Outside In

Stephen Jackson was trained in Psychology, Logic & Metaphysics at St Andrews - only later as a lecturer and professional artist.

 

"I’ve been author or editor of a dozen books as well as a journalist whose features appeared in The Independent, Time Out, Sunday Telegraph and leading national magazines.  I’ve also worked in television films, one of which won Crystal Prize at the Prague Festival; and been cited by BBC Music and Arts as “a writer of the Upper-First Division”. But it was only in beating a bout of the Blues in the mid-1990’s that I discovered the magical potential of digital imaging to transform our preconceptions of what we imagine the world to be like… The resulting juxtapositions of my art and poetry have been described as “fascinating and amazing” by Lisette Brodey, the US novelist. Elsewhere these visuals found acclaim as “hauntingly beautiful”: the words as “tight and life-enhancing”, with a richness and texture comparable to John Donne’s.

 

 A lot of what I explore now has to do with peeking up the wrong end of the telescope, to see in a clearer light all those walking wounded in the universal and (some might say) necessary battlefields that litter human aspirations and language. There are few outright winners here, except of the most ephemeral kind. The tiny obsessions of middle age: the games all of us sometimes have to play - these are my canvas – and my occasions for humour and optimism.  The memories of my own dark period, the fresh revelations of a subsequent sort of rebirth, offer endless avenues of inquiry as well as new and welcome pleasures.

 

Amongst the artists who intrigue me are Odilon Redon, Bill Brandt: Rousseau, Rothko, Blake, Chagall, Kandinsky, Edward Burra, Bonnard, Munch, Bacon, Frida Kahlo and Tamara de Lempicka; H R Giger, Ernst Haas, Georg Grosz, Francis Bowyer and Henri Cartier Bresson."

 

See Stephen's latest book on www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-People-Holiday-Stephen-Jackson/dp/1450039685/ref=sr_1_1

 

See Stephen in interview on www.youtube.com/user/stephenjacks58

See Stephens Author Profile at booktour.com/authors/show/34064 

 

He arrived, in a blue January twilight

At this great space: this measureless pavilion, epic

And austere.  Within it (lost), the murmurings of

Still-beating hearts: microcosms, these, as if a thousand

Dew-drops where, in a day, seasons of life and death were

Played out – intimate, ephemeral, unacknowledged.

 

At the big door he baulked; merely a novice, in this

Cathedral for the dying. One of the Sisters glanced:

He blanched, and lowered his gaze.

In upper wards the satellite channels prattled,

Television by the dead, for the dead. But not down here.

Here there was silence without dignity, at a time

When dignity was all there was to cling to.

Here was a mollusc of metal and puny plastic filaments,

A reticulated organism, perhaps; at whose numerous

Intersections little gobbets of flesh might move and stir,

Punctuated from time to time by sacs of brownish fluid.

 

In the corner, with a head

Like a busted bag, the elegant lady

He knew, twenty years since, from an evening

Watercolour class. Somebody senile fell back from

Ranting at an extinct cousin. But first, dear Reader, to bedside

Watch. There’s no response, as (quiet as a choirboy)

He folds his coat, and perches on it. At length

He says, “Would you like to hear some nice news

About me?”  Pause, and the rattle of distant tea trolleys.

Finally she says, “We’ve been waiting thirty-nine years.” 

 

At this moment it is evident that,

Contrary to all prior intimations, Elvis has not

Left the building. As for the seated one, his back

Makes a low arc and, as if to himself, he murmurs,

“Now I know you’re going to be all right.”

 

Stephen Jackson                                                                                                              March 2005