The Eternal Pendulum, Irene Pérez Hernández, research for grove residency

This morning Jacquie Campbell announced a micro nature reserve in Looms Lane, prompting a response from poet Phil Barrett and Astra Papachristodoulou. 

I see a voice
 
A mouthpiece, a chink, an aperture, a hole in air, a hole in the wall;
Let’s get some cash out and leave a note – an IOU –
or put something in – a message in a bottle (if only to ourselves) –
in this small hideaway, this little hidey-hole, a crucible for making lead into gold.
 
A brick house, a round arch, a circular hole, a wheel of fortune. 
Let’s spell it out – there’s nowhere left for us to go, and nowhere too small 
for a nature reserve, a concept – considered or ill-conceived – concealed
in this last remaining hole. Are we big enough to take it on? 
 
A smaller world that doesn’t exist yet, but will – and they don’t come 
much smaller than this. Small enough to create its own horizons, and 
close enough to look over or through. (But what’s on the other side?) 
Does it matter? Does any hole make a home? (Except for you or me, 
 
for whom time is running out – We’re running-out of homes!) Key stories, key facts, 
key words, key holes, key stones, not a place to live in; a bee house, or bee hive, 
a Borrowers’ hideaway, a place to grow up in, a gap between two holes or two 
worlds. With a ring for the finger, a ball for a toe, and we shall have music 
 
where ever we go; the soundtrack for a broken world, a world divided into two; 
as re-inventing the wheel, round and round we go – the wheels on the bus;
the wheels of the world, a whole world, or a world in a hole, a hole in one, 
symbolising a beginning or an end, a new horizon. A space or a ship, 
 
a clean sheet or a clean shirt – the shirt off our backs – but where to now? 
Where do we go? The down-ward spiral or slide, like a rolling stone. A deep place 
or space, or a shallow hole, a natural place to hide in, a peep or pin or loop hole, 
a place to hideout or a place to let go – on the way to somewhere else, with
 
somewhere else still to go. In or out, two sides of a gap between two holes. So, 
where to next? – we’ve got (a lot) to learn, about making holes – and can’t conceive 
of the consequences of such a world, where the inhabitants have had to leave, 
have all flown, leaving an empty seedpod or shell, like an open door; a conker, 
or canker, or this fallen apple, without a core.

Phil Barrett

Today we have a multiple of four exquisite works by Sarah Sabin, which have been placed in The Great Churchyard, amongst the trees, gravestones and monuments. Words in response are by Sue Burge. 

Imperative
 
            twist the pale lid – an anti-clockwise moon
            unfurl the tight spiral of fine weave
            use your unpricked fingertips
            to trace each careful silk-sewn ridge
 
            wind the ashes of a small and fineboned thing
            you didn’t mean to kill
            into the cloth’s dark heart
 
            twist the pale lid – a clockwise moon
            suspend your disbelief for seven days
            press your ear to the light tight grain
            listen for a quiet and forgiving flutter
            a ready steady beat
 
            turn and release
 
            Sue Burge

Since 20 August, 15 specially commissioned artworks have been placed on the streets and in the parks of Bury St Edmunds. Some have been found and taken home to be treasured, others are still to be claimed. X  marks the places where artworks have been left. 

I Predicted Both 
 
Out of rubble
stones turn

into tableaux-
 
The horses were rising
 
A horde of limbs 
recast as a 
unified body. 
 
Anthem for a new form.  

Amilia Graham

metamorphoses

moving sand horses
caught in moving land
moment to moment
lands caught in manic 
rage of moving lands
moondrifts the horses
moonshines the sand
concrete sand-drifts
creating momentum

Astra Papachristodoulou