The Cotswolds - The Forumist

The London based Greta Bellamacina is a poet, writer and film-maker who was featured in our very first issue and also an influence for The Forumist. Greta has just released her collaborative poetry project and book with the title “Points For Time in the Sky” on the 22nd of October.

This project is breaking new grounds in English poetry, not only by finding inspiration from a 8th century Japanese technique but also by experimenting with the process of the writing. This work was completed in a collaboration with Scottish artist and poet Robert Montgomery known for his text installations across different medias. The duo executed the writing by using the same laptop, in the same Word document, over a period of months.

The result is genius. AnOther Magazine commented in a recent interview “modern and weird… equally full of echoes of WB Yeats, as they are of Tesco and Frank Lampard. Their words are shrewd and witty, presenting a quintessentially British view of the world.”

Here is an exclusive poem from “Points For Time in the Sky”

The Cotswolds

that leaving page you wrote

if the goodbyes were your poems and the breakings

then these are nothinged beginnings

these are still beginnings cos I never wrote goodbyes

temporary silences maybe til I was able

but I told you they were temporary I’m sure

at least with my eyes

just like my forgottern grandfather who touched the skies

the insertion of the silent r in estuary English is ridiculed in the North

and the ruined kisses which make music

don’t really excuse the ruined castles of Scotland

or the land cleared for sheep

in a morning room, where light is morning

and the wood paneling has that Farrow&Ball paled green colour

I always imagine and wondered who cut the wood

who were the first carpenters of the grander houses

What would Hardy think of us for sitting here pretending with our host that his wine cellar is the best in the whole Cotswolds

without ever thinking about the carpenters

making of the trap door

guarding of the lillies

librarying of the arboretum

protection of the daisies

prodigalisation of the sad returned from boarding school children

the passing around of Engels in the basement

the idea of hugs for the children

the idea of libraries

the airing of the smoked winds

then Tatiana’s face trapped in a window

of what house

with what sense of trapped privilege

the stained glass windows of the grander houses of England could have been simpler

needn’t have borrowed Religion

could just have kept

the simple silhouettes of their unhugged children

standing behind them

looking to the fields for what dust or donkeys

making for sunlight

the outlines

who’s eyes were then cast and cut

for the purpose of colour