The Black Ribbon

Hello good, luxuriant and energetic people,

I’m considering starting a salon and naturally you are invited. It will be once a month in London for one year. I haven’t found a location yet but assume a room in a pub.

It will be called The Black Ribbon and it will be for those of you who think the Symbolist art movement is having a second coming.

I find my artistic work increasingly glamoured by Symbolism. This began when a group of us staged the one-night-only Idyllegy happening. My idea for that was a lecture that becomes a dream. Conspirators Will of Margaret, Sarah Kershaw, Francesca Way, Mario Epsley and Eleanor Robins helped turned it into so much more.

Whilst creating The Idyllegy evening I learnt more and more about Joséphin Péladan and felt a kinship. Which led to an addiction to the Symbolists over the past couple of years. I keep trying to kick the habit by staring at Brutalist concrete architecture and considering Swiss typography, but something about all those hyacinths, tombs, androgynous terror, sex-magick, lonely houses and heads of John the Baptist keep pulling me back in.

Last year’s poetry collection, Black ribbon, was deeply informed by the movement.

Ok, here’s what I mean by Symbolism, though you could have an infinite number of monkey art critics typing on an infinite number of typewriters … and *still* they would struggle to come up with a final definition of Symbolism.

Perhaps that’s one of the fascinations for me. It’s a reverie of a philosophy. Difficult to pin to the butterfly board.

But I find it the last movement, moment, when decent mysticism flourished in the artworks.

Romanticism is glorious of course but obsessed with the idea that primal nature is where salvation lies. Occultism is delicious but *can* be a bit results orientated. Everyone likes Decadence right, but sometimes all that nihilism wearies the soul.

For me Symbolism is the resulting spooky homunculus of those three cauldrons.

I love the Impressionism and Abstraction that came afterwards as much as the next hipster but I can’t help thinking we forgot about eternal myths of the psyche along the way. I forgive the Modernists because they’d had all that World War death to trying and blank from their mind, but cold collage is never going to heal you Mr Eliot.

In Symbolism I find beautiful occultism, serious mysticism, the power of the reverie, the truly ungraspable, the Romantic’s Sublime, the delightful darkness of the Decadents, and a genuine contending with the pressures of finding meaning in an increasingly left brain world.

Symbolism arose partly in response to the displacement enforced by big industry and I strongly suspect that current technological displacements will usher in a new variation of the old mode.

So that’s my understanding, but I’m not an academic, never had the Latin, and it’s probably all wrong. Your definition may be very different, I’d love to hear it.

Still, over the past couple of years I have been releasing poetry I’d judge as heavily Symbolist, as well as creating – with my amazing group of conspirators – those live poetic experiences that try to pull dreams into a one-night-only consensus reality.

So, fancy coming to a salon?

A place for artists, musicians, writers, academics, poets, magicians to share work or research with each other ... and possibly create new pieces together.

New joiners welcome as the group evolves.

No obligation to turn up every month, but perhaps miss two gatherings in a row and you’re out. Sometimes it’s nice to feel scared and under obligation.

If you’re still curious then email yes@thepoetryofitall.com

If you do fancy it then I’d be interested in what your own personal favouring of Symbolism is, how it manifests in your current work and what you’d like to both contribute to a salon and take from it.