Sonia Jarema and Cath Rive

There is a mysterious page at the end of the first chapter in the Patternotion book. On Page 60 we find no image or poem just a declaration for the ahead.
This is what it says -
 
Collaboration
I hate to make resolutions but I didn’t want the year to
start running away without having made any plans so I asked my artist friend, Cath, if we could collaborate and this is what she said,
 
"Great idea
You give me a poem
I’ll give you a painting
I’ll give you the painting from the poem
You give me the poem from the painting
We can keep going
And see where it takes us?"
 
So this year we will be  having conversations between
paintings and poems.
 
--------------------------------------------------
 
First Exchange 
 
So here it is! The first rally between two creates minds. First the poem by Sonia Jarema and then a visual reply by artist Cath Rive.

New Kid on the Tower Block
 
New Kid on the Tower Block (after Duchamp)
Cath Rive
Balletic you tested each stair
with toe, pad and heel.
Your hand glided the banister
as you stopped to shake sunshine
into the dark staircase.
Your shirt held clouds
you’d clung onto on the rooftop.
I could see the skyline
in your legs poised like cranes.
That evening you brought in
the dank brook on your trousers.
You told me how the water
drank you as you waded her length
to find the unfamiliar way home.
 











Second Exchange
 
Volume
by Sonia Jarema
Cath Rive

Heels lift up
walking caught as a dance;
her dress as loud as her daughter’s coat.

The volume’s turned down, 
on the older couple, yards behind.
They’ve hidden their hands from each other.

The woman’s head is tilted back
as though filling her lungs deep 
for her yearning song.  



Third Exchange

Cath Rive - After Duschamp

Inside
by Sonia Jarema

I thought I had eaten into the dark with words
but they have rearranged themselves around it.

Sunk in my soul is a resting place
past which I  spiral up and down.

 If I stopped moving, 
let the dark compress me,
who knows what I could become.





Chapter 4

Cath Rive - After Volume
Outside in
by Sonia Jarema


Bare branches show the trees

are reaching up and out. 

My lungs overlay them with bronchioles

terminal branching into alveoli 

out of reach a thought itches irritatingly.

There is some truth here I am missing.


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