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.
Here, Sarah Wardle presents a special poem to coincide with the Turner Prize 2006 exhibition, meditating on Mark Titchner's Ergo Ergot, 2006, currently on display at Tate Britain.
After Mark Titchner’s Ergo Ergot 2006
I imagine fields of whirring contraptions,
stretching out like pylons across rural Britain,
conditioning us with washing machine tumbling,
Trade Union technology, industrial grumbling.
Each tree is a zebra crossing in motion,
stem of daffodil stamens, or sombrero fashion.
Both underline anticlockwise anarchy.
Outer spirals disobey inner conformity.
In the larger the central wheel is smaller.
In the lesser there dominates a bureaucratic centre.
Alongside, TV screens show kaleidoscope shapes,
cataloguing Human Rights Legislation dates,
empowering the viewer to examine the broadcast,
who runs the airwaves and who runs the State.
The installation invites one to question perception
until you find yourself mesmerised by illusion,
freefalling through clunking, robotic life,
seeing progress in newsprint black and white,
wondering if motors ever move to advancement,
and if each TV were the monitor in Parliament.
Mark Titchner Turner Prize installation, 2006
Ergo Ergot 2006
Wood, steel, motors, electrical and mechanical components, DVD loop, monitors and speakers
Photo from Turner Prize 2006 exhibition at Tate Britain. Photo: Sam Drake and Mark Heathcote
© Tate 2006
Sarah Wardle was born in London in 1969. In 1999, she won the Geoffrey Dearmer Memorial Prize. Her first collection of poetry, Fields Away, was published in 2003, and was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection).
Previous poems
October 2007 Will Eaves presents his poem Crater
September 2007 Francesca Beard presents her poem Portrait of A Young Child In Blue at Tate Britain
August 2007 Ilka Scobie presents her poem based on Hélio Oiticica’s Grand Nucleus
July 2007 Pelé Cox presents her poem based on Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss
June 2007 Jacob Polley presents his poem based on Nicholas Hilliard’s Queen Elizabeth I
May 2007 Penelope Shuttle presents her poem based on Barbara Hepworth’s Garden Sculpture (Model for Meridian)
April 2007: Lawrence Sail presents his poem based on Bridget Riley’s Metamorphosis
March 2007: Tishani Doshi presents her poem based on Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Woman
February 2007: Anne Rouse presents her poem based on Andreas Gursky's 99 Cent, 1999
January 2007: Moniza Alvi's poem on Samuel Palmer's Coming From Evening Church 1830
December 2006: David Harsent's
poem based on Jean Dubuffet’s Le Arbres de Fluides 1950,
and Susan Hiller’s After the Freud Museum 1991-96
November 2006: John Burnside's poem on John Nash's The Cornfield 1918
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