Art,poetry

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/sep/20/art.poetry

 

“The poems I wrote during my residency were not an attempt to explain the paintings, their stories and hidden narratives, but more of an interpretation, a way of seeing and sometimes giving a piece a voice. But would the poem based on the painting grow from the perspective of the onlooker or from a character within the painting? Would it enter into a dialogue? “Perspective” in painting, I discovered, is related to “voice” in poetry.

Picasso’s Weeping Woman, with its haggard, fractured features and clash of colours, made me want to give that haunting face a voice. In the end I wrote in the voice of Dora Maar, the woman on whose face Weeping Woman is based:

They say that instead of a brush

he used a knife on me –

a savage geometry.

But as I say, look again,

this is the closest

anyone has got to the pain.

Green knows me –

Not the green of new shoots,

but the ghastly green of gangrene.

Yellow knows me –

Not the cheery yellow of the sun

but the sickly hues

of this war’s putrefaction.

Blue knows me

Not the boundless blues of sky or sea

but the blues of the singer’s

deepest sorrow.

Mother Dolorosa,

this grief has got to me.

Under the poise of my red hat

I hear, as if from a great

distance,

my own stifled scream.