The green language
It’s sometimes known as the ‘langue verte’, but most often referred to as the ‘language of the birds’. It appears in Kabbalah, Renaissance magic, alchemy, and European mythology.
It’s the mystical, divine and perfect language. The Adamic language, the angelic language, used by birds to speak to the initiated. Dr John Dee believed the Enochian tongue that the spirits in his shew stone used to converse with his scryer was the same thing.
Don’t you just long to be initiated? To be able to read the signs that are everywhere and know, I mean really know, what they mean? To be able to hear the perfect language with perfect clarity and perfect understanding?
Some of you kindly received copies of my latest book, Black ribbon, following my last letter. There were only 75 copies made, 25 of each cloth cover – forest, kingfisher and amethyst – and they’ve all gone now. But don’t worry, keep reading for a *new* colour coming soon.
Being self-published, the nearest my writing comes to literary reviews is people sending me emails or sharing Instagram stories. I’m not going to play it cool – I gather their comments eagerly. We all want to divine whether the effect our existence is having on reality is worthwhile, right?
People said …
“Not so much reading, maybe inhaling. The poems seem to live in the cracks between waking and dreaming.”
“Thank you so much for keeping language alive. If there is a magical world behind the ragged curtain, I’m sure its inhabitants shine bright every time you release new poetry, I know I do.”
“Permanently roaming the desolate moors of love-in-death, love-in-terror, love-in-decay, without ever having recourse to the warming hearth. It was a cold afternoon anyway but I needed extra blankets. It reminded me of the Eve of St Agnes - the bone freezing cold of that poem and the way the human heart makes its presence felt not through the heat it transmits, but through the clammy aftermath of the condensation it leaves in its wake.”
“I love your poetry … the experience is enriching, thought provoking and stimulating. The poems that I don’t quite get leave me full of wonder - and I love wondering.”
What is the green language?
Well, I’ll tell you what I think it’s not. It’s not the perfect language that tells the divine truth. The perfect language doesn’t exist and as students of cutlery know … the ultimate divine truth is that there is no truth.
Actually, now I think about that film I remember that all the scenes in the illusion are filmed in various shades of green.
I particularly like that last Black ribbon comment “The poems that I don’t quite get leave me full of wonder - and I love wondering.”
I think the green language is an exercise in listening. It’s the listening to language and the illusion – whilst believing there is something perfect behind it all – which is the point.
I suspect that many of you remain in various wary attitudes to poetry.
Poetry is hard. It contains little information of use. Its narrative is ephemeral at best. (What was that image of a sort of pre-French Revolution costumed decadence that I saw? How does that connect to anything?) Poetry is music but requires much more of a sweaty consciousness work-out.
My advice is always to read poetry not as if it’s containing some perfect and divine truth but as if it’s meaningless. Like the green language, the listening is the thing.
Anyway, guess what cloth colour a second printing of Black ribbon will be in?
L'Ame du Vin, the soul of wine, by Symbolist Carlos Schwabe, after the Baudelaire poem.
That’s right – orange. Or mandarin buckram according to Winter & Company. Or starfish as I shall rebrand it because I love the Prince song Starfish & Coffee. Here he is performing it with the muppets.
There will be 50 copies of Black ribbon with the starfish cover.
Question – what should I do with them? They cost me about £10 a book to make and I’m making them because there were a handful more requests for the book than I could fulfill from the original printing. But still, after those are dished out I’ll be left with boxes and boxes of orange language.
Suggestions in comments please.
April 1st will be my sixth birthday of trying to be a poet.
I used to have a design studio. The first five years were a *slog*. Up until that point we scrabbled around for commissions, not really getting the clients with the budgets or reputation that meant we could do our best work. Then, at the five year mark we got invited to pitch for the rebrand of English National Ballet. We won and made something lovely. Everything was a lot easier after that.
Hofstadter's Law – “it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.”
Turns out trying to be a poet is a lot lot lot harder than trying to run a design studio. But lo! At the six year mark a month-long mini-retrospective of my writing so far is appearing in the brilliant Field System art gallery in Devon.
Why an indy art gallery is more receptive to my poetry than bookshops and publishers is a bafflement to me. But, like my experience with the design studio, I've learnt that when you build something there's *always* a point when momentum suddenly comes from somewhere other than your own efforts. Just takes ages.
I’ve been putting together a bunch of stuff for the gallery show. Limited edition letterpress prints of some of my most popular poems are being created by Thin Ice Press as are ten box editions of my Yellow Pencil winning Fluxus installation Twenty-five sculptures in five dimensions.
Of that installation the brilliant Astrid Stavro said “everything about it is stunning. Such beauty and such courage. Wow." So it’ll be that, but in a box.
The show is based around my book Language consciousness magick romance – which is itself a collection of my first six years’ poetic work – and Studio Sutherl& have created three psychedelic variations of the book cover as limited edition posters.
On the walls of the gallery will be a set of texts outlining what might be a poetic philosophy. Or a set of texts as a series of conjuring tricks. These both might be the same thing. Here’s a sample.
And all this will be accompanied on the walls by four fantastic original illustrations by my Idyllegy and Abyssmass collaborator Will of Margaret. She’s a true one. You can see her Thoth for the gallery show above and her scarab beetle below. The four originals will be for sale at Field System.
And finally, I’m so pleased that another of my frequent collaborators Eleanor Robins is releasing her amazing essay This moment needs your deep weirdness and your intellectual rigour as a printed booklet which will be for sale as part of the whole consciousnessfest.
So I’ll be in Devon in April for the first week of the installation. There will be a launch party on Saturday 5th where I’ll do a reading and talk. Contact Field System to be on the list.
I’ll also turn up at the gallery for private one-on-one performances in the magickal corridor for anyone who buys something and maybe rubs a book three times.
But I’m *also* in Devon because my biggest artistic project to date is about to begin. Together with Studio Sutherl& and New Wood Trees and Ben Hayes of the phenomenal Circa, I am creating a year-long series of … well, the best way I’ve found to describe them is medieval poetry raves. There will possibly be some stone circle elements as well.
The work is called Our Longland Is Dreaming. It’s inspired by the medieval poem Piers Plowman and is about the fact it might be time for a proper societal revolution, as well as the green language of fields and life, a form of writing called boustrophedon, and the cyclical nature of it all.
Heads will roll. Heads will rave.
Call Piers Plowman from his medieval parable,
our longland is dreaming for the dirty divine.
There’s anarchy in Albion, fated acres will turn.
Let us sing up the soil and surrender.
First one will be in June. Probably the 27th. If you’d like to make a pilgrimage to Totnes for that weekend you’d be very welcome. It’ll be unlike anything else.
Now a poem from Black ribbon. It’s about trying to find meaning. Do correspond with me about your own search. And follow me here for more things.
The green language When your coffee fell across my coffee-coloured suitcase in the Klimt-themed room in Paris – all angular gold and kissing – which was above the Friday café where, unknown to us, the famous fashion designer – spun on threads of chemicals – was ranting vicious of the Shoah, what you said was ‘I wonder if that means something?’ – not ‘sorry’, not reaching for a cloth. The designer’s rant was secretly filmed in city-rosy ruin and blur. Next day’s papers refilled with a fresh hissing shame. A rarely seen turquoise bird, with wings lined by fairy-grey, knocks at a winter window so mothers rush to look up the symbolism in surly books of season-shrouded country ways. I’m not sure what it could have meant or what might be corresponding, but I do know that feeling – if only everything was wonderful, that’s it, isn’t it? If only everything was marvellous. Ourselves in the café later you remembered studying Satre at the Sorbonne and tried to recall – of the French occultists – who was the first to levitate.
Thank you for the words and book. I’m drifting in and out of its dreams🙏
Hi Thomas. Please I would love a volume of orange language. What do I need to do?