Just got this. It was a short complete residency earlier this year and as good as a residency gets.  It surrounded the making of one poem thoroughly researched with the people of Thanet. Originally I wanted to call the poem The Trace Sea because in one way it’s all about Tracey Emin who spent childhood here. In another way it’s not. There – I said it.

The poem For Work For Love  was projected on the building at the launch of Turner Elements, the first exhibition of Turner at Turner Contemporary.  Each line of the poem is steeped in Thanet folklore and contemporary messages.  A reference to the penny on the pendulum is, for example, the story told to me by the son of the town’s watchmaker of how his father who  looked after The Margate Clock Tower would place a penny on the pendulum in summer to set it right against the heat tha twould stretch the pendulum and time itself. Time was money.

My accomodation at The Reading Rooms is world class and Louise Oldfield who part runs the The Reading Rooms took me to Arlington House which also finds itself in the poem. And the last line is a direct quote from an English rose of a lady whom I met in the community centre at St Nicholas on Wade.  I’ve said too much. The video of the work speaks for itself and so too the poem. The poem in its entirety is here