(Photocopies. The Gradual Mutation of The Territory, 2013).
† Addendum to: 2024-06-16
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memoradelia
Regions as layers for deep time storage /
Perform a regional invocation to draw something up from the localised past / Place your clay offerings among the hawthorn leaves on the slopes of the greenbelt / Bury your wooden effigies beneath loose Earth in a circle of small bones — the remains of a magpie or treecreeper /
From your backpack pull the jar of hair and iron nails, withered red berries / Desiccated leechwort bound with twine / Little pockets of skin folded and sown like leather /
With surgical precision open the veins etched across the territory and the spectra of history oozes through /
The land spits up thick liquid time / Spectral phosphors glow over marshland at night / Estuary, tributary, mudflat / Salt dry skin peels from bone /
This is anxiety about worn places /
Burning like static off pirate radio /
(Excerpt. The Gradual Mutation of The Territory, 2013).
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Origin songs transmit ceremonial frequency / Explosive explosive radio explosive /
Modulated rite of time zone changes / Orbital grooves across hollow song sky /
Move carefully across the skein of scrubby floodplain / Beneath the thrumm humm humm of pylons tying up the GHQ Line /
Electrical surge along concrete river defences / Conducted into a ground loop of anti-tank ditches, blast mounds, hexagon bunkers /
Silt-logged beds thick with early morning mist / The rustling sandwiches of bird watchers /
Residual history etched in the ribboned tributary surface / Deteriorating stretches of muddy water, creeks, marshes /
Paint peeling off the forgotten hulls of trawlers / Splintered ores and masts / Flaking from the sheet metal sides of the dock / Rust stain of surplus time / Salt air weathering with corrosive traces of limestone, clay, cockleshell /
Draw your incision carefully across the landscape / Wash out the bloody debris / The sediment of Empire /
At the foot of hillside and down / A town founded terminally below sea-level / A recessed tooth sunk low in an estuarine jawline / A reclaimed island embedded in the mudflat margins of Essex Witch County /
A flat land for flat people in flat houses / Dominated by the artefacts of a dying petrochemical industry / Buildings, roads, trees, painted all over in ash, battleship, charcoal, gainsboro, gunmetal and slate /
A horizon of silos and spires / Flaming refineries / Typically Blakean altars at which we sacrifice our bodies to the North Sea gods of oil and coast /
Walk until you reach the encasement of sea-walls / Climb two kilometres out on the black metal jetty /
Sagging sky fog belly punctured by slowly moving container ships /
The anamnesis of place with the worn down tone of magnetic tape /
(Excerpt. The Gradual Mutation of The Territory, 2013).
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