Poem Brut at Second Step, Bristol

Poem Brut is delighted to partner with the remarkable Bristol based charity Second Step, thanks to Poem Brut mainstay Paul Hawkins. https://www.second-step.co.uk/wellbeing-college/bristol-wellbeing-college-live-sessions/

Poem Brut Series

Our six week poetry series, taught by poet and Second Step service user Paul Hawkins, offers the chance to get experimental and unleash your creativity. We will explore how a number of contemporary poets have used language, shapes, colours and textures to express their inner thoughts and feelings, creating unusual poetical forms with scribbles, erasure, notes and strange scrawlings. After three weeks of discussion and experimental exercises (which you can enrol for on an individual basis), we will work on a piece we would like to exhibit for our Autumn Digital Anthology. Please note, while you are not obliged to attend every session, we encourage you to attend all six to fully benefit from the content of this course. This course is in association with Poem Brut, about which you can find out more at https://www.poembrut.com/


Second Step 2024

A selection of Poem Brut work made  by some of the learners who took part in the fifth occurence of the six week series of Poem Brut workshops, delivered by Paul Hawkins at the Bristol Second Step Wellbeing College.

Their work will be exhibited for six weeks at Boston Tea Party, Stokes Croft in Bristol from April 10.


2023 Second step

Blogs on the course as it unfolds, from Paul Hawkins et al

Week one

(re) discovering

Poem Brut returns a third time to Bristol Wellbeing College, introducing again the freedoms of mark-making, the joys of obliteration, deletion, scribbles and scrawls.

We began this course with Asemic Writing and through the works of Henri Michaux and Rosaire Appel, discovered that poetry need not have a language. That poetry is a language of the soul, a feeling, an essence. It’s what emerges when the barrier of words dissolves. The musky spread of charcoal. The bold, permanent ink scrawled across the middle of a hidden notebook.

Poem by Valerie

Week two

Tearing up the health and fitness pages

Ripping up words to ‘becoming a better you’

Reassembling shapes and letters

into what is already you

Week three

In painting a picture we discover

The dark clouds that fog our adult minds

And the colours that dance in our children’s.

Delving into the worlds of Collage and CoBrA, the last two weeks have seen Poem Brut participants access poetry through mediums beyond language and words. Echoing the work of 20th century collage artist, Hannah Hoch, we explored the theme of femininity and being female in today’s society, using collage and found materials. In the third week, we looked at the CoBrA movement, celebrating collaboration and art liberated from academy, as in the works of Karel Appel and Constant Niewenhuys. CoBrA’s “childlike” approach to creating art, and the idea of creating art “with a child’s mind”, led to interesting questions around authenticity: can and should and adult deny their accumulated knowledge and experience in order to create a piece of art?

Poems by Valerie & Chelsea

V. Bowes Asemic.jpg
V. Bowes Collage 1.jpg
V. Bowes Collage 2.jpg
C. Fitzpatrick CoBrA 2.jpg
C. Fitzpatrick CoBrA.JPG
L. Goodliffe Fighting Oppression.jpg

Week 3 : N+7 brought us to the close of our third Poem Brut course at Bristol Wellbeing College.              

This was a technique introduced by the Oulipo School or Ouvrioir de littérature pottentielle. This 20th century school of writing and poetry believed that self-imposed constraints beyond those traditional such as rhyming schemes opened up new and unexpected creative possibilities. In this particular exercise, each noun in an existing text is replaced by a succeeding noun seven places below it in the dictionary. Of course, in the 21st century, household dictionaries are not as commonplace. For those who had no dictionary to hand, we set to the task of rearranging an existing text into a new poem.

This was a one final exercise in ‘letting go’: letting go of a given meaning, letting go of control and self-criticism in art, and discovering the playfulness of imagination when it is afforded freedoms from these.

C. Backer Untitled.jpg

As we shared our poems, there was an air of sadness that this would be the last time. However there was also solidarity. Each Poem Brut course has planted the seeds of inspiration to keep on creating, together. The end of the course is never really The End.

Or better said:

As we shared our pointers, there was an alarm of saga

that this would be the last tinkle.

However, there was also song.

Each Pointer Buddhist courtyard has planted the seizures of instinct

to keep on creating, together.

The endorsement of the courtyard is never really The Endorsement.

And that pretty much sums it up.

Keep checking our Poetry Without Words online exhibition for new artworks, added after each course completion. Our physical exhibition will be held in Bristol at the end of June at Boston Tea Party, Stoke’s Croft.


POEM BRUT ii : The second series of 6 weekly workshops inspired by Poem Brut

Week 1 - Something out of nothing

finding compassion in scraps of paper on a kitchen table

as Trump needs help getting out of office

some things never change

Hoch would be horrified to see her cut-outs of men

(cogworks of capitalism)

still paint a picture of the day one hundred years on

(something’s got to give)

it might be the world turned downside up;

Santa on his head, pointing out money drives the sleigh, not him and Boris Johnson is an angel on a Xmas tree

some things are simple:

circles,

the colour orange

Poem inspired by topics discussed in the Poem Brut Collage session and the works created under the prompt of the recent American elections. The sessions studied the photomontages of 20th century satirical German Dadaist, Hannah Hoch, with themes of colonialism, feminism and capitalism.

Week 2 Poem inspired by topics discussed in the Poem Brut Asemic session and the works created as a result of discovering the concept of ‘writing without words’. The session studied the pen and ink asemic artworks of 20th century Belgian artist and writer, Henri Michaux, and those of contemporary poet, artist and illustrator Rosaire Appel, whose work is highly influenced by sound and noise, and the idea of translating these in a visual way.

Poem Brut: Poetry Without Words Exhibition While the opening at Boston Tea Party in Bristol has been postponed until January 2021, we will be launching an online exhibition at the end of this month. Follow Second Step on Instagram and Twitter to find out more. 

Blog poem 18.11.jpg
A. McAllister Asemic Party 16.11.20.jpg

Week 3

Poem inspired by discussions in the Poem Brut CoBrA session and the artworks produced as we explored the potentials of approaching art with an instinctual, gestural child’s mind. The session explored the works of artists in the post-war CoBrA movement, including Karel Appel, Madeleine Kemeny, Dora Tynman and Constant Nieuwenhuys as well as work by SJ Fowler. We focused on ways to help us let go and find flow, including using the opposite hand from that we usually use, and closing our eyes whilst painting.

Poem Brut: Poetry Without Words Exhibition While the opening at Boston Tea Party in Bristol has been postponed until January 2021, we will be launching an online exhibition launching on 11th December 2020. Follow Second Step on Instagram and Twitter to find out more.

Week 4

Poem inspired by feedback and artwork in week 5 of our second Poem Brut course. In the last two weeks, participants have been experimenting with new ways of working, influenced by the topics covered in the first half. These include collage, asemic writing and the impulsive, gestural approaches of the CoBrA movement. Individual works are taking on the distinct voices of the artists in unexpected ways.

K. Saunders Locked In Locked Out.jpg
Poem Brut 2 Wk 5.jpg

Week 1

Questions of empire

Questions of war
Questions of male-dominated politics
The Housewife who killed Hitler

Babies with men’s heads
Women with infant’s heads
 – do we ever become what we wish to become?
The political machine

An over-bearing hat
Tiny legs in tall shoes 
Cellulite. Who cares?
Potato boobs

Days without mascara
Debbie Harry’s head
Kim Kardashian’s bum
Theresa May’s laughter
Whitewash life
Memories faded
Dreams not captured 
Obliteration

Poem made up of discussion from our first Poem Brut session, Collage: Poetry of Many Pieces, in which Paul Hawkins showed us how working instinctively with ‘found’ materials can generate unique forms of self-expression. The theme of the session, ‘women in the media/society’ was inspired by looking at the critical, satirical collage and photomontage of Dadaist Hannah Hoch, made in a time of post-war politics and consumer culture. We included the additional prompts of ‘dream’ and ‘introspection’ after looking at the works of contemporary poet/illustrator/artist Hiromi Suzuki. Here is one piece from today's workshop by Allison. Paul Hawkins is running a series of online Poem Brut workshops for The Wellbeing College, Second Step Bristol. There will be an exhibition of new work made during the workshops running from November 2020 to January 2021 at BTP Stokes Croft, Bristol.


Week 2

Sri Lanka                  tea stained
A sea                         sun smattered
A name                     going by the glass
Freedom                   tattooed on the mind
Birth                           softened
A party                      paid tribute to
A name                     in the sun and moon
Chips                         bigger than fish

A semantic poem constructed from asemic poems. The words are a mixture of learners’ explanations of their works and this reader’s interpretation of their creations.

This was the second in our Poem Brut workshop series. Paul introduced Asemic Writing via cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphs and 8th century Chinese calligraphy, consolidating it with the more recent works of Henri Michaux and contemporary artist Rosaire Appel. Some really brilliant and original work was made by all learners. Here are two examples of new work made during the workshop by Cheryl and Sharon (b&w image).

Paul Hawkins/Ali McAllister are running a series of online Poem Brut workshops for The Wellbeing College, Second Step Bristol. There will be an exhibition of new work made during the workshops running from November 2020 to January 2021 at BTP, Stokes Croft, Bristol.

Sharon Asemic Poem 1.jpg
Cheryl Asemic Poem 2.jpg

Week 3

A poem inspired by pieces created in our third session based on the work of the CoBrA art movement, including work by Karel Appel, Dora Tuynman, Sonia ferric Mancoba and Madeleine Szemere Kemeny and a selection of visual poetry from SJ Fowler. Participants were encouraged to approach their work this week through improvisation and on impulse. Here’s one piece made in the session by Ali.


Wk 4

Excerpts from learners’ discussion on what they had researched and developed during the week's break. Influential artists and movements included Hannah Hoch, Karel Appel, Mark Dutcher, Dadaism and elements of the 19th century Secession Movement. Collage, asemic writing, graphics and mixed-media were some of the materials used by learners in developing their own work.

New Poem brut artworks were made by everyone, here are a couple by Ali. Covid 19 restrictions permitting, our Poem Brut exhibition of new works made during the course will begin on November 24th at Stokes Croft BTP, 156 Cheltenham Rd, Cotham, Bristol BS6 5RL. More details to follow.

A. Schooler Fight the Power.jpg

J. Glasgow Reactionary Collage.jpg

Week 5 & Week 6

The group spent this time mainly completing new creative works, discussing as a group which pieces should be exhibited, agreeing that we’d like to keep this group going & planning how to enable the group to continue in the future, tying up any loose ends & reflecting on the past 6 weeks.

Key influences have been Dada, given its nod to the absurd in these strange times, and Asemic Writing – expressing language without words, where words often fail.

Here’s a collage by Jacky.

Testimonial

Enabling

a much fuller and positive life
full of trepidation
a feeling never experienced before
something you can express in the artwork.
a sense of purpose
a gateway
a whole new world 

Elevating

beyond my comfort zone
has felt different
becoming absorbed in creativity
lightened me and helped me grow.
this sense of belonging
the masterstroke
this interweaving of lives

Found poem constructed from Poem Brut course testimonials.

Poem Brut: Poetry Without Words Exhibition
Date: 25th November 2020 – 25th January 2021
Venue: Boston Tea Party, 156 Cheltenham Road, Bristol BS6 5RL