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On a mat appears...(an early practice poem for a public art commission)

 

Sliver, slip, slub, snarl, sup-up

pins, pair, pick, put up,

inandoutinandoutinandout,

nip, nicking, necking, nosing,

nightnoisesirensnevending,

inaweinaweinawe,

nocturnal nattering ‘til noon,

get-up garble gibbering go work

 

Murmeringmutteringmouthingmilling

unclearunblockingunravelling

laying-on, let-in, long lever

endsneverendneverendnever home again up again-

 

Ends that never end,

let-in the light

knockeruperer so that soon the

 

Moon full song of motorway mayhem

interrupts industry’s influx who are

looking forward to doffing the hats and

lapping at liquids in pintpots on beermats.

cottonElk Mill Spinning Mulemill slangmills.work

◄ Summer Awhaikuing

Comments

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Cathy Crabb

Sun 28th Jun 2015 01:37

The first thing that I can tell you is that I wanted to have Spinning Mule Elk Mill in the letters of the poem.

So I wrote it as an acrostic poem so that every first letter would spell that out.

Then I wanted it to sound like the mill, so I took the noise from recording of a mill with a spinning mule in.

And then I wanted it to be layers of how people would work for the weekend so they could have a drink so I put that in with words that I knew were northern slang and also mill slang.

And then I wanted it to go full circle so I put word in that would carry on so you'd get to the end and start at the beginning again.

My hope is that you can look up a lot of the words and phrases and trace them back to the mill.

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