AIRTIME recalls what happened to my Penguin Classics 1986 edition of Arthur Rimbaud's Collected Poems. Written on a flight between Belfast and Bristol, I must have made an imaginal leap between beam/nail and stigmata, and between stigmata/crucifix and aeroplane. The first two lines are adapted from Rimbaud's 'Fêtes de la faim' ('Si j'ai du goût, ce n'est guères / Que pour la terre et les pierres.'), one of a handful of poems thought to belong to an abandoned project which was to be called Études néantes.

Rachael Boast - Airtime

Baku is named after a creature in Japanese mythology that is said to devour nightmares. Blending musical styles from heavy rock to the music of West Africa, the song presents the feeling of falling in and out of dreams and nightmares through contrasts in intensity and quiet. It is an impassioned meditation on realising that you can be a different person every time you wake up, and how that realisation can be simultaneously chaotic and cathartic.

Malaika Kegode & Jakabol - Baku

CH TEAU NÉANT might be a place or it might be a rare vintage of French wine. I can't remember writing the poem, although it belongs with a few of the other void studies written at a time when I was fascinated by a particular person who told me about a kind of honey made in Ikaria, said to prolong life. The idea of the néant has a long history and should be taken not as denoting emptiness or nihilism, but as relating to the idea of the 'abyss' in Cabalistic thought – a place to cross over, from suffering to redemption, for example, or from anxiety to liberation from fear.

Rachael Boast - Chateau Neant

DREAM OF THE POEM is a love poem for someone with whom, one day, I tasted violets and shared a bottle of Domaine de Château Néant 1872 (Vieille Vignes) – an exceptional vintage, coincidentally from the year Rimbaud was writing his études néantes. The poem contains a reference to the Irish tradition of the 'Aisling', or dream-vision, itself derived from the French genre of 'Reverdie'. The blues singer has already crossed the abyss and, with heightened ESP, sees everything, even when asleep.

Rachael Boast - Dream Of The Poem

ICHTHYOSIS is a depiction of forebearance. The title is the name given to a chronic medical condition primarily affecting the skin, a condition that can result at times in altered perceptions and priorities, as many disabilities do. The poem, as a void study, eschews the biographical in a bid to affect a wider resonance for those interested in turning ordeal into art; what to do if something can't be remedied, if there is no choice but to bear with it. The mode of the poem is somewhat somnambulistic – it sleepwalks into its own revelation.

Rachael Boast - Ichthyosis

Labyrinth is about Scarborough bedsit land in the eighties as it appears in dreams and uninvited memories. I don’t usually write about anything until it’s had at least five years to digest, but in this case it’s more delirium than reflection. There are deaths imbedded and violence and in places the memories are inaccurate and the viewpoint’s skewed to boot. It led on to a series of paintings some of which appear in the accompanying book. They’re executed very quickly, and any compositional preparation is by repeatedly conjuring and battering down the same image. Stop thinking and work intuitively.

Tim Turnbull - Labyrinth

Lorem Ipsum is well known as the dummy text used in printing, typesetting and website design. It’s not nonsense, as I once thought, but an extract from the ethics text “The Extremes of Good and Evil” by Cicero. For folk who can’t read Latin, like me, encountering the lorem ipsum text is like falling into a current of language with nothing to grab hold of. I like this text’s role as a placeholder – something in between states – and the illusion of infinite words. The poem I wrote in response nods to Gertrude Stein in its rhythm and repetition, but I hope it also comes over as playful, like a kid gathering seashells or pick ‘n’ mix, completely unaware that their bucket or bag might fill up.

Kirsten Irving - Lorem Ipsum

NIGHT OF ECHOES is syntactical slippage taken to excess whereby one word or phrase might belong to what came before it or what follows, or both – a device which characterises many of the void studies, especially those without punctuation. The idea of writing in this way is to discourage the rational mind from its search for meaning, instead favouring indeterminacy. What would it be like to encounter things in the split-second  before we start reacting, ordering and regulating our experiences? And might this quality of encounter alter how we view the self? Perhaps the lyric self is a néant.

Rachael Boast - Night Of Echoes

It’s starting point was working with car obsessed lads in HMYOI Werrington in Staffordshire. There was a documentary on one night about hatchback carpark meets and the young folks who customised and filled them with gigantic stereos. It occurred to me that a decent proportion of disinterested parties would make no distinction between the hot hatch enthusiasts, who’d pour their hard-gotten cash into custom jobs, and my larcenous young shavers. From there it was an exercise in trying what it was like to be young and reckless and then, after seeing Perry’s pots onto Keats and a long and meticulous analysis of his structure.

Tim Turnbull - Ode On A Grayson Perry Urn

I wanted to explore liberty & language through my culture. It was important to me to use my natural vernacular with sophisticated language to break the stereotypes of West-Indian speech. I loved the idea of focusing on a moment from my childhood and asking questions about what else it could mean.

Safiya Kamaria Kinsasha - The Headless Chicken

I often take a phrase or fragment from another text and ricochet off it in a different direction altogether. The title for this poem came from the short story “The Meat Fields” by Stuart Pantoll, which was also about a dystopian future, but one in which the focus was on the relationship between a boy and his companion robot. Here, I took the idea of the fields growing strange crops and made the setting itself into a weapon. I grew up running around fields in Lincolnshire, seeing them as places of fun and escape, so it was enjoyably uncanny to reframe them as a source of fear and surveillance.

Kirsten Irving - The Ear Fields

I wrote this poem while I was choreographing a ballet. Early 2020 I lost people to the pandemic, myself and many friends were struggling in our environments and I wanted to reach out to friends who lived in a metropolis and explore where hope could be found.

Safiya Kamaria Kinsasha - Plastered Heart, August

Nautical Dusk is a time of calm, with an undercurrent of unease. The undulations of the song mimic the uncertainty of the sea, where a deceptive calm may lead to a thrashing climax. The words are a reflection on a moment of self-discovery and change. The song gives way to “City”, which started life as an improvised soundscape. This poem and song also contemplate self-realisation, with a soft and nostalgic twinkle that gives way to lush instrumentation and a feeling of acceptance.

Malaika Kegode & Jakabol - Nautical Dusk (City)

Have you ever felt the desire to be out at sea? This is exactly how I felt when I wrote this song. I was sat on an uninhabited beach in Hawaii, after a long journey through the jungle and years of travelling, I was tired. It was a pleasant and fulfilled tiredness, one which made me feel that I had truly lived. It is the colours of the sea that I remember so vividly, from shades of turquoise, green and blues. The sound of the sea filled me up with a melody, and from their formed into a song without any instrument other than my voice. Being by myself on this beach, I felt a sense of freedom which I still to this day cannot put into words. I swam into the ocean and heard the whales in the distance singing with me. Give me to the sea.

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