π.ο.: I think it’s a fabulous metaphor for writing and when you make visual poetry, you really get your hands dirty, literally putting the language into a physical format. And one of the first things that happened when computers came in, the first sense that was destroyed was the sense of touch with language. Whereas your project basically makes language tangible. When you make visual poems you often physically make each letter of the alphabet and then hold the letters as you put the words together. And even the sculpture is almost like an ideogram of the poem, you know? I find that crossover quite fantastic. And in your book, Watching Words, you actually go full pelt, don’t you?
SC: I do, yes. I try and make visual poems as pieces that can go on a wall or on a plinth, in a garden, or public space. I’ve had a long interest in public art having worked for years in collection management and public art project management. I see the power of words and poems, as being like signs – something in the landscape rather than always being on the page. Poetry can be part of our visual culture in public spaces too. Making visual poems involves lots of processes, rolling slabs out, and cutting out all the letters of the whole alphabet. Which means you’ve got to have a lot of letters – especially vowels, to make sentences. If you are missing a vowel, it’s a real killer, as it takes so long to make, dry and fire the extra letters. When I’m making the alphabet letters, I’ll sometimes run my fingers carefully over the surface of the wet clay to make the clay surface have movement. When it comes to creating letters for concrete poems about our climate catastrophe – I’ve placed the letters in parts of the kiln where I knew the flames would impact them in a harsh way, so that they come out with flame flashes of brown on the terracotta clay. They become almost toasted, which to me reflects heating of the Earth, and how we’ve got to do our best to stop all of this from happening.
π.ο.: They become environmental poems which is a huge element of your writing too, you know especially in Watching Words.
SC: In Watching Words there’s a lot of ceramic and other visual poems, and poems about these significant concerns. I have a piece which is based on one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines that I’ve reworked as: ‘To Be Or / Not To / To Have Bees / Or Not / Is To Be / Or Not To’.
Sandy Caldow, To Be Or Not To, 2020, terracotta clay, acrylic paint on mdf. Courtesy Sandy Caldow and Collective Effort Press, Naarm/Melbourne.
It’s about how important bees are, particularly because now they’re dying off due to the amount of pesticides being used in this era. Some of these short visual poems consist of homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings.
One piece just says, ‘See Petal / Sea / Breeze / See The / Bee / Be, which is also a sound poem in its own way. Is it the letter C? Or is it the letter B? Or is it ‘See, Sea, Bee or Be?’
π.ο.: Can you talk a little bit about who your influences are?
SC: I admire many writers. I like reading poetry, novels, biographies, memoirs, and journalistic and nonfiction writing. I know you, π.ο., are not a fan of novels, but I disagree. Of course, I admire your works. You have had a major influence on my writing. Some of the poems I’m particularly enamored with are by you, and by Jordie Albiston, Sarah Holland-Batt, Jeltje Fanoy, Joy Harjo, and Shakespeare.
Also, T.S. Eliot, as he’s a symbolist type of poet, and I think I am a symbolist artist and writer. Lauren Williams, Wallace Stevens, and Thalia, a concrete poet who uses shorthand. I’m a fan of the Arena Journal and love how complex, political, and current the articles are. A lot of the content is beyond my understanding, but I try to understand it in an attempt to be as politically aware as I can be. I also love The Paris End – they’re great writers and have fabulous humour alongside fascinating observations on contemporary life in Melbourne. Catherine de Saint Phalle is also one of my favourite novelists, memoirists, and a translator, especially her memoir of her parents called Poum and Alexandre, told with honesty, love, and tenderness. My other favourite writer is Evelyn Juers. I’m obsessed with her book, The Dancer: A Biography for Philippa Cullen. Cullen was an avant-garde dancer who used a theremin as an instrument to dance to and with. This book blew my mind. It was like putting a mosaic together and assembling all the shards piece by piece to form a deep, biographical picture. And your books, π.ο., Fitzroy: The Biography and Heide, are also top favorites of mine, as they create and assemble so much history and tell it in an innovative way that’s not just cerebral documentation but is writing as Art.
π.ο.: You’re just so sensible. What do you like about experimental poetry?
SC: I love people who have the courage to take risks. People who experiment with language and continually change the forms poetry takes. People who don’t stay where it’s safe and who are innovative in a largely conservative art form. I like how you try to break down the militarisation of language and how you champion the underdog. Ceramics is basically a very conservative art form too. The tradition is so tight. I mean, it’s got its great points, but I don’t want to practice the Japanese tradition or be too tied up with what Bernard Leach regarded as important in British studio pottery in the twentieth century. There are many unspoken ‘rules’ in the visual art and craft world too.
π.ο.: Well, speaking of mosaics, your books are basically biographies and ultimately autobiographies about the lives of some of your sculptures after leaving you, and the stories that came back to you about them.
SC: There was an instance biographically once, about the dangers of working with clay. I was nearly incinerated. I was taking a red-hot sculpture out of the kiln, and a wire holding a giant pulley broke. Half a ton of red-hot steel and metal came down onto the kiln and smashed. A split second later, and I would’ve been trapped under that weight and incinerated. I was doing a lot of Raku firing, which means heating the kiln, and rather than leaving it to cool for twenty-four hours before unloading it, you take it out straight away with big tongs, asbestos gloves, and face heat shields. You then put it into sawdust. All of these magical alchemical processes happen because of it – the glazes change colour and become metallic – like copper. You can create colours you would never, ever get again. So that type of firing was something I always did until that accident.
It totally changed my practice, believe me. I explore this in the poem ‘My Firing Lesson [part 2]’ with the line: ‘Would my reduction have made me into / a blood red glaze; a beautiful Copper Red?’ It was huge thing for me, because for over 25 years that was my signature style. I’d come to a crossroads, and I had to reinvent myself and my practice – which I did. I’d rather stay alive.
π.ο.: Poetry is dangerous!
