Tag: writing
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Editorial: Clean Unclean
My side of the desk is scrupulously clean. The other half is a mess of dust and papers, temporarily abandoned books, a pair of tights, a lump of local granite. The line that separates the two is not as clear as I’d like. From the other side, my wife’s stately, slender Mac spaceship turns its…
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Of a Mouse, To a Mouse
The clean pink two back feet he has have long toes almost like a bird’s. Unlike a bird’s, the tail, a draggled earthworm, limps behind his search. Head joined on distinctly to a face but not a neck to speak of. See his oildot eyes like little fleas and yes, they’re shiny! really! Shining eyes!…
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In Richmond Park
Here is the cusp of November colour: deer in a nicotine prairie. Trunks snaked by squirrels, clouds and crows over yellow and russet leaf-rag. On thin legs, bulbous-jointed like twiglets, picking their way through the tussocks, three females pause, wary of me inching toward their group. Of the two stags, one chooses now to move…
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Beauty and Revolution / A Token of Concrete Affection
Now is the time to visit Cambridge if you’re a fan of concrete poetry. At Kettle’s Yard is Beauty and Revolution, an exhibition of work by Ian Hamilton Finlay, while the Centre of Latin American Studies plays host to a group exhibition entitled A Token of Concrete Affection. Both are furnished from the private collection…
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Open Call: Clean Unclean
Cleanliness, they say, is close to godliness. And the pig has long resided in the realm of the unclean. Even today: “It’s like a pigsty in here!” – as if the pig has much choice in how he lives… More than ever do we feel the urgency of cleanliness: clean hands, clean homes, clean minds….
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Rye’s Valhalla
Influx Press’s editor-at-large, Gary Budden, and author of Marshland, Gareth E. Rees, venture into Rye Harbour with inadequate footwear and a 1904 guide to Sussex. They discover more than they’d bargained for… BUDDEN: I switch at Ashford International. I hate Ashford. The train rumbles off. I rub my eyes, wishing I’d slept more….
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Tasked to Hear
On 30th March 2013 Mark Peter Wright made his way to a point in South Gare – a two-and-a-half-mile stretch of reclaimed land to the south of Teesmouth – and stopped. He made a note of the conditions (temperature, wind speed, humidity) and of his own body temperature. At 12pm, he switched on his audio…
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Heliotrope
For A.G. The fire called the shadows in They rushed to occupy every perimeter Crowded the mantelpiece, jostled with sharp elbows Tore up the carpets and hung heavily from the curtains Whispered their love songs with hoarse and gentle tongues Scattered in terror at the weft of the flame as it buckled…
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![Animals are good to think [with]](https://thelearnedpig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/garden-of-eden.jpg)
Animals are good to think [with]
Animals are good to think [with] – Claude Lévi-Strauss To be in two minds, think amoeba. To sell tea, think chimp. To build your own beak, think owl. To lick jowls and vomit logic, think wolf. To be insulted, think cow. To turn your voice inside- out, think crow. To balance the earth…
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No Rural Fantasy
The anti-pastoral of Cynan Jones I’m a Londoner through and through; a city person fascinated by everything the city is not. The rural worlds outside of mine are compelling, attractive, and occasionally frightening. I admit, as I head into my thirties, I feel the pull of an idea of being out in the country somewhere….
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Fungiculture
This summer sees the launch of a brand new academic journal: Fungiculture. Subtitled “A Journal for Psychedelic Culture Studies” Fungiculture was conceived over the past six months or so by a group of course-mates from Goldsmiths in order to provide, in their words, “a space for the experimental and playful cultivation of ideas and practices,…