Sinbad/Mallarmé: The Grace of Wreckage – Visual Poetics by Brian Baker

The Grace of Wreckage

1. An abstract seascape in grey above and green below, divided into sea, island and sky. The image is painted over a page of text. In the top left corner, a box contain text which reads ‘the Sailor’; at the bottom, larger capitals read ‘A THROW OF DICE’.

2. An image of sinking into deep water, with white at the top and dark blue-grey at the bottom, painted over text. Three boxes read: ‘the swelling ocean/ opening wide its enormous mouth/ swallowed up the ship’. A large italicised word, ‘NEVER, appears at the top of the page; a smaller line at the bottom reads ‘FROM THE DEPTHS OF A SHIPWRECK’.

3. An abstracted picture of a seashore, with dark grey clouds and white sky above. In the white, the words ‘the Abyss’; on the ochre sand, a box containing the words ‘the fore was touched with silver’; and at the bottom, two words: ‘whitened, Glassy’.

4. A diagonal composition framed in black, with a deep wet beach and mountains glowing with snow behind, mainly in a yellowish-green. Two boxes at the bottom read: ‘striking inland/ I wondered’; above, in white, the text ‘The Master’, and below, ‘with no ark/ no matter’.

5. From high in the mountains, an image of snow in the foreground, snow-capped mountains behind, and jumbled grey sky. Two boxes read ‘a great heap of bones/ noise like thunder’; three more are blacked out. Large text at the bottom reads ‘WILL NEVER CHEAT’.

6. Two pages side by side, the drawing running across from one to the other. Above a pit of bodies, two groups of men walk the skyline. On the left, three boxes: ‘a coffin/ and a corpse/ his presence I fell’; on the right, ‘in tat charnel/ again/ strange corpses/ wild beasts/ open sky’. Connecting the two pages, the words ‘AS IF’.

7. In a monochrome grey-blue, a crowd of hooded men loom towards the reader. Three boxes read: ‘recalling memories, heading towards / the Sea/ a crowd of men’. In the top right corner, arranged diagonally, the words: ‘false memory/ immediately/ evaporated into mist/ that will impose/ a limit on the infinite’.

8. A simple abstract design, a page overpainted, with white overspilling onto a black frame. On the left, thin green stripes like reeds, over which a box: ‘We are lost!” On the right at the top, text reads ‘SE CHIFFRÂT-IL’; at the bottom, in large type, ‘DEATH’.

9. A cloaked figure, in black and grey, with a skeletal overlit face. A box in the upper left reads: ‘there came to them the Steward of the graveyard; the Shadow of friendship’. Below this, in capitals: ‘RIEN/ NOTHING’. At the bottom, ‘WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE/ BUT THE PLACE’.

10. An abstract picture of waves in blue and grey, with a pencilled eye on white ground emerging in a band towards the top. Five boxes below this read: ‘Who may you be?’ I/ me/ you/ they’. Text at the top read ‘EXCEPT PERHAPS’; directly below the eye, ‘A CONSTELLATION’.

11. In grey pencil over sepia, an image of a body lying on the beach, wrapped in a shroud or a sail. Two boxes read: ‘the world grew dark again./ the grace of wreckage’. At the bottom, text that reads: ‘un coup de dés jamais ne trichera la mort’.

Note on Series:

The series is a set of visual erasures/ redactions based on the voyages of Sinbad, which has been mixed with lines from Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés (mainly in its English translation). This interference reworks the archetypal narrative of voyage and return, so invoke modern and contemporary images of shipwreck and loss. – Brian Baker

Brian Baker teaches literature, film and creative writing at Lancaster University, and lives in North Wales. He is a member of the Troiiica art group (https://www.troiiica.art) and has published creative and critical-creative works in The Lune Journal, Foundation, E.R.O.S. and elsewhere. His first collection of visual poems, Argo-0, was published by Steel Incisors Press in 2022. His work can be found at https://www.brianbaker365.com/home and on Twitter @SciFiBaker.

Layout – robert frede kenter. Twitter: @frede_kenter

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