make sparrow pecks On the duvet. Peck, peck, peck Goes the tiny beak It is not enough Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck. A small cumulus of feathers floats to the carpet under my bed Appear in drifts of snow But it is not enough To contain my universe of pure Red rage. Not enough to express my galaxy ...

Dream poem 111 How Not to Teach At art college A student is expecting me to say something constructive about his painting. It looks something like this Half figure, a guitar, a chain link fence and sky. I say to him The fence needs to be more in front of the figure So it can cast a shadow on the form The sky needs to start darker at the very top And get lighter where it is near the sun And get darker again where it hits the horizon. He thinks about it for a moment And agrees.

Dream poem 108:   M agic Cup of Tea A North Korean communist girl   very smiley and happy can magically produce cups of tea from thin air when she drinks. When I try it the cup appears but with only a teaspoon of tea in the bottom she drinks it anyway.

Dream poem 109 a Turner Storm The sea is tremendously wild and so, so strong. All around the swells are destroying shops, the tide is tsunami. The semi-dark sky is Turnered with storm clouds. I am living on the dockside. There are houses on the pier right out into the ocean. The plunging of the waves, crashing on the docks and then sucking back down into the deeps.

Dream poem 110 He is Not There An old house It is terribly haunted each room is filled by memories and spirits it is acutely overwhelming  in this museum house I hold hands with my love  all the way round. On the way home I lose him in a crowd I cannot find him I wait he is not there I retrace my steps he is not there I am distraught.

Mirror Land: Response to Gaffney's 'The Good, The bad and The Ugly' sculpture. Lone girl at an Irish Zoo, how she has set herself apart. She is on a table which rests on a mirror. Claude Glass, a Black Mirror, used for painting landscapes in the 18 th  C. Are the landscapes memory landscapes? Or Ingold Taskscapes? 1965 treetop canopy, a park with a cenotaph. A lot of sky, populated by trees. This hand mirror is Cleopatra’s Obsidian highly polished mirror. Not a true reflector black stone of magnetic depth A wonder. The magnetic depth of prismatic black flecked with quartz. The contemplative depth is much more about soul space. A  Psychological fingerprint. Because it is not a true reflection It gives space for infinity Mirror To look in it is to gaze on the infinite, the sublime. Not Newman’s sublime although I think I understand the Abstract Expressionism’s love of black. Ad Reinhardt, Malevich, Rauschen...

Yellow Bunny Frances was born in 1969 at Leeds Maternity hospital, (this is going somewhere, I’ve got a plan honestly) and was given a yellow rabbit by a lady from Ann’s jewellery evening class. (Those ladies loved mum.) Ann had two significant car crashes in 1968 and 1969 and had broken her pelvis and back. Right before the birth she had a blow out and flipped the car right over on the way home from Harrogate. Ann says her shoes were stolen while she was unconscious. (This is relevant It’s all part of the story). [Sometimes a story is slow in the coming like Frances was being born.] Ann suffered terribly at the birth Still recovering from her injuries Ann was unable to sit up or hold her new baby. Frances and Yellow Bunny went on a trip to Huddersfield, with Uncle Bobby, Aunty Susan and Cousins Philip, Janet and Rachel. Hours, days, weeks, months went by. Who can tell how slowly of fast they passed. She was a baby. {Not yet conscious o...