poetry | Holly Pester

Saturday Seminar at the Serpentine Gallery

11-02-2012

Saturday 11th February, 3pm
Holly Pester in response to the poetics of Lygia Pape

“Every Saturday the Serpentine Gallery hosts talks and seminars for the public. This winter prominent artists, poets, curators and academics discuss themes connected to the Lygia Pape exhibition and the Neo-Concrete movement.”

The below sound poems were made in response to Lygia Pape’s woodcuts and neo-concrete poetry. The series was made for a presentation at the Serpentine Gallery, 11th February 2012. All pieces are anagrams of the word ‘Disentangled’ from Pape’s poem Boca a Boca.

The following video is of the poem written in response to my engagement with the exhibiton, Magnetized Space, and to the Pape material.

News Piece

By: Holly Pester

27-07-2011

News Piece, poetry, sound piece

Ongoing news poem made of breaths and words. Sourced from the Today programme’s news bulletins on BBC Radio 4.

News Piece 9 8 2011 by holly-pester

News Piece 8th to 12th July 2010 by holly-pester

News Piece 16th to 19th October 2010 by holly-pester

News Piece 20th July 2011 by holly-pester

The Bury Poems

By: Holly Pester

27-06-2011

news, poetry

Featuring Tony Lopez, Robert Grenier, Ron Silliman, Geof Huth, Carol Watts, Philip Davenport, Holly Pester, Tony Trehy.

A Text Festival Publication with Apple Pie Editions

Danger Scale – recording of Maintenant Icelandic Poetry Event

By: Holly Pester

14-03-2011

live performance, poetry, sound piece

Holly Pester by Maintenant

S.C.R.U.F.F

By: Holly Pester

08-09-2010

poetry

The violins of autumn
Are men in wetsuits tracking a tracking device
Scruff is part scratch part fluff

Jean’s moustache muffles his question
numbers
numbers may be scratched and his head is scruffy

Stay thermal
Sccrrruufff is Orson Wells burning it down.
Scruff tracking a tracking device
Scruff cherry is a secret agent
Jean’s got croup rough
panic hatching panic. little and green and pulsing
Don’t go over the top. Don’t talk into the wind

Fish for harmonies
Stay thermal in rough winds
Jean’s moustache is longer than we thought
Jean’s moustache is. Slick, shuffling out to sea

Jean’s moustache covers his mouth
Is a little green heart beat
Pulse pulse pulse. Roof. Blown. off

Jean’s moustache is ropey
Jean hasn’t got a moustache

Rough rolling through panic hearing panic numbers
numbers may be scratched with letters of human panic

A cherry
A sounds like ffffffffffffffff
like a moustache is vocoded
Cocccooccooooned in fuzz

Jean’s moustache plaits into other
Jean’s moustache is a Halloween joke
Jean’s moustache is theatre on air
Jean’s moustache hides a cocooned bat
Hu huuu
A cherry is a secret bat
Jean has fuzz
The wind sounds like ffffffffffffffff
Jocelyn’s moustache catches
Jean’s agent covers his mouth
Jean’s moustache is ropey
Scruffy

tough
trouble
tattle
tremor
twinkle
twinkle
tattle
terrible
tattle numbers
numbers may be scratched and fluffed

The back of Jean’s head is scruffy
Where the message backfired
Jocelyn’s moustache is cherry ripe
Ca-boom. Ca-bang.

Jean’s moustache is encrypted
The air around it is encrypted
Air type 1 scccccrrrrrrrr
Air type 2 is real panic, human
Elaborations of scruff. Real panic, human panic

the tune of thought
Elaborations of scruff. The oracle scruffed a sermon is scruff. The lines between L,G,M are scruffed: Little scritch, Green scratch, scruffy men in wetsuits tracking a tracking device. Hu huuu Scruff is part scratch part fluff with the remains of a flutter. Clash scritch muzzle caboom. A scruffed message is hard to hear > a massaged scruff is unhearable.

Jocelyn Bell hunting scruff
looking out for human panic.
twinkle
traffic
take me
take off
tatted
totally
twinkle
twinkle
tatted
tatted
Jean’s moustache is theatre
Martians roar
Earthquakes purr

Jocelyn’s moustache is cherry ripe
Jocelyn’s cherry is wailing
Jean follows rattles like a recipe. Find a bowl. Put on a wetsuit. Dive in.

Today’s cherry is a secret agent
Jean’s moustache is ropey
Jean’s moustache is vocoded
Cocccooccooooned in fuzz
numbers may be scratched into others
Jean’s moustache is a Halloween joke
Jean’s moustache scruffed
Little scritch, Green scratch
Hu huuu
Jean is Jocelyn Bell hunting herself
chasing martians,
becoming cuffed
making a message unhearable.

men in wetsuits tracking a tracking device.
Scruff is part part rough

tremor
tremoring
twinkle
twinkle
traffic
take me
take me
talkie
hu huuu
twinkle
tradgedy
trouble
tough luck
terrible
terrible
tremor
the wet rubber of those violins.
tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak

theatre on the air
Jean is Jocelyn Bell hunting scruff
looking out for jokes
Jean’s moustache is fluffed

The back of men in wetsuits
is unhearable

Jocelyn’s moustache is air-talk
Jean’s moustache is oracle
Cocccooccooooned in a green heart beat
A message is a hard heart beat
Pulse pulse pulse. Roof. Blown. Off.
Jean’s moustache is because of the wind
Jean’s moustache grows in the wind
The LGMs have throat infections – they cage noises
Little scritch, Green scratch,
Jean’s moustache is ropey
twinkle
twinkle
tattle
teetle
huu huuu
tanker
sounds in boxes. panic hearing panic tracking
take off
tatted
total Scruff
is a secret fluffed
and flicked

Jean’s secret is cherry chipe
a Halloween sermon air-talk
huu huuu

The air catches
Orson Wells burn it down.
Jean’s head is scratched-in
commentary is a joke

Jean’s moustache is agented
Jean’s moustache is by numbers

numbers may hide explosions
mid-air sounds mixed in boxes.
trouble spot
tough luck
Jean’s moustache is ropey
panic that flutters
cherry is a secret agent
Jean’s moustache is ropey
There’s no more cognac

little Jocelyn Bell hunting Orson Wells
It screeches, then steps out of character
Jean’s moustache is a system of numbers
Jean’s moustache is a little green scruff
Jean’s head is scruffy
Where the message backfired
Jean’s moustache is a
talkie
twinkle
tradgedy
trouble
tough luck
hu huuu
terrible
tattle speech
It screeches like the wet rubber of violins.
teetol
take her
take her
tracker
tracker
tracker
craquelure

Scratched Fluff

By: Holly Pester

08-09-2010

poetry

Jean’s moustache is longer than we thought
Jean’s moustache is. Slick, shuffling out to sea
Jean’s moustache covers his mouth
Jean’s moustache muffles his speech
It screeches, then steps out of character
Jean’s moustache is a system of numbers
Jean’s moustache is a little green heart beat
Pulse pulse pulse. Roof. Blown. Off.
Jean’s moustache is because of the wind
Jean’s moustache grows in the wind
Jean’s moustache is scruffed in places
Jean’s moustache is encrypted
The air around it is encrypted
Air type 1 sounds like scccccrrrrrrrr
Air type 2 sounds like ffffffffffffffff
Jean’s moustache is vocoded
Cocccooccooooned in fuzz
Jean’s moustache plaits into others
Jean’s moustache is a Halloween joke
Jean’s moustache is a theatre on the air
Jean’s moustache hides a shot gun-nenenenenenene
Hu huuu
Jean is Jocelyn Bell hunting scruff
chasing martians, mer-cu-ry
looking out for numbers
numbers may be scratched and fluffed
The back of Jean’s head is scruffy
Where the message backfired
Jocelyn’s moustache is cherry ripe
Jean’s cherry is a secret agent
Jean’s moustache is ropey
Jean hasn’t got a moustache
numbers 3.5
not much cognac
letters 3.5
not much cognac
agents 3.5
The violins of autumn are
Clicking
have a crackling affect
on words through a wire
Rumble over disaster voices/ still wailing like little and green and pulsing
Don’t go over the top. Don’t talk into the wind
Fish
For harmonies
Stay thermal
Sccrrr – ared of loud noises
Scccrrr – ary cage noises
Scccrrr – artificial speech of bat
Jean has been talking to the LGMs.
putting sounds in boxes. Regurgitating pangs-peeps-blasts. Today they asked for an explosion, mid-air. Kata-Kata city. He should shout a letter of the alphabet as each fragment combusts. Frizzles back to earth. Ca-boom. Ca-bang. Catastrophe commentary scratched into ffireside cha-atter. The LGMs have throat infections – they croup
Hiccough
Husp kah-kah Jean follows the rattles like a recipe. Find a bowl. Put on a wetsuit. Dive in. Squeak the wet rubber to the tune of those violins.
tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak
The trouble with this
The rumble with th
The terrible is
you have no idea how many are listening. Who is rolling through the catches
from tic to tock to air-talk to gibber-pitch. The only real real real wave is Orson Wells burning it down. Real panic, human panic, New Jersey panic. Panic transmitting panic hearing panic homing panic hosting panic hatching panic.
Martians roar
Earthquakes purr
Elaborations of scruff. The oracle scruffed a sermon is scruff. The lines between L,G,M are scruffed: Little scritch, Green scratch, scruffy men in wetsuits tracking a tracking device. Hu huuu Scruff is part scratch part fluff with the remains of a flutter. Clash scritch muzzle caboom. A scruffed message is hard to hear > a massaged scruff is unhearable. How you manage a scruff is a question of counting pulses.

tracker
take off
tatted
totally
twinkle
traffic
take me
take me
talkie
twinkle
twinkle
tradgedy
trouble spot
tough luck
terrible
tattle
teetol
take her
take her
tracker
huu huu
tracker
take off
tatted
totally
twinkle
twinkle
traffic
take me
take me
talkie
hu huuu
twinkle
tradgedy
trouble spot
tough luck
terrible
tattle
teetol
take her
take her
tracker
tracker
huuu huu
huuu huu
huu huuu

Ledbury Poetry Festival Reading with Jamie Wilkes

By: Holly Pester

06-07-2010

live performance, poetry

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

bird interview

By: Holly Pester

12-04-2010

poetry, sound piece

bird interview

Interview Pieces

By: Holly Pester

18-10-2009

poetry

A Bookwork published by Regolith Works, now available at The Serpentine Gallery as part of the 2009 Poetry Marathon

interview pieces by Holly Pester is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Bad, Boring Writing about Magenta

By: Holly Pester

13-07-2009

critical writing, poetry

1
Using magenta with neutrals opens up smaller spaces like this nursery soft and pink and social. Rough tones of sorbet blend 20% gentle, maybe some dust, fine for a room that’s perfect for you. Or your little pinks. Inviting biological blends can transform the mood of any room without transforming the mood. Perhaps a redundant berry? A muted neutral such as soft stone contrasts with a feature wall for a gorgeous way to pervert woodwork. It keeps things clean and simple and is softer on the living room. Try babe in contrast to a Greek shimmer, anything dextrous for a rich lift. A little calm is forgivable, it’s only Tuesday and the yellows are out. Light pinks and similar April bushes are very likely. It shows well in this quiet and reasonable room. It’s all over 1930s sexy. Clash a tone on this table, make it a raspberry perfect for you. Saturated, regular or dusky.
One quarter violets will bring a seasonal and necessary change – think oyster, think coma.
Come the season for circles in irregular spaces. Dirty as grapes. You want a change like fondant goo and the rest. This furniture deserves the site of cream, something to send it into 60%. You could frame it in shiny lilacs and really get the angles you deserve. Try to separate the brights from the bolds, it could win you 5 minutes to a week of free-time with your dirties. Blossom rash?

2
No one wants to see a bashed berry yogurt in the morning. On occasion it’s forgivable to tone two neutrals together. Soap and sack, rough water holidays. This fest is an ideal time to try some new samples – plucked skin is hot but to be daring is to risk a sterile ruby. Minus a shade or two for a proper century carpet, and now you’re really staining! A good fantasy fetcher is ¾ pig ink, a must-have for this corner space.
Feather the brick wash. You won’t regret putting blush before you’re 40. Make space, make time, the cherries are groaning. The crack of a new month is the perfect excuse for some fresh acid thinking. Why not update your alcoves with something musty. Your home is a mood-farm and worth every lick. If the dappled long coats get you down, sprinkle some fizz and relive the era of the mantle-piece. Something for sitting and driving: it should always make you roomy, a bit like a garden.

3
People of the watermelon, listen to the new sound coming from the angry red planet. Peach-wash or milk crust? This is contemporary California style. The new motors have a wonderful aroma and a mildness that agrees with your red-eye. Liner. So do yourselves a flavour and complete the decking in meat planks. Do it for your family, or just for the sheer fat of it. Life is certainly pleasurable now. It’s made of pure foam – Don’t ever forget that. Fact.

In the olden days a wife was a spread of bacteria. She knew the smack of pink wafer biscuit. Spray, spray, spray away the crinkles. Lip is the stick smart women should wear – says Andy McDowell, the glut agent. Today the trend in telephones is certainly to colour – in both home and the office. So why not update your talking shades? You’re a smoker, so American. Not a baby washer after all.
This bathroom is synonymous with the gracious living of Beverly Hills. It’s mulberry blush, it’s sandalwood and it won’t harm your pets. Want to know Paris’s secret to beauty in the morning? Cry a little. And there’s no need to plug it in, or even shake. To keep your decor in trend, you must follow the Johnson Plan. Step one is a Barbarella diet with two-tone salmon trays. Step two to three becomes available on Boxing Day. The most recent devotee has inched herself into 3 flesh sizes her previous. It could be you, so why not update your talking shades?

4
Feeling low? Blow away the brown air with a new internal wall. You’ve seen them in the showrooms; they leak real-life hormones. Halleluiah Jimmy. Now award yourself a twin-pack and really begin the neo year. It really really really will make your mornings bigger. It’s what every contempo doll is looking for. What is? This is! And you thought the bag-hogs had the last sample stitch. We all care about your lounge, Ronda. Believe it.
R-O-T spells luxury rug.

5
Monroes welcomes Baglics, the most recent member of the Vanity family. They insist on surfaces being bright and clear. Keeping up bright and across clear, ensuring a bright and clear sphere that’s bright and clear. The portals are bright and clear. The bays are bright and clear. They’ve customized bright to enhance clear, really bringing out the shine in the furnishings. The focus is on bringing out the bright, it’s clear. The design shanks are aren’t just clear, they’re brighter than clear, they’re bright and clear. And the rest. Bag-a-lics say, Come Alive! You’re in the coochie purse generation. That’s bright; that’s clearer than clear. Pimp your basement room ready for some grade A action. Hang up the stuff! Match faux fur with jaundice stones. And always make sure there’s plenty of peach on the blankets.

Voiceworks

By: Holly Pester

04-06-2009

live performance, poetry, sound piece

A collaborartion between Joshua Kaye (composer) and Holly Pester (poet and text artist)

Presidents and Birds and Even by holly-pester

Programme notes:

At the conception of this project Kaye and Pester created a system of exchange and translation, developing shared concerns for chance operations, periphery speech sounds and the thrill of live performance. By trading sound, text and image material, they allowed the piece to workshop itself out of their (re)interpretation and (mis)translation. Kaye and Pester have engendered not only a musical score, but a hypertextual network of graphic notation, sound poetics and a prolific collaborative partnership.

The piece works as a triptych, with each instant both setting Pester’s text and also conceptually representing each visual poem. The piece is also interspersed with rhythmic interludes.

Baritone singer

Percussion 1 – Catherine Ring

Percussion 2 – Louise Morgan

To begin our collaboration Josh and I exchanged compilation CDs with recordings that we felt represented or at least indicated the direction of our practices/interests. My CD for Josh was a mix of sound poetry excerpts from Henri Chopin and Bob Cobbing, some experimental vocal tracks by heavy metal musician Mike Patton, a few songs from Bjork’s ‘Medulla’ album and some Mongolian throat singing. (And some pretty incredible Michael Jackson acapella!) Things that I like, listen to, make me think about the voice and the concept of singing.

Josh passed on to me an alien world of contemporary opera, some of his own piano pieces and pieces for many voices, plus a welcome reminder of The Velvet Underground’s ‘The Murder Mystery’. What did they tell me about Josh? That he likes inter-sections of voice and percussion; rhythmic, polyphonic vocal sounds.

After this we talked over our listening experiences and went to see as many exhibition, event and performances as we could, trying to build or uncover a common language. It became clear that neither of us were interested in the conventional poet-composer partnership, i.e. having me compose a text, hand it over to Josh and then have him set it to music. We wanted a collaboration that involved a continuous workshop and thought laboratory, that pushed both our practices forward, and gave away our personal artistic temperaments.

More than this, we wanted the piece to perform the exciting collision of text and music that was occurring in our dialogue.

We started by making a small collection of vocal noise. I recorded some ‘para-speech’ noises (erming, ahring, coughing, spluttering, laughing etc.) and Josh produced some piano bits and some of his own throat singing. Josh set this using some sound editing software and passed it back to me. I took this newly constructed sound piece and visually translated it into a sequence of typewriter poems. I passed these back to Josh who translated these as graphic notation, unpicking the flat plane of paper and creating a dimensionality that I found very exciting.

And this was how the process continued, passing back and forth sound, to image to composition.

Eventually I narrowed down the sources for my noise-making to YouTube footage of Barack Obama interviews, extracting those wonderful, distinctively pitched, vocal controllers he makes when pausing between words. I collected these, mimicked them and recorded them. I then juxtaposed this recording with impressions of talking pet birds (also sourced from YouTube). These sounds were arranged into the sound piece ‘bird interview’ which informed the body of much of the final piece:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This suited our mutual creative interests in interviews, periphery speech expenditure and procedure-led art-making. It was also inevitable given my current fixation with the phenomenal sound of Obama’s voice.

While much of the material was still in fragments; typewriter poems, sound texts and annotated scores, we met with our singer, Alex and began testing some of the vocal sequences Josh had devised. During one of these rehearsal sessions I transcribed some conversations between Josh and Alex, discussing the technicalities of singing the score. These transcriptions were worked into another poem that was spliced into the interventional sections before each miniature.

I was continually excited by the way Josh interpreted the material we had workshopped out between us. One of the typewriter poems I gave him had solid squares of letters, which Josh – through the indetermination of graphic notation – devised into a game for percussionists. This is ‘played’ in the final miniature where Louise and Catherine race to get to a certain note in the grid. Because of this each performance, although structurally identical, has an inbuilt facilitator for different versions. Both Josh and I place a great deal of value on the alchemic moment of live performance and were eager to make sure that there was something deliberate that ensured each time would be different.

The female percussionists work together regularly as a duo and had a wonderful energy between them. Josh’s vision for Alex’s vocals to be constantly struggling to break through the drumming was almost too successful. They embraced the vocal interjections Josh had written for them with a thrilling vivacity. Overall the performic dynamic between the trio for the final performance made it something of a visual and sonic spectacle.

Name Score

By: Holly Pester

10-04-2009

poetry, sound piece

Please join this facebook group and add your name in sounds

Video Links of Past Performances

By: Holly Pester

11-01-2009

live performance, poetry

Showreel of performances from 2007 to 2008

The Ventriloquy of Artists’ Interviews

By: Holly Pester

20-09-2008

critical writing, poetry

Start the tape.

“I always felt the need to bring a new objectivity to” ladders.

Who’s speaking? Every interview is a junkyard of voices; you believe, I insist, we all think. Allow me to explain. I am the partial interviewer, veiled in script. I am the interviewee that spoke and the one that was written later in my absence. We are all various understandings of the Work, and the work’s value. But which one of us is interested in forklift trucks?

What do you want to say about interviews? That we’re too in love with them? That they fill in narratives of how and why art works? How and why does your art work. I can’t tell you now that you’ve asked me. How do you understand it? If you enjoy it you must understand it. There’s no need to say ‘What about your lines? What about your materials? “Being intelligible is not what it seems.” What’s interesting about this interview is the rhetorical skill, it’s so dependent on an unambiguous persona. Only he could answer a question like that. Somebody said something impulsive at a point in time, somebody wrote something rational and that moment is now a monument. Ask her about her plan. The question is always the answer is always a statement about your current project. That’s not a question. But do you agree or disagree. With what? With whether the question or answer is the making of criticism.

It’s probably more like an exercise in understanding a journalist. The golden egg is a recording of someone’s meltdown. The best way to achieve this is to cause someone to have a meltdown. Tell us about the moment of your public failure and if you can’t please be silent. You mustn’t insult me by understanding me. My way of being critical is my way of showing you that I care. I care enough to ask what you think about how logos have changed? And how did the move to go all white come about? It was my brief. People must be so bored of decision making. Explain your strategies for escaping phallocentricism? Silence. I had my first exhibition in Warsaw, with photographs of my actions. Untitled (November 1976) was in it, as was Untitled (18 November 1976) and other things I had done.

Is an apologia even necessary, and what’s the difference between what you decided and what you can’t decide? Decision making. I am interested in the initial impulse that led to your ‘actions’, what did you do before this? I was doing drawings in a notepad then I did collage. What have you heard others say about your work? What they say is true. How did you end up in Poland? It was for my second exhibition. Could you explain the train journey in detail, including the coffee and the sandwich and the book you read. Maybe that’s when I had the idea. What have you heard others say about your work? What they say is wrong.

It’s a shame this interview is too circumscribed for you to say anything surprising. Was that your intention? If you enjoy it you understand it. Everyone talks about what a wonderful structure Number 32 has. (What I mean is) if they only knew how arbitrary that decision was. Now the biographers are calling and I can’t remember what is true and what isn’t. Why are you using forklift trucks? I’m fascinated by them. You are not fascinated by them. I can’t talk about intention, everything I do is a surprise.

(This article can be found in next month’s Vacuum magazine)

(awake and lie)

By: Holly Pester

18-09-2008

live performance, poetry

awake-and-lie-poster

projection text

– Holly Pester

sound poetry, performance texts and writing

Saturday Seminar at the Serpentine Gallery

News Piece

The Bury Poems

Danger Scale – recording of Maintenant Icelandic Poetry Event

S.C.R.U.F.F

Scratched Fluff

Ledbury Poetry Festival Reading with Jamie Wilkes

bird interview

Interview Pieces

Bad, Boring Writing about Magenta

Voiceworks

Name Score

Video Links of Past Performances

The Ventriloquy of Artists’ Interviews

(awake and lie)

news

twitter

recent

Categories