BLESS BLAST (2022)
[13x21cm., risograph and digitally printed folded poem, with overlaid text. Edition of 50.

This book is a continuation of the papercut visual poetry installation at the Octagon vitrine, UCL, produced for the for 150th anniversary of the Slade School of Fine Art.

Wyndham Lewis was described by Ernest Hemingway as having “eyes of an unsuccessful rapist”. Leonard Woolf labeled him as “bilious and cantankerous”. Paul Nash defined Lewis as “strangely sub-human”. Lewis inspired almost entirely negative commends from his contemporaries, including accusations of vanity, insanity, irritable temperament, dullness and general nastiness. His penchant towards the negative, makes it rather delightful, that his first Vortex manifesto in the first Blast edition included not only of those deserving a blast, but also of those who would merit a bless.

Here I take a less polarised view. Although inspired by Wyndham Lewis’ manifesto, my blast and bless compete for the same ideas. Layers of meaning overlap, preventing the concepts from emerging as fixed entities. Although differentiated by only two letters, the bless and blast are entangled: they are a nebulous reminder of the delicate difference between that what is pursued, and that what is cursed.

bless the sight of his thighs
(she thought)
(naked Adam standing above the altar
with his virility obscured by a scroll of letters).
bless her thighs too and bless her hips
(naked Eve emerging from the darkness
with her womanhood barely concealed by a twig)
bless that curve
(she remembered him saying)
bless that curve of her hip
and the hazy hills
of Italian Renaissance masters
who aspired to replicate
that curve
plump and calm...
tender and demure...