Tomorrow

 

Seminar on Street Art 12: Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be when we have the conversation we always have. Who knows where it might go next. Words freely flow, stack up, bounce back and forth, gyrate and joke, like graffiti on that fence, as we drive past. Unspoken then, lulls. Rarely does it occur to us talking we traverse directions between inferno and paradiso. Or that our presence together counters illusions like the news cycle, movie nostalgia, the metaverse. Tomorrow we shall find still the names of mercy and charity, humility and poverty. Our walls meanwhile may be blazoned with anonymous extravagance, names larger than billboards and weirder than jargon. While here and there could remain small stickers of hope, a shattered psalm on a signpost, handwritten ha-ha ho-ho protests. The indecipherable hieroglyphs shape the time, shake with faith. Unspoken then, lulls. Tomorrow there may be no telling the changes in store. That which was lost inside badgers’ nondescript dwellings will be painted seven-feet tall across walls for all to witness. That which was an invisible thought will be advanced a hundredfold, signs of existence reified in every unforeseen direction. That which was secret will be a blatant blast. The illiterate will write in innumerable tongues, the speechless sign ownership of their birth city in eloquent personal calligraphy. Tomorrow will not be so bad. Yellow leaves will settle on the ground with today’s windfall. City skyline will be gleaming at every changing facet. Our voices as we enter the room will speak normal reassuring words, practical as can be. Our daily bread is stored where we can find it, thankfully. The conversation will happily contradict whatever the radio calls news. Even the weather is open to mild refutation. Unspoken then, lulls. Tomorrow won’t be quite what we imagined, bolstered as we are by ambition and desire. Trespassers will evade prosecution, maybe. If they asked for words, would they be given stony silence? Was there a thought that because they were silenced, they would not speak? Here at ground zero, all grass and daisies again, they will have staved off the evil hour by inscribing with cans and brushes their inimitable name. Their heroic moment joins the other names in a communion of the dispossessed. The streets of a hundred names blossom towards Spring. Tomorrow will be an adventure called home.  

 

Bronze

 

Seminar on Street Art 10: Bronze.

 

Liquefaction of bucketed colour turns the heads.

Brainiacs climb someone’s walls to apply a distant blue.

Consonantal collapse and revive extends a rough-hued gracious hand. 

And codebreakers abandon the hidden clues, return to reality daily.

 

Bituminous air mixes with gold spraycan afterglow.

Coronavirus calligrams by graf kings are coronated.

Hardedge armoured vowels submerge softest brickwork tones.

And deaths heads grin where contortion alphabets smile.

 

Tenements overpriced underutilised wear vagrant monograms.

Stoked on weed and horse, the signatories steal through the night.

Monuments more lasting than bronze are their bluffs.

And they replicate pyramids midst their high-density hieroglyphs.

 

Eating rains, unfailing hail, wild west winds are for another day.

Here one-word odes exist extant against the everest of forever.

Here anonymous performers delineate silent their present location.

And here behind supermarkets, on railway fences, their red flowers.

 

Little magazines bequeath the decades with numbered numbers.

Handwritten epistolary epics lend lustrous sentiment to a shoebox.

The hand that signed the paper got off lightly.

And likewise these walls face the music of passing traffic.

 

Such personal esperanto surpasses reviews. 

Such broken english breaks open fractal figures of everyday tongues.

Humble green, writhing green, urbane green glut the 2-D parades.

And speak unto one another whom no one sights by daylight.

 

Grandiloquent their names reminiscent of bagpipes and trumpets.

Disarming their claims to a corner of a foreign field forever.

Disconcerting their aims, the one from the other, still altogether.

And yet yes their name awhile is now, their badge the latest news.

 

Super the moon everywhere white or new as shades broad casting.

There again where they round the corner to furtive rendezvous.

There again blasting letters lasting, the olympic race for bronze.

Where glorious testaments rest unique in splendour for the days.

 

Autograph

 

Seminar on Street Art 9: Autograph. All the very best! [Signed] Indecipherable Hieroglyphic. Such are the squiggles inside childhood autograph books. Autographs were the proof you were in the presence of greatness. They were your brush with immortality. They were the sign that such greatness existed. Only time and maturity changed the meaning of the ballpoint loops and dashes of Indecipherable Hieroglyphic. What a guy! That highflying footballer eventually retired to run the pub in his home town. That TV celebrity survives in their funny stock phrase, all in the moment, all in the timing. She was a trick! That opinionated politician visiting your school was voted out: autographs come to commemorate landslides. Autographs of your schoolfriends take on other, more personal meanings. The earnest copperplate denotes a focussed mind. The autograph with final fantastic flourishes wishes to entertain. The business-like lettering of honest endeavour vies with the jagged stuttering of could do better. Where are they now? Now you have only their names. Autographs clearer than their schoolyard faces in your memory. Time to turn the page. These signs of connection, fleeting as may be, are the beginning of a lifetime’s notice. Forms, you sign them with Date, Name, and then quizzically, Signature. As if your autograph were expected to be a different design, by nature and norm, to your Name filled out in full. That the two would be identically written is unlikely, in a society like yours. Your name must be clear and rigid as Times New Roman; your signature may be all over the place. You’ve always signed it that way. Only connect. This expectation of uniqueness motivates behaviour, from approval of deals to last wills and testaments, and signed first editions. And translates with ease to street autographs, seven-feet high embellishments emphatically self-assertive, and utterly unique in their own terms. They gleam in the sun, even after the paint’s dried. X, but then some. Your average street artist has, first and last, their name, an autograph practised over and over, in-your-face or inscrutable, being for the benefit of Mr Site, a landmark that must be theirs, if only for one day. Autographing the city, they lay claim to its identity, set out their pathways through the maze, strike a deal. Not that this autograph matches their real-life Name. It is a signature ‘innominato’, unnamed ones who inscribe their glorious autograph upon the walls for reasons known best to themselves. Reasons, innumerable as the ways of fortune that they must respond to. ‘Innominata’, perchance?  Almost certainly. All the very best! [Signed] Indecipherable Hieroglyphic.     

 

Eater

 

Seminar on Street Art 8: Eater. Graffiti eaters need to get food on the table, like everyone else, their hours are long, their locations change daily. Luckily, they have a constant source of work. The paint drippers far outstrip the paint strippers, numerically, outwitting all manner of detection. There will always be a livelihood for graffiti eaters while muralists persist and badgers insist. Some say it’s a toxic culture for graffiti eaters, the air laden with leaden fumes, their skin exposed to the constant tinge of poison. Their company motto, though, is a serious commitment, almost a commandment: you want it off, we’ll get it off - the graffiti eaters. They will not desist. They bear down on luckless wall scrawl. They turn flowery daytime expression back into a nighttime of uniform grey, starless and reliably blank. Secrets, coded but out in the open for all to share, return to the unknown, unspoken. Retail outlets breathe a sigh of gratitude, assured that only their name defines the streetscape and fills the skyline. Shopping centres feel clean again, free of the linguistic detritus that dirties their outward esteem. Banks can count on keeping up appearances, no more sloppy consonants spoiling the view, lowering the tone and the rigorous property values. Councils may boast of tidy minds in a tidy town, rid of the vulgar splurges overwhelming other less attentive neighbourhoods. Owners protect their assets from the desperate signs of the dispossessed, at least for the time being. Graffiti eaters promise that whatever the surface, brickwork with rising damp, concrete with accretions, timber with root rot, their devouring techniques should leave no trace of the event ever happening. Ever. Which raises the matter, what is the event? Is it not true to say that for every textual mural event there is an immemorial removal event? For each personal autograph event left overnight for daylight sightseers, there is an equal and opposite autograph erasure event performed in daylight, leaving the innocent surface once more stark staring bible black, again? Which, in turn, raises the question, what is ever? Graffiti eaters assure their clientele that their work deters the artists from ever returning to that favoured location again. An assurance that may be music to the owners’ ears and money in the till for graffiti eaters, but as likely to be the making of a clean canvas for the Rothkos of the outdoor vowel, the poets of never say never. O where will it all end, as one event leads to another event leads to another, down to the last syllable of recorded time, along warehouse frontages rife in new estates, down under bridges where the Merri river flows by, almost everywhere. Making a meal of it.             

 

 

Application

 

Seminar on Street Art 7: Application. Downtown in the city of downloads, fingertips walk stepping stone icons. Alone. Applications simulate control. Controlled, the digital beings connect to an artificial globe. The world. Passwords are passports, pins are wins. Interminable applications. Innumerable applications. The app for measuring light. The app for wrong from right. The app for updates on nostalgia. The app for computer neuralgia. The app for more money less time. App (pop-up: download now) where punishment fits the crime. The app for craziest quotes ever. Ever. The app that never says never.  Everywhere now, inexplicably new and now, pretending to know how applications happen. Snap them then tap them. All desires known. Sent to your iPhone. Private configurations, tonics and iconics. A service to keep an eye on. So many to choose from, which ones to try on? There is the app for A to speak with B. The app they said was free. The app for conveyor belts. The app for how things felt. The app for the way to dusty death. The app for taking your next breath. Uptown in the city of uploads, these handy daydreams of universal connect power out. They lose the feel of write. They fall through the stormwater grills, through the wise cracks. Forget about snacks. Upload overload, offload. Interminable until terminable. In their stead, instead, rise cartouches from the earth. The polychrome earth. Encapsulated in caps, applications in gloss paint proliferate. They instigate their maker’s unique claim. In touch with the grain and shape. Their name in rows with other names of the unnamed. Sign your name legibly. Make your application early. The graf of the tracks of their tears. The graf of the cracks in their fears. The graf of open secrets in code. The graf of calligraphy overload. The graf of internal fires. The graf of nighttime mires. The graf of the loneliest street. The graf where like-minds meet. Yes, secrets, coded but out in the open for all to share. The fair and aware, the scared and rare, bared in primary colours where inner city meets outer spaces. Garish and nightmarish, or cherished and first wish? Squarish and flairish, flourished, efflorescent. Dare this. Private configurations gone public in Dulux and Montana. British Paints, sure can. The graf of poetical overtures. The graf of seven-foot signatures. The graf with its back to the wall. The graf that is having a ball. The graf of not seen nothing yet. The graf of exploding alphabets.

 

Two Sonnets: 

‘The App’ 

The app for measuring light.

The app for wrong from right.

The app for updates on nostalgia.

The app for computer neuralgia.

The app for more money less time.

App: the punishment fits the crime.

The app for craziest quotes ever. Ever.

The app that never says never.

 

The app for A to speak with B.

The app they said was free.

The app for conveyor belts.

The app for how things felt.

The app for the way to dusty death.

The app for taking your next breath.

 

‘The Graf’ 

The graf of the tracks of their tears.

The graf of the cracks in their fears.

The graf of open secrets in code.

The graf of calligraphy overload.

The graf of internal fires.

The graf of nighttime mires.

The graf of the loneliest street.

The graf where like-minds meet.

 

The graf of poetical overtures.

The graf of seven-foot signatures.

The graf with its back to the wall.

The graf that is having a ball.

The graf of not seen nothing yet.

The graf of exploding alphabets.

 

 

Babel

 

Seminar on Street Art 6: Babel. Observe the city of 250 languages. Drop into the aural aroundedness. Distinguish its many Englishes, their accents and oops of grammar. Pronounce with aitch, haitch and huh. Notice the many variants of commuter Chinese. Unravel the beauties of iphone Spanish. Respect the originality of Greek. Encounter the aboriginality in Wurundjeri. Wonder, a lot. Abandon the belief you understand everything being said. Breathe the air on this first day. Breathe again, as everyone breathes. Listen to the world come to this city of towers, here to perpetuate its tried messages. Trial by embouchure, fearless with found phrases. Try to discern what is so trying from what makes every effort at trying. Live with the saying of it that doesn’t need to try. Interpret mood by the ups and downs of other intonations. Appreciate the incomprehensible that, for others, is the most comprehensible thing they have heard all day. Distinguish the English, single out the verbal wish. Gauge the basins or terraces or meanders where such tongues have their root in the geography of migration. Abide in the speedy profusion of multiple speech. Turn then. Turn past the airwaves. Gaze down past resolute institutions and punning shops to the walls of no-man words. Track with your pupils the contours of word hundreds, outlines and inners of unsaid words lining outer limits. Note how these names are not their real names. Consider this is because they desire to escape detection. See how these diversities seek to name the unnameable. Contemplate their tangles of consonants and vowels seven-feet high, concrete poetry that makes nothing happen. Query whether these experiments in unEnglish are not the mergings of 250 tongues bumping each other and curling into being. Question if this is not unquestionably the case. Measure the miles of street art speaking back to spraycan Babel its makers’ yearnings for agreement, their longing for speaking in tongues. Appreciate the language of walls, signs of the confusion of speech, giving birth to new words unfamiliar to an urban dictionary. Relax with a rapid city that talks over the top of itself, whispers and shouts in fast-drying paint. Listen the while to the out spokenness of neighbours, one of the most diverse in the world. Eyeball the walls, covered to the rooftops everywhere in lettering, lettering very deliberately absolutely no one can understand. Read with assurance the painted translations of the aural aroundedness, the object of a future signing itself with daring. Read their secrets, that are our secrets, coded but out in the open for all to share.

Underground

 

Seminar on Street Art 5: Underground. It is unclear why they risked their lives, dark in fact, descending into the wide drains below Melbourne. The Cave Clan left little trace underground, graffiti being contrary to their secret code of exploration. Anonymity was essential once they crossed the entrance to hell, somewhere near an effluent creek. They were torchlight crews, down there to discover the last frontier. Their cavernous concrete caverns were a hard day’s night, measureless to man where sunless they ran, tiptoed, stumbled, forged new memories. Speleologists of the sewers, their aim was discovering new reaches of the depths, only staying away for obvious reasons on rainy days. Now the explorers rise above the surface, whether rain or clear, scaling above the grids of lit windows, ducking down calligrammed bluestone lanes, finding forlorn fences beneath a sterling moon, their purpose to leave traces over every wall. Their purpose being to discover the next unknown nook that by hook crook they will hook with good looks. Just take a Captain Cook! And well that was one particular rabbit-hole. Another entertains Alice as she enters upon her adventures underground. There small becomes large, elephant becomes mouse again, and mirror-writing turns the alphabet inside out. Obtuse interactions, empirical impossibilities. the nightmare of the subconscious meet Alice whether she is opening doors, falling through space, or sitting down to tea. She’s frank. She’s grace. She’s prudence. But ask her to compose a response and we find she has risen to the occasion with seven-foot high mirror signatures that she’s good-naturedly choreographed across the entire neighbourhood. It might be a kingly Lear limerick in her head, a mock heroic palindrome, but across the waste deep urban landscape her names are pure concrete poetry. Which is not a poetry spoken into open mike at the seedy slam, or recited to a hush of introspective literati. Concrete poetry was everyone’s personal advertising in the heyday of the Velvet Underground. Cut-and-paste edged up the blocks of letters page upon blank page, their tumbledown graphix, their typewriter sprays in the days before personal computers. Newsprint turned a Cubist yellow, juxtaposition looked almost random, the capital letters awry the pride of their compositors. Now the Nicos and Alices draw their signature poetry from the earth below, where all paint is ultimately sourced in its myriad shades: vermilion earth, obsidian earth, sunburst earth, viridian earth, even skyblue earth, rising in wondrous oceanic earth waves over the reinforced blocks that uphold apartments, warehouses, flyover stations and hangars alike. Flourishes optional and noticeably frequent.

Gift

 

Seminar on Street Art 4: Gift. On cold days with rain on the window I want to give thanks to the divine truth of breath and the pathos of someone’s seven-foot alphabet glimpsed from the wet freeway. Someone had taken the time, joining the crew, to fill in their own official form signed in blasted colours, then left for public admiration. And diverse opinion. The seven-foot letters join the labyrinth of cause and effect decorating walls above the daisy-speckled mud fields and lonely carparks of outerness, seven-feet being the comforting reminder of human height. I give thanks for these human beings, their diversity of being, reaching for the stars with spraycans and rollers to find that in this singular universe, seven-feet is the arch of heaven, their chosen wall a mere clay tablet in the larger scheme of things. Or on another day, walking by the creek in leafless winter, I see more reasons for thanks, gifts along fences and all over power stations that will never give up dreams of lettering go their seven-foot faces with perseverance and love, letting us see them who otherwise go unseen. Solid diamonds, flowing water, spattered algebra, exact crystals, mystic coins, blazing fires, mystery roses, coloured vowels, innocent birds, tiger's stripes, exploding inevitables, unhidden treasures are the words spoken, the names declared this morning where wattles blossom and boost buckets rot. I give thanks for their hours of forethought, their stealthy choice of site, their haste in rendering, as they add one more chain tag to Melbourne’s one thousand and one nights. Their dreams have set firm on frosty mornings in the cold white sun, their gift a message of hell or heaven, too hard now to tell. On some days I stop in secret and immemorial backstreets, ice-hard bluestone and repatched bitumen, to let converge on me the twenty-first century language of codes unknown. I give thanks for seven-foot inner city nicknames and the young daring of their makers, yet rarely can I discern their exact intention, or their form. I know they are word music (Deo gratias!), that they were wished for, but they may be anthem or apology, epistle or epitaph, inscription or insult, ode or oracle, understatement or umbilical. All or none of those. Their presence arouses awareness and amusement, excites euphuism and ephemerality, invites investigation and illusion, overnights opprobrium and opposition, uninvites unctuousness and umpiring. It could be taken for wisdom. The seven-foots plea to be noticed, but never give their artist’s name. They ask to be remembered, even as they flirt with anonymity. On winter days I wish to be home, where I was always going anyway, past the sum of all created things under the winter sun, giving thanks for all variations of irrepressible, soon forgotten, street art.

Anonymous

 

Seminar on Street Art 3: Anonymous. Essential to the wonder of street art is anonymity. It is a given that no one but the artist and close associates, the crew, really knows. It’s they who made all these endless extravagances. The public and constabulary are in the dark, even in broad daylight, Broadmeadows daylight, though it is likely the constabulary possess files of names caught red-handed with a spray can, indelible markers. It is itself part of the mystery how so many artists go to infinitesimal detail writing their impossibly obscure signature upon doors, walls, back lanes, freeways simply to declare their honourable anonymity. It is anonymity, indeed, that gives freedom to the artists to express themselves as they wish. They are not bound by expectations a famous name means to the voracious and unthinking public. Fame is fleeting as a car careering past, a glimpse while out shopping, a billboard stripped back to tin by the morning. Their real name is invisible behind their immense contrived street names, signed in original lettering across the city’s length, breadth and don’t forget height. How did they get up there? This is a profound conundrum, painted over high density urban spaces: the sight of hundreds of ornate signatures that are not the artists’ real names. Who are these people? Their desire to lay claim to the impersonal landscape with their personal Pessoan heteronyms is uncontrollable, and done at risk to their physical safety and civil security. The law takes a dim view of their brightest autographs. The law would return to dust-grey their flowery embellishments, using a heavy-duty city council paint roller. The uniformity of conformity. Yet the law itself has provided street artists with the creative restriction rule that garners such populous proliferations of anonymous prolixity: Thou Shalt Not Sign the Work. Their viewership assigns medieval cognomens to their inscrutable pseudonyms: The Master of the Sunshine Industrial Zone, Pudgy Budgie Member of the School of Pam the Bird, Looping Illuminator of the Mernda Line. ‘Foo Was Here’ is the germ of this superabundance of dancing signoffs. But this is about more than scrawling a peekaboo in the wrong location. The results of street art imply a most complex artistic premeditation, an unswerving determination, a clubbish anonymity. They display gift and the painterly training of Renaissance frescoists, those men and women who knew they had only 15 minutes starting Now to complete their unacknowledged masterwork before the plaster set.

Concrete

 

Seminar on Street Art 2: Concrete. Precast concrete slabs have sped up building construction everywhere. The resulting conglomeration of concrete rectangles, similar in appearance to an A4 sheet of paper, cross the landscape, relentless: a logical invitation to the concrete poet. Wild varieties of graphic verse, in every type of type and calligraphic application, liven the humdrum greyness of miles of slab. All of it free of charge to the company. Concrete poets take advantage of the disadvantages of this building material. To begin with, concrete is very expensive, replacement unthinkable. By coating the surface with polychromatic Baroque lettering, the concrete poet protects the dull and vulnerable concrete, extending its life by several years. Badge bombing strengthens the initial layer against sun and shower, an ornament to the industrial wasteland into which it speaks, as with multi-coloured tongues. Then concrete has a high compression strength, but a weak tensile strength. Concrete poets gibe at this temporality, often drawing cracks and chips into their overnight sensations as a gestural reminder that concrete walls, like their own most ardent efforts at attention, are not made to last. Concrete isn’t porous, another disadvantage that the poets turn to their advantage, brushing swathes of paint and spraying cans of colour over the smooth surface. In terms of speed, scale and level of detail, concrete is far superior to corrugated iron, which delivers optical confusion with its uncontrollable, interminable undulations, or the Melbourne paling fence, its textures porous and getting porouser, its timber shades spoiling the instant effects of a blank background. Unporous steadies the holding agents, beaming a chorus of diversity. Finally, concrete has the unhappy reputation of being unaesthetically pleasing. Concrete aficionados are divided as to the architectural beauty of the material. Snobs find pleasure in Soviet brutalism while land developers have a whole dictionary of laudatory words for every occasion, but public opinion wavers. Concrete poets, themselves aficionados if not for those reasons, find benefits to the underwhelming ordinariness of concrete. For them it is the opportunity to take up a fresh canvas, readymade and promising a constant viewership, that cannot begin to contain their unintelligible, gnomic poems. Much as references explain concrete poetry as a modernist version of shaped poetry, actually concrete poetry is old as Antiquity. Those earliest scratchings on city walls, those names for posterity that could be anyone in time, those tags against the forces of nature, those singular signatures – they fit the definition of concrete poem: “An arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance.”

Crew

 

Seminar on Street Art 1: Crew. ‘World’ and ‘Cola’ are names 20 feet high applied to large billboards and warehouse walls, paint dribbling at time to affect haze or Pollock, throughout the inner city. The actual World and Cola constitute a crew, their crew name the well-nigh universal WLS. The meaning of this set of letters is elusive to the uninitiated, which is most of the Melbourne population. Travellers who leave their phones in their pockets may spend quality reading time following the fortunes of World and Cola through cuttings, along vacant lots, under overpasses for miles. Or other crews that have taken a grip of available spaces with their nominated handle. Crews become recognisable as such by the sheer diversity of their art, WLS for example being presented in everything from ornate variegated two-storey calligraphy to inscrutable hardline block bubbles to irascible underlined logo bombs and dumb old badges of largely indifferent quality. Whoever they are on the Australian Census papers, World and Cola are amongst the most prolific and immediate artists that Melburnians get to see every day of the week. They enjoy the same notoriety as Pam the Bird, a graphic figure with beak and large eyes that adorns freeway signs, industrial estates and disused railway carriages across the western suburbs. Pam the Bird is often accompanied by the bold letters MP, which stand for the enigmatic message ‘Milk Please’. This in-joke hints at the idea Pam the Bird is a crew, that and the immense variety of art styles in which she is made manifest, however graf blogs still believe she is the product of one (very overworked) single-line roller grafittist, a lone hand, a rare bird. The term for this kind of romantic visionary is a king. Kings are happy to do their own thing with their lettered identity. They are only rarely lone wolves, because kings are in the business of making spraycan statements to get the attention of other street artists. Kings send coded messages using their distinctive acronyms or sets of initials to other kings, using the public surfaces of Melbourne as their writing paper. Pam the Bird possibly started out as a king but is now feral, or at the very least out of her/their tree. Seeing and being seen is one of the driving characteristics of kings, the crown frequently being a feature of their wild emblems, paint whirling through time to affect regal haloes or Basquiat. Crews and kings make the running, tending to regard newcomers to badging by the patronising term toy. Toys are okay, but they are like schoolboys who cut their initials in a desktop, leaving a mark. Toys deliver low grade product, poorly formed and not thought through. Chances are most toys are chancers who ruin a good fence with their inferior tags. They lower the standard of the neighbourhood and give a bad name to the real thing.

Illumination

 

The writing life requires great belief. Weather can be an obstacle. Weather may even be used as an excuse to avoid writing. Onset of rain makes walls damp. The writer must brave the elements in what they’re standing up in, if they are to find a clean dry surface. The primary interest, to make a significant contribution, overrides such concerns. Writing asks for application of thought. A writer works with whatever materials are to hand. Corrugations are a creative challenge for some, for others an intolerable hindrance to free expression. Weed-decorated brickwork does not offer the best field for a writer’s personal data. As we know, writing is a person’s signature, their gesture in language to an unknowing world. In this case, the writing generally is the signature alone, commonly initials or an original pseudonym rendered with such unique particularity as to be recognisable but to themselves and their fellow writers. They may gloat and laugh at their handiwork. Sentences are not encouraged in writing. Sentences take too long. Although sentences may turn into slogans or mottoes, they may also draw the uninvited readership of the constabulary. Writing need not go from left to right only. Every surface, large or small, may be entered from any direction and exited likewise. Writing upside down from the rooftop of a ten-storey building is not encouraged, nor can it be stopped. Such foolhardy enthusiasm in the name of a signature is not for everyone. Nor is writing for everyone. Some people prefer illumination. Here are some guidelines. The illuminator has a noble air. Maintaining this noble air is important, even when it gets tiring. Take an unlined book into high density areas for writing. Illumination is passive artform, affirmative action, research calligraphy, reader response. The illuminator finds an ideal window seat on public transport vehicles. They view the writing at a raised level. Complaints about weather conditions are obviated. Time is of the essence as writing rushes past at the whim of driver and traffic. This means choosing writing quickly as it hoves into sight. Note literally both the main flourishes and as many finer details as time permits. Practice makes perfect; the novice works best by training at tram stops and railway stations. Once the vehicle has moved on, the illuminator may fill in the writing with colour, rounding the arcs and thickening the strokes. Al fresco is always available, nevertheless. Illuminators enter back lanes with sharpie pen and drawing book. Some of the most meticulous writing is there for illumination. Critics rubbish this work as ‘cannibalisation’ of writing, and suchlike jargon. Their arrant bosh may be nobly overlooked. It may be sprayed against a hoarding, then copied into the illuminator’s workshop book with a Smiggle colour change pen.  

Graffiti (March)

[Found Poem: Rick Koenig, January 2017] A group of fed-up Banyule residents has banded together to tackle graffiti vandals, who they say are defacing the area, lowering property prices and making older residents feel unsafe. The group founder wants council to hold taggers accountable. Banyule’s management strategy includes funding for deterrence, the provision of legal street murals and community art projects. But the strategy fails as “the allure of graffiti is that they’re doing it as a middle finger to authority.” The Mayor said the council had used extra funding to tackle graffiti-riddled areas including Olympic Village… [Philip Harvey, March]

'Heidelberg Leader', Tuesday January 17, 2017, front page: 'Clean up our streets : new group calls on council to get tough on graffiti vandals'.