The

Bath BurpAugust 2011 MUSIC * POETRY * ART Issue 5

Editorial

Maybe it’s the compounded feeling of being

continuously kicked in the nether’s that has so

riled a generation to kick the innocent shit out

of everything with a wall on it. Or maybe it is the

continuous kicking of the last three generations,

which has so downgraded our sense of community,

empathy and common sense. I don’t know, and I don’t

think anyone ever really will. All that will come

out of it in the end is a desperate and impotent

frustration that something should have happened,

that we knew it would, but that the dynamite exploded

off the wrong fuse.

Something inside us needs to smash out and be

recognised, or at least seen, just like art.

The best of all things comes from freedom.

“As

The

Spirit

Wanes

The

Form

Appears”

Charles Bukowski

David Selby

Disappointed

Thanks again to Jo Harbutt and Amanda Jones at

Realworld Records for letting us duplicate our CD’s

there.

Front cover image by Bob Shaw: mattbobshaw.

deviantart.com/gallery. Art Contributions:

Brian Selwell, David Cobley, Adrian Howe,

Diana Ahmed, Dave Coupland. Poetry & written

contributions: Jake Saw, Nina Innocentia, Angela

Williams, Joe Skelton & HLS.

ON THIS MONTH’S CD

1. The Pact (Guillaume Blanc Remix)

Bath-based Helium Records releases this remix of a One

Sixth of Tommy track. Produced by Chris Huges and Mark

Frith. www.onesixthoftommy.com

2. Five

A poem by Laurie Bolger

www.myspace.com/lauriebolger

3. Hanging Ivy

A song by local folk hero Tim Graham.

www. myspace.com/timtrad

4. Hard Living (live @ The Griffin open mic)

By The Matt Warren Band

5. Persil & The Old Man

Two more poems by Laurie Bolger. One you might have read

before, but this time you get it spoken to you.

www.myspace.com/lauriebolger

6. Merry-go-round

Loveliness from Jennifer Crook www.jennifercrook.com

7. Astray

Bath locals, The Edsel Furys

www.myspace.com/theedselfurys

If you would like to submit a poem, song or story for a

future month, please send an email to:

music@thebathburp.co.uk We are happy to come and

record gigs in Bath too, if you let us know in time.

BRIAN ELWELL

Abbey Interior oil and enamel on board 30x30cm

The Glass Arch oil and enamel on board 30x30cm

Brian has been a professional painter for many

years and has a studio at Bath Artist Studios

(www.bathartistsstudios.co.uk). He has recently

completed a portrait project called ‘Meetings With

Remarkable People’. You can see this and more of his

work at www.phoenixgallery.co.uk

The Exile.

 

I have spent too many sleepless Ray Charles nights

staring through this window, sucking

at a dry teat. I have watched them

come and go, spreading across the streets

like black sand. There is something behind their inches.

I remember the stories I’ve heard, I think

of those I don’t yet know and imagine the names

I’ll never speak. I invent friends and discard

them as the sky turns inside out, baring

its teeth. I sit, raising my voice to try and stop the echo.

 

Music.

I can take the night sky apart with a thought,

peel back the inky clouds in a sticky film.

Look at me – I can swim.

I become the tree I’m watching

which glistens with wetness.

My arms support a thousand shining

children that shiver with the winds rhythm.

From a distance I hear honey-covered clockwork

crickets ticking, praying in perfect time.

They speak in riddles, laughing.

Their notes flutter on the breeze

and weave to form a pattern.

Tell me where you want me to go;

I have always followed your directions.

These songs sketch themselves on my skin, I

become a walking, breathing poem.

Your symmetry is overwhelming.

I send you the tears I kept for myself.

The mirror holds us still until

I can’t tell you from me

or he

or she

or...

The Festival.

 

The news was delivered with a palm

pressed against a shocked cheek.

We ventured outside and I watched

the leaves stir above us, hundreds of tiny

green fingers clamouring to clasp the breeze.

The violins talked among themselves

while we looked at distant hills.

Sheets of mist swelled between

them as we passed; the scene flashed by as quickly

as it appeared and we became combined.

The shapes we threw at each other struck

echoes through the evening. The monster

went hungry in the mountain’s shadow.

As we each departed, searching for that ultimate

awareness,

I can still remember you drawing ghosts on my skin.

Jake Saw © 2011

News @ 5

Here is my house.

A hedgehog is in the garden.

Here is a funny castle.

This is my birthday party.

It has been snowing today.

This is Mr Men land.

My Nana is going to dancing club.

Charlotte has a globe.

A house is on fire.

We are growing cress.

Here is a big crocodile.

The queen is outside her castle.

Here are my friends playing boats.

We are asleep in bed and

people are out….

rioting.

HLS aged 5 and 31

“As an artist my journey has been exploring the

tapestry of emotions that one encounters in life, which

I express through various art mediums, installations

and personal interpretations of each experience.

Presently my practice has moved into performance

art. The ability to change my appearance and become

another character really appeals to my sense of fun

as the transformation from my reality into a another

personality then acting out the creation.”

In early September Diana will present Gallopy

Installations, an exciting showcase of artists’ work

at The Octagon, Milsom Place, Bath. The opening night

promises to live up to the dynamic name of the venture,

with horse-themed activities planned. 7th-10th Sept

www.gallopyinstallations.blogspot.com

DIANA AHMED

Dolly stencil

Untitled

There is no ground beneath my feet.

My inner compass points to magnetic north.

I sit alone inside my head,

With the door shut and barred.

I do not want to step outside,

Although others come knocking

From time to time.

 

I have no source of wisdom.

My life blood has ceased to flow.

I have stopped listening

To words, small and mean,

Washed up, over used,

Faded in the sun,

They hold no truth for me.

 

Do not placate, do not explain.

I am not the same.

A fragile facsimile of what was before,

Two dimensional

My veins run cold,

My heart does not beat within.

Am I already old?

 

Nina Innocentia © July 2011

twitter/ninainnocentia

Clouds

We had this long backyard. It took me a couple of

years to be able to throw a baseball the length of it.

At the end, in her first years there, my mom planted

a garden. In the fresh cold of spring, we uprooted

the grass and weeds, framed it in with abandoned

railroad track wood, carefully planted seeds. In

the front, we planted flowers in the little section

of dirt between the crammed in houses. Mint and

lilly’s grew there, offering us beauty in the

summer, and cold remedies in the winter.

It was an old railroad town, every morning and

evening we would hear the loud rumble of the train

as it struggled along carrying carts of various

pollutants and graffiti on it’s back. Our time there

as a family was like the old town itself, neglect

and abuse wearing down it’s life, stability, and

future.

In stolen moments I used to run out back, lay

down by our now weed infested garden, on an itchy

green blanket we picked up from the salvation army.

Blocking out the sounds from the train, shouting

family, neighbors and cars, I would look up at the

sky. The big blue sky, bright and full of moving

clouds, soft shapes and violent beauty. With eyes

closed, I imagined myself carried away on the

clouds’ caress, so pure and so clean. Gentle, Kind,

New.

As the shouts from the house called me back in to

an endless list of chores, pain, and survival, I

smiled. The sky would be waiting for me tomorrow,

and there in, hope.

www.myspace.com/angelicasophia

ADRIAN HOWE

www.54nch32.deviantart.com

DAVID COBLEY

David was the founder of The Bath Artist’s Studios,

which is now looking for funding to secure a permanent

home in the city. He maintains strong links with the

studios but now works above the Java Coffee House in

Kingsmead Square, where he says people are very welcome

to drop by, see his work and have a coffee.

Painting my studio pink Oil on linen

(Reproduced in glorious black and white.)

Portrait of Sir Martin Evans, comissioned by The

National Portrait Gallery. Oil on linen.

www.davidcobley.com

DAVE COUPLAND

Self portrait

OXJAM ART AUCTION REQUEST: We’re giving over October’s

issue to Oxjam and we’re asking people

to make / donate an original piece of

artwork (nolarger than 70x100cm) for

submission by Sept 20th. Images will be

printed in the October BURP and hung in

exhibition ready for auction at end of

OCTOBER to raise money for OXFAM.

Contact Heidi (creative@thebathburp.

co.uk) to discuss details.

Edward Sissorhands by Dave Coupland