While working in Japan some years ago I visited the Haiku Museum in Tokyo. I have always loved short poetry, where only what is essential is there. It is a very similar process to my own, removing the words or parts of metal until everything which remains is essential. I was unexpectedly moved by the experience of sitting in a small room surrounded by Haiku scrolls, beautiful paintings and calligraphy but in a language I couldn’t read. It seemed like the intensity of the words and paintings collectively created an overwhelming emotional experience which I have never forgotten.

I decided to collect some Haiku poetry and create a sculpture full of words. This led to a unique and wonderful collaboration with nineteen poets brought together at Moniack Mhor writers centre under the guidance of Jen Hadfield. It has been a pleasure to turn the words of these poets into steel, making all of the nine hundred letters by hand and shaping them together into a sphere.


WORDS FROM MONIACK MHOR POETS

Caterpillar works unseen. Leaf becomes gossamer.

Soft life flows beneath this brutally delicate exoskeleton

Earth’s rusting molten core surfaced giving breath

spring chaffinch pram wheels in snow new songs form

We revere in nature what we fear in ourselves

a heron seizes the air grey angles hunt the river

Sing robin russet ribboner of spring & curlew wee ration of silvered sky

Dimples in the sand Jets of water Brief encounter during spoot ebbs.

On the horizon, Storms clouds prepare their blessing A leaf turns upwards

Landscapes like patchwork Night Sky like fireflies Dawn like fire Is it wrong to mourn the fallen kings?

I speak into spaces where nature gifts solace the sky claims my words / my words claim the sky

So much depends on hearing the song of one bird

the dark moon rests space between things

Wind plays the silvered reeds. The sky is singing.

Teach me, vogel, how to sing my mother back into being.

Stars stud the matt black sky And filling my eyes, this tree.

Eagle as aircraft Cast jet-black in flinty skies Over the sea-loch

Toes dip under the surface Of a millenia of stars