The Vorrh - Softcover

Catling, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0957142714 ISBN 13: 9780957142718

Publisher: Honest Publishing, 2012

Synopsis

Taking its name from the imaginary African forest in Raymond Roussel's 'Impressions of Africa', The Vorrh is a magnificent, vibrant backdrop on which to stage a high octane narrative led by hunter, Tsungali, the Cyclops, Ishmael, and famous photographer Eadweard Muybridge.

About this title

About the Author

B. Catling is a poet, sculptor and performance artist, who makes installations and paints egg tempera portraits of imagined Cyclops. He has had past solo shows at The Serpentine Gallery, the Arnolfini in Bristol and the Ludwig Museum in Aachen, Hordaland Kunstnersentrum in Bergen, Norway, Project Gallery in Leipzig, and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The bow I carried with me into the wilderness, I made of Este.

She died just before dawn, ten days before. She had seen her death while working in her garden, saw the places between plants where she no longer stood, an uncapping of momentum in the afternoon sun. She prepared me for what had to be done. Walking back into our simple house and removing her straw hat, returning it to its shadow and nail on the north wall.

She was born a seer and some part of her seeing lived in the expectancy of her departure, a breeze before a wave, before a storm. Seers die in a threefold lapse, from the outside in. The details and confinement of each infolding must be carefully marked and heard without panic or emotion on my part, for now I am given a different role. We say goodbye during the days leading to her night. Then all of my feelings must be put away; there are more important rituals to perform. All this I knew, from our first agreement to be together it had been described, it had been unfolded. Our love and companionship grew in the confines and the constantly open door of its demand, and secretly I rehearsed my distance and practiced the deceit of loneliness.

I stood before our solid wooden table with her blood drying stiff on my skin, her body divided and stripped into the materials and language. As I stood with my back and hands aching from the labour of splitting her apart, I could still hear her words. The calm instruction of my task repeated over and over again, embedded with a singsong insistence to erase my forgetfulness and its fence of doubt. The entire room is covered in blood, yet no insect will trespass this space, no fly will drink her, no ant will forage her marrow. We are sealed against the world during these days and my task is determined, basic and kind.

I have shaven long flat strips from the bones of her legs. I have plaited sinew and tendon, stretched muscle into interwoven pages. I have bound them with flax that she cut from the garden. I have made the bow of these, setting the fibres and grains of her tissue in opposition. The now raw arc will congeal, twist and shrink into its proportion of purpose. I have removed her unused womb and placed her dismembered hands inside it. Sealing closed the misshapen ball that sometimes moves a little in its settling. I have shaved her head and removed her tongue and eyes; they are now folded inside her heart.

About this edition

• Publisher: Honest Publishing
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0957142714
• ISBN 13: 9780957142718
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 470