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<strong>TERRAIN</strong>, <strong>nine</strong><br />
(photographs and haiku)
This is the ninth volume of <strong>TERRAIN</strong>,<br />
an ongoing collaboration between two artists,<br />
featuring Ka-sing’s photographs and<br />
Gary’s haiku in response.
Barbaric Yawp*<br />
the split opens the tree<br />
to trashy readings: the Pac-Man<br />
maw, the “Anguished Face” emoji<br />
*”I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,<br />
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”<br />
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1892
Unsaved Remnant<br />
the anguish of the less than whole<br />
wood without the tree<br />
the anti-prosthesis, the not-belonging
Crater Violet*<br />
A foreskinned crater,<br />
the ghost<br />
of a wooden volcano<br />
* a deplorable but for me irresistible pun<br />
on “Prater Violet,” the title of Christopher<br />
Isherwood’s 1945 novel about filmmaking.
Let It Come Down*<br />
the armouring bark<br />
the exposed wood flesh<br />
the sky getting closer<br />
*The title of a 1952 novel by American writer<br />
and composer Paul Bowles (1910-1999)
A Tree by any other Name<br />
Our decisions deceive us:<br />
bench, bridge, highway, runway<br />
there’s always a fallen tree
Mind-Forg’d Manacles*<br />
though bound only by cast shadows,<br />
the cut tree cannot consider<br />
any further move<br />
*The phrase is from the poem, “London” by<br />
William Blake (in his Songs of Experience, 1794).
Unstoppable<br />
the mother ship is stilled<br />
but an upstart pod<br />
peels off on a new mission
Tensegrity*<br />
monumental trunk<br />
like a Rodin<br />
like an eagle with furled wings<br />
* Tensional integrity is a structural principle (much explored by<br />
Buckmininster Fuller) based on a system of isolated components<br />
under compression inside a network of continuous tension.
Time Immemorial<br />
The clock at the foot<br />
of the tree reads ten-ten<br />
and will proclaim it always
Tree Trash<br />
A hollow tree trunk<br />
an Edward Weston pepper<br />
but brimming with natural refuse
Unheard Music<br />
striations like the palm of your hand<br />
though a violin may form<br />
around that sounding rent
The Anti-Lifeline<br />
the tree’s fascia<br />
is smooth and unblemished<br />
except for its rictus crack
A Cold Bier<br />
a cut tree’s bier<br />
with mourning leaves<br />
recalling the old days of lift
“The soul of an ancient bell goes<br />
back to a young tree.” *<br />
the soul of an ancient tree<br />
searches for a second use:<br />
perhaps a bench.<br />
* Victor Segalen, Pictures (London: Quartet Books,<br />
1991), p. 11.
Starting Over<br />
the tree is sheared away<br />
the fresh trunk opens to the sun<br />
this time it will be a flower
Chip Ahoy<br />
a bright chip<br />
sprightly as a canary<br />
powers up the dead tree
Angle of Incident<br />
Forest Management<br />
supports a two-tier<br />
system of felling
One-Way Street<br />
wood goes round and round<br />
like cream in coffee<br />
inner vectors can’t stop the spin
A Note from the Teacher(s)<br />
This hieratic tree was felled<br />
a thousand years ago<br />
by space sailors--who left a message
The Unkindest Cut of All<br />
The cut tree<br />
forgives the saw*<br />
but remembers the severance<br />
* See poet William Blake’s “The cut worm forgives<br />
the plow” from his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)
Lee Ka-sing 李 家 昇<br />
Ka-sing grew up in Hong Kong and has been living in Toronto, Canada since 1997.<br />
He was the co-founder of DISLOCATION (1992, with Lau Ching-ping and Holly<br />
Lee). In 1995, Ka-sing and Holly founded OP Print Program, covering a crosssection<br />
with original prints produced by Hong Kong contemporary photographers<br />
in the <strong>nine</strong>ties. Lee Ka-sing was awarded “Artist of the Year” (1989) by the Hong<br />
Kong Artists’ Guild, and he received the Fellowship for Artistic Development<br />
(1999) presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Selected<br />
monographs include “Thirty-one Photographs” (1993, Photo Art), “Forty Poems,<br />
Photographs 1995-98” (1998, Ocean & Pounds, Hong Kong Arts Development<br />
Council Publication Grant), “The Language of Fruits and Vegetables” (2004, Hong<br />
Kong Heritage Museum), “De ci de là des choses” (2006, Editions You-Feng),<br />
and “Time Machine” (2021, with haiku by Gary Michael Dault). Recent sequential<br />
photo works released in book form include “CODA” (2020), “Diary of a Sunflower<br />
Book Two” (2022), “Songs from the Acid-free Paper Box” (2022), and others. Lee<br />
Ka-sing’s work is held in private and public collections, as well as in museums<br />
such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, M+ Museum, Hong<br />
Kong Heritage Museum, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.<br />
Gary Michael Dault<br />
Having spent most of his professional life in Toronto, as a painter, university<br />
teacher and art critic (his visual arts column, Gallery-Going, ran in The Globe<br />
& Mail for fourteen years, a sojourn he now regards as essentially purgatorial),<br />
Gary Michael Dault lives with his wife, artist Malgorzata Wolak Dault and<br />
their seven cats, in a greatly cherished Victorian house (called Swan House<br />
because of the stained-glass swans bedecking it) in the town of Napanee in<br />
Eastern Ontario. Dault is the author of numerous magazine articles and gallery<br />
catalogues, as well as a dozen books about the visual arts. He has published<br />
ten volumes of poetry, and has written three television documentaries, all for<br />
the late Sir Peter Ustinov (the most ambitious of which was a 6-hour miniseries<br />
titled Peter Ustinov: Inside the Vatican). Dault has exhibited his own paintings<br />
many times, most recently at Verb Gallery in Kingston, Ontario. He has been<br />
contributing regularly to the online Monday ARTPOST for over a decade.