A list of positive things for when things may not be so positive (2010)
a list of positive things for later when things may not be so positive, was a performed collaboration with Aleks Danko that took place at various sites within the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, as part of Duetto a multi-venue project of performance, installation, photography, painting, video and exhibition ephemera organised and presented by the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), Adelaide.
The performance was developed in direct response to four sites in the Botanic Gardens: The Museum of Economic Botany, the Wisteria Arbour, the Palm House and the Summerhouse and a site specific poem (text and actions) was created for each location. The audience was taken on a conducted walking tour of the sites and the performed spoken word and action events presented new perspectives for exploring Adelaide’s Botanical Gardens and gave new insights into the relationships between poetry and botany.
Photography by Michael Zerman.
Between Yeats and Yates
close-clipped
out to the hazel wood
winter wet, summer dry
a fire in my head
paving, pebbles and pine bark
peeled a hazel wand
pockets of cold, prevailing winds
hooked a berry
hollows into cold air flows
white moths were on the wing
early morning warmer and protected
stars were flickering out
shadows in spring
I dropped the berry
somewhere in-between
something rustled on the floor
wisteria, hydrangea
apple blossom in her hair
sheltered from strong winds
the brightening air
slatted fence, turbulence
among long dappled grass
disturb the ground as little as possible
silver apples of the moon
paling
golden apples of the sun
Aleks Danko & Jude Walton 2010
Roses with Adam’s Curse
at one summer’s end
your close friend
talked of poetry
flower form and fragrance,
flushes of bloom long-lived
a line will take us
not seeing a moments thought
our stitching and unstitching
dark dank condition
so they crumble easily
in all kinds of weather
articulate sweet sounds together
to work harder than all these
bare-rooted, dormant, weeping
watering, weeding, mulching, pruning
to be born woman is to know
who thought love should be
Photographer Tony Bishop
quiet at the name of love;
too high wrong angle
too low correct
last embers of daylight die
a moon, worn
I had a thought
above an eye and slanting back
to love you
in that hollow moon
Aleks Danko & Jude Walton 2010
'The doubling of self and other moves through the spoken word poems of Aleks Danko and Jude Walton. Taking their audience on a rambling processional through the Adelaide Botanic Gardens they performed A list of positive things for when things may not be so positive (2010). An index of first lines borrowed from other poets—”musing on roses and revolutions,” “beauty and beauty’s son,” “and the winter’s cold bright tulips we do know”—grew into a singing duologue of lines bouncing back and forth between the poets, a gentle rhythm of the accommodations of each to the other’s thought. Enveloped jellyfish-like in raincoats in the Victorian Palm House, they gave us a couplet of longing (“I mist you,” “I mist you too”) as they lovingly sprayed water into each other’s faces. The rhythm of this nurturing partnership flowed through it all as play and humour.'
Jemima Kemp RealTime issue #98 Aug-Sept 2010 pg. 52