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POEM OF THE MONTH

Sue Hubbard presents July's Poem of the Month
Poet Sue Hubbard

Poet Sue Hubbard

Each month, TATE ETC. publishes new poetry by leading poets such as John Burnside, Moniza Alvi, Adam Thorpe, Alice Oswald and David Harsent who respond to works from the Tate Collection.
This June Sue Hubbard presents her poem, based on Lucian Freud’s Naked Portrait, 1972-3, previously on display at Tate Britain.

Context:

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Naked Portrait 1972-3

Lucian Freud

 

I know this room as well as any prisoner
Knows his cell, its harsh white pallor
 
Tingeing the calamine rawness
Of my skin infirmary green as pinioned
 
By his gaze I lie exposed across this
Old brass bed, drowned cadaver on
 
A mortician’s marble slab. Though I give
Everything I have, hold nothing back,
 
He barely sees me. A woman, a dog
For him they’re the same. At night
 
He breathes in my civet sweetness, by day
I’m an experiment in bald flesh;
 
Nipples, public hair, my open thighs
Terrain for his palette knife, the sable
 
Brushes discarded on a paint-clotted stool.
Crow-like he picks me clean.
 
My fan of fallen hair offers no protection
As he strips me bare, peels back my paper skin.
 
Outside his high windows
Camden is dark with winter rain;
 
Buses, taxis, cyclists
Swish through the glistening
 
Mica streets as if there was
Somewhere they needed to go.
 

© Sue Hubbard

Sue Hubbard is an art critic writing regularly for The Independent and The New Statesman. An award-winning poet and author, she has published one novel, Depth of Field (Dewi Lewis); and two poetry collections Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon) and Ghost Station (Salt). Twice winner of the London Writers' competition, she came third in the National and the TLS competitions. She has also taken poetry into the architectural arena, with London's largest site-specific poem at Waterloo, and as writer-in-residence at the De La Warr pavilion during ArchiTEXT week. Her collection of short stories, Rothko's Red is due from Salt this autumn.

 

[Lucian Freud Naked Portrait 1972-3

Oil on canvas
support: 610 x 610 mm frame: 728 x 728 x 55 mm
painting

Purchased 1975]