Writing for me is a constant undertaking. I work with
collage, single poems/objects or longer sequences made from appropriated text
from innumerable sources. The collection of the material is always occurring. I
have drawers full of ripped newspaper, magazine articles, old prescriptions,
pencil drawings of eyes that my daughter produced on yellow card, bits of pages
of books, glue sticks, manuscripts of speeches made by Cameron and May in the
Commons, a polystyrene mannequin head, tablets of wood from B&Q (the
hardware store). The pockets of my trousers contain receipts, sweet wrappers,
little scribbled notes containing language stolen from commuters on trains, and
so on and on and on.
I suppose I decide what to write about, driven by the news,
my mood, something my wife, Cath, said over breakfast, and begin in the morning
to gather snatches of language from my self-produced archive. My daughter Emily
leaves for school with her mum; the dog goes nuts at being left behind. I must
decide the medium upon which to place the linguistic material. Glass, wood,
paper, Perspex. I drink coffee early on, usually cold through preoccupation
with other things. I eat berries and dark chocolate. I have a desk, old and
heavy, and an upcycled dining chair where I sit and make piles of paper. This
is where I begin to make associations within the disparate language and the
glue comes out. The sticking of the first piece is a rush, a real physical
rush. A text is forming and from there I am led by instinct, a misplaced notion
of purpose, works by others that I love, the language itself, and the poem
begins to take shape.
I’ll take breaks. The dog likes a lap to sit on. I oblige.
Another brew, tea this time. I’m thinking about dinner, what we’ll have, how
I’ll put it together.
Back to work and Joni Mitchell’s Blue album on loud. Really loud. Sometimes I remove pieces from the
poem and replace them elsewhere, other times I decide to cover them completely.
Sometimes a whole poem, on A3 or larger, hours of work, is itself cut and
ripped to pieces and used in another context on another day. I let the dog out.
I chase the cat from the bottom stair where she’s fucked the carpet kneading
her claws. Lunch is easy, a potato, tuna pasta. I’m a carb monster. After
lunch, heavier, I slow down, begin to second guess the morning’s work, walk
away, read Maggie O’Sullivan or Robert Sheppard, go back, leave again.
I’m starting to think about drink. I have to wait for the
glue to dry, the paper and the poem to harden. The school run comes next. I
wear a jumper (even in summer) that pulls up over my face, collect Emily, come
home and do Dad things. The materials on the desk are swept with one arm into a
drawer. I hoover the area, losing some bits and pieces of language in the
process. I wash my hands, start dinner and have that drink. Beer or whisky.
Cath’s home now and I’m a family man for a few hours. I lay with Emily on her
bed and we read or listen to Einaudi till she sleeps. I drink more and watch crap
on the tele with Cath. I almost always fall asleep on the couch.
Adam Hampton is a poet
and artist based in the UK. He is currently completing a PhD on textual
superimposition and illegibility in innovative poetry.
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