Having recently moved to Totnes in South Devon, after eight lovely years of exploring Berkshire and the environs of Reading, I soon realised that it is impossible to stroll down Totnes high street without being magnetically drawn to almost every single shop window. Unlike most high streets in the UK, Totnes is unspoilt by chain stores and chain coffee shops and offers an impressive breadth of consumer experience against a backdrop of old-world charm. What is also noticeable is the art – predominantly local artists are given window space in all manner of venues, from high-end clothes boutiques and dinky art shops to old-school barber’s shops and even the local butcher’s. And this is how I discovered the work of Lucie Smailes. A casual glance into a shop window and it was love at first sight! Staring out at me through the glass was a doll lamp constructed of doll limbs attached with chains to a torso made of a black tin box. She had pretty plastic flowers in her hair, a perfect Barbie face and deliciously deformed arms and feet. It was a vision of cuteness entangled with the grotesque, an object of beauty dusted with horror. It was everything within the world of art that appeals to me aesthetically and academically. Casually glancing into the neighbouring shop window my heart skipped another beat – gazing upward my eyes fell upon a glittering chandelier made with hanging hand mirrors! I have always loved the image of a hand mirror. For me it is evocative of fairy tales, mermaids and miniature doll paraphernalia – a motif of the feminine, a symbol of narcissism and the allure of beauty. Then, glancing downward, I saw another hand mirror with a pair of chubby doll’s arms reaching outward from the glass – adorable.

I was so enamoured with the art and so surprised to find an artist who appears to share my passion for freakish, surreal doll art that I wrote down the artist’s contact details and set about researching her more. I was not disappointed. Her website was packed full of all manner of twisted taxidermy creations, assemblage art, doll art and pieces alluding to the weird, wonderful and perverse. What also excited me were the titles of her pieces – some sexually explicit, shockingly rude and tantalisingly controversial. Viewing her art alongside these daring titles created a unique kind of magic in my mind and I began to write poetry inspired by the descriptions of the artwork alongside the art itself. And once I started my pen didn’t stop. The poetry wrote itself, as though some invisible mind was concocting story and verse at just a cursory glance at a stuffed fox, doll-head arcade machine, box of plastic limbs or sexually explicit title.

A number of weeks later and I had an entire book’s worth of Lucie inspired poetry. It was a fantastic creative ride – all manner of thoughts and insights flooded my imagination…from the myth of Jesus to romantic encounters from my past, from feminist anguish to defence of the exquisite experience of femininity, from love and desire to the accompanying sorrows of loss and loneliness. And throughout it all lurks the enduring theme of childhood. I have always been aware of the psychoanalytic component of my writing – for we are all walking echoes of our infancy, doomed as adults to perpetually chase after or run from the shadows of our formative years. And that is what attracts me to Lucie’s art – the symbiotic interplay between the motifs of childhood and raw, adult sexuality – a Freudian fusion of fantasy, family and fear wrapped in fur or pouting cherry lips.

I love the wild freedom of writing – how the unrestricted manipulation of language can construct meaning from the mire of lived experience. And I love the added component of incorporating art and image. Ekphrastic poetry (a description of a work of art) can add a deeper dimension to the power of the written word – can create new interpretations of an image, and thus construct new and multiple meanings. For me Lucie’s artwork provides a rich smorgasbord of inspiration and I revelled in the process of closely examining her work whilst weaving poetic narratives on myriad themes. Sometimes the ‘story’ was predominantly title led, other times it was one object or one image that sparked an idea. But always the end aim was the same: to craft a poem that represented something meaningful or thought provoking achieved through an interplay of my own personal philosophies, battles and experiences together with the images in Lucie’s work.

Upon writing a complete set of poems I then decided to create a prototype for a book, which I then sent to Lucie, in the hopes that she would approve and possibly agree to working with me on future collaborative projects. To my delight she loved the concept of the book and following on from a quick introductory chat over coffee one sunny morning in Totnes, we have become good friends. The book is currently in the works and due out sometime in December. We are also in the preliminary stages of planning a pop-up exhibition in Totnes which will be a wonderful experience – hopefully my poetry adding an extra dimension to Lucie’s fantastical work. Thus far my new life in Devon has been fun in so many ways and surprisingly fruitful poetically.

For more information on the work of Lucie Smailes please visit her website: https://luciesmailes.wordpress.com/

For a sample of some of my Ekphrastic poetry please visit here.

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