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Penning Perfumes Volume 2

Claire Trevien


Penning Perfumes

  Presented by Odette Toilette and Claire Trévien

  Copyright © 2013 Odette Toilette and Claire Trévien

  E-book edited by Claire Trévien

  Cover designed by Nick Murray of Annexe Magazine

  https://penningperfumes.tumblr.com

  Penning Perfumes was supported using public funding awarded by Arts Council England.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

  Foreword

  The following poems were written by twelve poets from four cities across the UK: Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford, and Bristol. We sent each of them an anonymous vial of perfume from which they would have to write a poem. Little did they know that we’d given poets in the same city the same perfumes.

  In the winter of 2013, Penning Perfumes toured to these four cities, providing audiences with a unique olfactory experience. As with our last project, the nights were a mixture of poems inspired by perfumes, and new perfumes inspired by poems. Each event involved a guest perfumer, and we are thankful to Kate Williams, Chris Bartlett, John Stephens, and Elizabeth Moores for taking part in this adventure.

  We challenged audiences with a writing exercise at the end of the night: to pen a fast and furious haiku in response to a mystery scent. You can read these quickfire responses in this ebook: some were handed to us anonymously, others with the flourish of a pen-name. We decided to include the ones we could decipher to give you a taste of the night.

  As with our last anthology, we have deliberately chosen a range of scents, from Boots’ Bay Rum to Lutens’ Jeux de Peau. Bristol’s haiku challenge scent was created specifically for the Birmingham event by Chris Bartlett, inspired by a poem by Claire Trévien. On the other hand, Oxford’s scent, Loulou by Cacharel, brought back teenage memories for many in the audience.

  We hope you enjoy this olfactory adventure,

  —Odette Toilette & Claire Trévien

  Table of Contents

  Theft

  Captured by the Castle

  it happened . . . .

  Manchester Haiku

  Botafumeiro

  Split . . .

  Say

  Birmingham Haiku

  All Things Nice

  Untitled

  Amber

  Oxford Haiku

  O

  Gliss

  This Poem Smells

  Bristol Haiku

  Someone Missing

  Atomize

  Cantation

  Manchester

  23 January 2013, the Kraak Space.

  Kim Moore, Anna Percy, and Andrew Mcmillan share their poems inspired by Balenciaga’s Florabotanica.

  Theft

  This is the backless dress, your hand on the base

  of my spine, a charm, a gift, your palm is the centre

  and I twist, back through the years, driving into the city,

  the city you left, the scent on my wrist, the high rise,

  the pubs, the rats that ran along the canal, big as cats

  in the dark, you left and I left, it was theft of a sort,

  here is the day that we met, you went as if you weren’t

  really leaving, you didn’t look back, you’d be back you said,

  the phone silent as a book and the way that you look

  stays with me, we’re trapped in the things that we missed,

  the words that were left unsaid, to fend for themselves,

  what fools, what fools we were, we were young,

  but is that an excuse, o what were we afraid of my soul?

  —Kim Moore

  Captured by the Castle

  I think I have tricked

  myself into conjuring

  bluebells

  the carpeting in the woods that coroneted

  Hill House

  our cruciform folly now

  ghosting

  on google maps

  Considered jumping

  the

  barbwire

  fence

  where the pheasants. . . skittered

  and gun shots . . . ruptured

  to smear the

  sound flowers

  on my skin

  Cautioned by the scar

  on

  my

  thigh

  a line to tell you where I hung once

  like the prey of a

  butcher’s bird

  —Anna Percy

  it happened in the middle of the night so no one saw how bad it was until daylight

  this is surely proof

  this is surely proof of global warming

  this is surely proof of global warming…the rug has been pulled from beneath my house by the moon

  my house is wounded

  my house is wounded like a dog with no back legs

  my house is wounded like a dog with no back legs it is suspended by its own disbelief

  my house keeps walking backwards

  my house keeps walking backwards as though it expects a wall

  my house keeps walking backwards as though it expects a wall or someone to shoot it out of its misery

  the beach will be rained on

  the beach will be rained on as the windows burst

  the beach will be rained on as the windows burst and the objects I used to dust reluctantly each fortnight will be driftwrecked on the sands

  this is surely proof

  there is one photo I remember of my grandma…she is wearing pearls on the beach and behind her my granddad is sinking the Bismarck and coming home to die the kind of slow death it is only possible to die without water

  the beach will rain

  the beach will walk backwards into the sea

  the beach is a dog without back legs and is moving slowly

  the beach is pulling the rug over itself nightly

  the beach wears the pearls of the waves

  each year there is a shift

  of inches . . . every year . . . a little more

  collapses

  this will be proved

  shore . . . shhhhortly . . . surely

  —Andrew McMillan

  Manchester Haiku

  These haiku were inspired by Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Absolue pour le Soir.

  Sharpness fizzes cleansed

  Out of alchemy’s ashes

  Magus’ locked attic.

  —John Calvert

  Liqueur, in your veins.

  You hurt me, us, dark outside.

  There is another.

  —Katherine Roche

  Hot embers, no flame

  As the cat lies on the hearth

  Her cigarette burns...

  —Jackie

  I’ve watched it for years

  That Russian Squirrel fur coat

  Then you gave it away

  —Kate Williams

  Crawling, falling bees

  hum amber, breeding notes;

  Dawn floods, violently.

  —Rebecca Audra Smith

  In the whisky peat

  He waltzed her all her green days

  His damselfly love.

  —Angela Topping

  Wicker laundry bin

  inside snagged on a raw edge

  pink silk French knickers

  —Jan Dean

  Blue in Paris sky

  We stamp the silver white streets

  The future is ours.

  —Hannah