Object as Muse

Our Hampshire Poet for the National Year of Reading, Alison Orlowska, has responded to the Object as Muse exhibition at the Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre with the following poem.

This thought provoking exhibition explored differing responses, using a single object – a dress. Responses presented were from a range of creative disciplines, including photography, installation, ceramics and poetry. The exhibition runs from 8 August – 19 October.

Watch Alison Orlowska read Changing Room

Changing Room

This dress takes care of me,
cushioning, folding up frailty.
Duvet to hang around my neck,
hand-me-down swooning,
lower me gently to sleep safely
hiding in your feather puffery.
Swaddle me.
Buffer me.

My dress has a neckline
to be drawn tight to the throat
and tethers my arms to its sides.
Ribbony tapes stitch wrists to fabric.
I wear it in private to stop bits of me
flying apart; you’re holding me in.
Hoarding me.
According me

approval.

As it sways heavy, silent,
at my ankles, swings with a will of its own,
I wonder can it trip me, trim me down,
sizing me to the measure of itself?
I am human and remember my scars,
but they only remember themselves.
The dress won’t let them forget.

I am more; more than my bruises,
my dislocations, and I crave curing,
quickening from a deeper source.
And this, after, all is only a garment.
Untie me.
Uncry me.