AN INTRODUCTION TO OFF_CENTRE
AN INTRODUCTION TO OFF_CENTRE
AN INTRODUCTION TO OFF_CENTRE
JORDAN HAYWARD
from Song for Disaffection
(2021)
All these years spent learning to describe
and now nothing.
There’s only so many synonyms for glumness,
so many vowels to yell.
Most immediately:
a tumbleweed, obviously,
bumbling down the aisles — fresh fruit,
frozen desserts, household cleaning —
clambering shelves in search of a reasonably priced metaphor,
a bundle of similes. O, your honeyed voice,
your eyes like washed grapes, like seville oranges
simmering in their own glow. Your skin
pink as raw minced beef — O, anaemic radiance.
What’s more real
than a feeling?
this lonesome feeling
specifically
creatively shopping
my fabrics
in an all-night deli
pushing a rusted trolley
actually trudging
leaning for support
attempting a stumble
as if midway through
an artful wade
in some man-made river
of sunflower spread
ABOUT THE WORK
The following three movements of music, An Artful Wade, Honeyed Voice, and Anaemic Radiance were created using MIDI generated by Jan Willem Kolkman’s Langorhythm 2.0 and an excerpt from my long poem, Song for Disaffection. The program uses a text input, in this case my poetry, and generates MIDI by assigning a note value to each letter, note length to use of vowels, chords per sentence by sentence length, and other parameters denoting scale, chord placement, etc.
Using the MIDI file, I arranged the music using various software synthesisers in the tradition of artists like Brian Eno and William Basinski, to create a situational piece of ambient music, which I hope will be listened to while you, the listener, go about your weekly shop. The melody of the piece, to me at least, feels reminiscent of those harsh, dentist-like lights often found in supermarkets. High frequency, washed out.
This sound and association, whether a wondrous coincidence or tenuous clutching at straws by myself, is a natural accompaniment to you, bumbling down the aisles, trudging, clambering the shelves.
BIO
Jordan Hayward is a poet and musician based in Manchester, UK.
His work has appeared in various journals, and was awarded the Brian Woodstream Prize for Poetry at the University of Manchester for his long poem Song for Disaffection. His debut pamphlet of unpublishable poems, a literary powerhouse, will be published by PINK in 2021.
He can be found @totoafricaremix.