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