I was somewhat amused to notice today that the spaces that once graced some of my poetical works have ceased to be.
Whither have they gone?
I have tried to entice them back but nothing I do makes them reappear. This does not happen with books, you see. One puts a bit of grammar here and there, introduces a space to give the words room to breathe and there it stays. Not so with this virtual contraption. It removes my spaces – selectively- without so much as a “by your leave” and tucks them away into mysterious voids from whence they can never be recovered. Give me a good, honest book any old day!
If anyone in the WordPress world knows a way to right this dreadful wrong… do share your notes. My poems do not like to be squinched up.
Richard Moult ‘Celestial King for a Year’ available now (18/4/11)
Composer, painter and poet Richard Moult is the Newcastle-born author of innumerable songs, miscellaneous musical settings, field recordings and works for solo piano and classical ensembles, with a clutch of beneath-the-radar-albums and EPs to his name. Richard is also known for his work with the group Far Black Furlong and for collaborations with the David Tibet’s apocalyptic folk mavens Current 93, Irish psych-folk band United Bible Studies and Dorset sound sculptors Plinth.
His debut for Second Language, is a three-movement suite of stark, immersive, beauty. Celestial King For A Year began life as a work for string quintet but was gradually pared back to a numinous essence. “I wanted to write something spacious and to my mind, completely spiritual”, says Richard. “I took as my influence very early Christian chant (‘Old Roman’ – circa 6th Century AD), but I wanted to strip the work down even more, doing away with any rhythmic and harmonic embellishments and creating something that seems quite static, quite still. I then expanded the work to include two extra movements for voice, strings and electronics.”
The album is named after a poem of Richard’s and refers to the seasonal cycle and how offerings were once made to the fields in order to propitiate the gods. While the music doesn’t seek to literally describe any specific ritual/seasonal fest, it was Richard’s aim to, “try and presence a general ‘pagan’ sense of the sacred”. That he has succeeded magisterially in his aspiration is evinced by even a cursory listen to this haunting, compelling album.
Celestial King For A Year comes in a hand-made envelope with a postcard of Richard’s painting of harpist Áine O’ Dwyer.
Limited edition of 300 copies.
This is SL010 available online at: http://www.secondlanguagemusic.com/
Text from Second Languages Music
Video of Richard Moult’s music and artwork by Anne Wallace
Breathing in the coolness of air infused with spent incense
And feeling the echoes of plainchant still reverberating in my soul
In the silent darkness I would steal away into the library
That housed in over a hundred thousand books
The arcane knowledge of clever scholars and pithy priests
Scorned novelists and languishing poets
Because my mind burned for sacred knowledge
And my heart yearned for a numinous breath of life
Which I secretly possessed but did not yet know
At the break of dawn
When the sun rose in glints of majestic hues
Nature would open her book of secrets
And she turned its pages for me unceasingly
As the cycle of the seasons progressed
Holding nothing back
She would lead me time and time again
Along the curve of the cloister wall
That led to the hedge hidden within a tangled copse
That had been cultivated into a shape
Which reminded me curiously of a womb
- Like an ancient Celtic burial ground -
Until one day I crept inside and wept
I had wanted to be the Bride
I had come to seek holy ground
But instead I found scorched earth
Broken mirrors of human virtue and submission
Which reflected no light
So I found the key to the hidden gate
And carried the cloister of my heart
Into the expanse of the world
I constructed a hermitage made of paper
And arrayed myself in Nature’s gifts
Original poem by Anne Wallace
Music used by permission of the artists of the album Chartres: Catherine Braslavsky and Joseph Rowe http://www.naturalchant.com/disco.htm#chartresplace
Cello piece “Night in the Cathedral” by Thierry Renard. With gratitude.
2010 was a very challenging year creatively and practically. It brought with it much change and a chance to ground myself in a new reality. In honor of the new year breaking open to offer its new chances to dream, live and learn, I have decided to dismantle what has hitherto been my only WordPress site: Atelier Pigmenta Peregrinae. That will remain but I would like to tease apart the different elements of my creative aspirations to give them ample room to fly.
This site will be dedicated solely to my literary pursuits and photography. My poetry, literary critique and general blog will be housed here. My illumination and bookbinding will still be found at Atelier Pigmenta Peregrinae. Another new addition will be The Lepidopterarium which is where my silversmithing and ephemeral art will find a nice niche. Finally, The Habit of Silence will be a new thanatological journal that I am going to keep specifically addressing the work that I will be beginning at Covenant Hospice in January. Everything will be a wee bit chaotic as I move things about. The links will be in the sidebar to all the rest. Thanks to all who have visited and will visit these quiet realms of mine.
One lovely thing that happened in 2010 was the publication of two of my poems in The New Art Review.
