Greta Bellamacina & Robert Montgomery
This poem was first published in The Aleph Review, Vol. 2 (2018).
costed hours of you
the snobby children of grocers are
the biggest danger to the country
clacking over the whatevers
a half-valentines day
before the separating airports
cashmere blankets our mum’s bought us
and hopeful television
the thing about love is that
like poetry
it’s nothing to do with language
it’s our last line of defense against language consuming
all the ordinary magic of the world
the thing is, it waits like dried reflects of life
Hackney seemed dust covered tonight
just forged in the all-yellowed lines
laughed out and justed like this
laughted would have been the past perfect
tense of laughed, if we had
an English that had survived
the Chaucerian century
but your eyes gyred like windows
or like nothing remembered
put your skull bone back on my shoulder bone again
Still like that, come back in for hugs
Let’s sleep till 000Women’s Hour comes on and get up at 10.15
late for our jobs
Come back in and sleep on me in morning sunshine
I can’t remember language
What was English?
Greta Bellamacina published her first collection Kaleidoscope in 2011. In 2014 she was short-listed as the Young Poet Laureate of London. In 2015 she edited A Collection of Contemporary British Love Poetry, a survey of British love poetry from Ted Hughes till now, featuring the work of Wendy Cope, Emily Berry, Annie Freud and Sam Riviere. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in LA. Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine said, Greta “is garnering critical acclaim for her way with words and her ability to translate the classic poetic form into the contemporary creative landscape.” Greta’s collection Pershing Tame is a dazzling and frank meditation on motherhood, female identity, ennui and love. She has been featured in Vogue, The Evening Standard, Dazed, Wonderland, I-D, The Sunday Times, The Guardian and the BBC for her work.
Robert Montgomery follows a tradition of conceptual art and stands out by bringing a poetic voice to the discourse of text art. Montgomery creates billboard poems, light pieces, fire poems, woodcuts and watercolors. He was the British artist selected for Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, the first biennale in India. Montgomery has had solo exhibitions at venues in Europe and in Asia, including major outdoor light installations on the site of the old US Air Force base at Tempelhof. The first monograph of his work was published by Distanz, Berlin in 2015. He has been featured in The Independent, The Guardian, Dazed, Interview and The Huffington Post. For more, visit: www.robertmontgomery.org
About the featured artist: Asavir Nadeem's work investigates disassociation across intimate and public spaces, as well as the role of mark-making in relation to personal and collective memories. Asavir did her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore (2021). Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally and she is currently working on multiple artistic projects.