Good evening,
This Sunday I’ve got a poem AND an announcement to share with you.
And not just any poem, it’s another cat poem. A villanelle - a very old fashioned poetic form. It’s a form that’s typically used for obsessive lamentations, for subjects like death and heartbreak. But I think it’s a form that is so mathematical and dramatic in its repetition that it gets a little absurd after a while. Glorious and hilarious, what could be a more perfect outline for a poem about my cat, with whom I am obsessed?
I laugh when I read this poem aloud, and yes I recite it to my cat sometimes. When she drinks from my water glass, or pounces on our feet, or ruins one of my paintings-in-progress I say: O what to do with that wild cat!
That’s what I think we love about cats: there’s a bit too much wild left in them. Just when we think we’ve got them figured out and domesticated, they pull out another trick. There’s a great recent article in The Guardian about female artists and their relationships with their cats, how often they are stigmatized as “crazy cat ladies” perhaps because they challenge social norms around domesticity and being well behaved. So this poem is a celebration of the wild that stubbornly remains within the cat, and the little bit of wild that’s in us all.
Oh, and my announcement: I’m currently doing an artist residency at Bakeriet in Ås (a town just outside of Oslo in Norway) and this Sunday 24 September we will be hosting an open studio day. If you’re in Ås, or Oslo and fancy a day trip, then come along and see my works in progress! I’ll be reading my poetry at 2pm, some old stuff and a sneak peak of Shopping for God - my upcoming exhibition and show. There’ll be paintings, wood sculptures, giant collages and… cake.
Details are on my Instagram @flowerseleanorflowers
You ready? This is Villanelle for our Pussy Cat. Sound ON!
O what to do with that wild cat?
Why bite and scratch my lover?
She’s just a puss and that is that
From street stray to aristocrat
From whom we run for cover
O what to do with that wild cat
She pays no rent and creams the fat
Still steers our soft hearts’ rudder
She’s just a puss and that is that
A child whose play ends in attack
Against her doting mother
O what to do with that wild cat!
And when she splays out on a lap
We dare not even shudder
She’s just a puss and that is that
O untold beauty cased in black
God knows how much we love her
O what to do with that wild cat?
She’s just a puss and that is that!
Painting is by Girl with a Black Cat by Henri Matisse, 1910
Baggy! 🐈⬛