Disability Arts Online

 Pallant House Gallery will be hosting a few Outsider Art Exhibitions over the autumn months this year. I became involved with Pallant through their Step Up Programme, which trained marginalised artists to be workshop leaders, and was very happy to be asked to provide poetic responses to several well known - and some lesser known - outsider artists, as part of an audio trail for one of their exhibitions. I went into the studio on September 17th to record these poems for the audio trail.

 

 

Response to Barabara Hepworth’s ‘Single Form’

 Do you know what it is to be an outsider?

It is black and white for the world to see.

They think they are in the light

And we stand in the darkness

But they don’t see a light

That can burn

A hole through stone

 

The outsider knows the pierced form

The outsider is the pierced form

 

We are not the paint, not the stone

Not the ink, not the clay

 

We are what is left behind

 

You see a hole where the heart is

We see a heart where the hole is.

 

Poor you.