A site-specific spoken word piece, performed with The Xth Muse (a bust of the poetess Sappho) at Jupiter Artland.
‘Almost Blue’ is a song of my poetic lineage, a wondering about legacy, and a kiss on the forehead for sapphic culture, written with thanks and honour to the billions of I’ s who wrote before me.
almost blue“I am thinking about lavender,
about bruises and eyebags
the colour I asked my dad
to paint my room when I was three,
a pale lilac,
almost blue
I wonder if my red pen
clutched in my paling fist
will be the last beating sting about me,
(is it really so mannish to speak of legacy?)
I am thinking about your heartbeats
each of them, all twenty-three
and yes, of course my darling,
I am thinking about you and her and me”
I am thinking about lavender is a poem from almost blue. You can watch the full performance here.
I approach writing as a visual practice as well as a sonic art, exploring mark-making, redaction, and sensorial interpretations of text. almost blue is a deeply personal work, so when creating a performance score of the work, I used handwritten repetition to obscure a reader’s ability to read the texts ‘normally.’ Instead I introduce the score with the provocation: “if you can’t read it, change it,” inviting reader’s to create their own work from this as a stimulus. See an excerpt below:
June, 2023
Jupiter Artland
Written & Performed by Kate Bradley
Photography by Jassy Earl
Videography by Lucas Chih-Peng Kaodit
