Suzhou
Lotus seller, Suzhou
The old canal city of Suzhou is ringed by innumerable apartment blocks with names like ‘Orchard Mansions’, with services like ‘Urban Romance Restaurant’, billboards for luxury labels. We pass through the international expo centre, vast halls, boulevards empty and stop at Modern Plaza for Toys R Us, Casa Zoe – Tex Mex, The Coffee Club, ‘Rise Immersion Subject English’. We carry on down Wangdun Road heading to the Yangtse Delta and Shanghai passing Rolex, Hermes, Mont Blanc, Ralph Lauren, and the ‘Art Soft Outfit Life Bar’.
Billboards for the Versace Company Store clutter. China has become one of the most important markets for luxury, at 25% of the world market proportionally way above its income. They are keeping up with the Smiths or the Wangs. Consumerism has gone mad after all those years of Mao suits. When I was last in China 30 years ago, one of the first backpackers in the country, I found one private stall in Shanghai and that only sold one product, busts of Beethoven! How is that entrepreneur doing now?
"My Artistic Conception of Life", Shanghai
My Artistic Conception of Life, Suzhou
Modern Plaza, Suzhou (with Toys'R'us in shot)
Monopoly, Suzhou
"Pollution of the earth, air, and water has been largely ignored in the rush toward material consumption that has seized... [China] in its haste to emulate our shallow and problematical Western 'progress.'"
Peter Matthiessen, The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes
Northumberland
Thomas Bewick's goldfinch
He was influential in bringing nature to people's attention. When a new species of swan was discovered in Northumberland in 1829, the year after his death, it was named Cygnus bewickii Bewick's Swan.
Thomas Bewick's platypus
Thomas Bewick's view - the Tyne Valley
Action in the British Museum
Action at Tate Modern
Contemporary Painter
Dreaming of Poetry
Viennese Actionism - Rainer
July
Bananas - self portrait, Chelsea Physic Garden
Sun Temple
Amersham Hill
June
In the Uk in to see my elderly parents.
The mystery of miserichords
and of poems written by diamonds:
True Greatness of the soul soars far above
what the world calls misfortune & afliction . . . 1775
Lyme Regis reminding me of my childhood in Sussex.
Via Hong Kong and Macau
- met up with friends Kit Kelen and Carol Orchard and Chris Somng who is translating my poetry into Chinese for Kit's second volume of Fires Rumoured about the City – Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poets.