Poem-House

A portfolio of combined work developed for public exhibition, this is a consolidation of research ideas, as embodied in the ‘Poem-Houses’ created by Ramsay and Collins, with Butler and other poets, throughout 2005–06. Focusing, in particular, on increasing the scale of these pieces, initially envisaged as a means of enhancing their spatial potential, this has had the added benefit of encouraging the incorporation of more complex poems which have, in turn, facilitated deeper investigation into ways in which the structure of a poem might influence the nature of the physical structural elements of an artefact, in terms of both materials and form. One outcome has been the development of a triptych format, responding to Butler’s poems and demonstrative of the existence of an equality in terms of interaction, both with the space of the physical artwork and the structure and consequent spatial form of the poem. These new pieces have also formed the basis for the content of an Artist's book: “a place where thought happens…”, a distillation of the process by which, through collaboration, the idea is expounded that a poem can be given an actual three-dimensional spatial context which, rather than representing a ‘mere’ interpretation of its meaning, is intended to loosen such constraints, through the creation of a physical place in which it can be seen to 'dwell'. Taking words/lines from Butler’s poems and placing them in a new spatial context, articulated by Ramsay and Collins, the borders of these poems are rendered more flexible, opening possible routes between real and imagined worlds. 6 works (12 x 18 x 5 cms), 3 works (15 x 15 x 15 cms