'By way of cautious touches' by Sue Rainsford.

b y w a y o f c a u t i o u s t o u c h e s S u e

R a i n s f o r d

A text in response to: Scapes; Rose Quartz, Barbara Knežević 1

b y w a y o f c a u t i o u s t o u c h e s S u e

R a i n s f o r d

A text in response to: Scapes; Rose Quartz, Barbara Knežević

by way of cautious touches

Sue Rainsford

citrine rose quartz

slake

luster

shine

strip of linen

I stepped outside the better to feel the rain and said

D r i n k

u p

w h a t

has been transmuted or cast into amber, agate or opal.

H a v e

y o u

c o m e

t o

q u e n c h

m e?

Now I’ve had my first sip from a cosmic body and my stomach is lined with its coarse detritus.

But though my lips had parted there was no new moisture in my mouth.

I knew then I had come into a new thirst.

I

have

come

u n t e t h e r e d,

endowed with a mineral of almost eternal endurance.

Standing in the rain that was not rain. That was another kind of dampness.

I had opened another mouth, had tipped another cup.

I would have been living my life differently had I known thirst didn’t belong to the muscle sitting limp in my mouth, b u t

n o w

i s

t he

t i

m

e

t

o

d r

i

n k

all that had once been juice, sap and delicate vegetable fiber.

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by way of cautious touches

Sue Rainsford

gamet

jasper

small shard

under lounge rock the body

electric

I had a vision which struck me like fire, a hot current that took a deviant turn and left me with such bright sight: my eyes replenished.

I

a

m

storm

s

t

e

i n t

p o

p a

i

n

g

n

o

w

n e w

iteration: Now, when I see my face in any surface

a path to ecstasy and a means of communication with the Real World.

it is always exactly as I expect it to be, or at least that image’s likeness, its kin or partial parallel.

Now I know I never owned anything at all, it was just that certain things had spent longer than others beside me.

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by way of cautious touches

Sue Rainsford

earth bloodstone

obsidian

pint of milk

drink without pause

Old body of mine which had for so long been a heap of misfires, a cut wire glitching.

Out of the dark of the stone has come a composite star and the work now is to measure its arc: a gleaming crescent threaded with fracture.

under pillow

sponge

When a droplet has been some thousand times distilled and the light comes bending through r e f

r

a c t e d is it still light?

Or some other particular radiant to a new degree?

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by way of cautious touches

Sue Rainsford

old veil convex

opal agate

of molecule concave

I know the toll I take on any given space.

I know because I have let go of the future.

Its outcomes, its possible variations and a medley of other nodules free of all rhythm.

Even a granule accelerating is sufficient to create the whirring blur of motion: it is one of

I have come now to a new birth.

two systems...trying to get to know one another by cautious touches.

It is the birth of all flesh irrigated by a liquid.

The other is stasis: stillness.

I am living in a reverie and

Equipoise.

it is a recurrent inhalation.

I now know the exact ripple of emotion across my face.

I know, too, what my body would look like if suddenly distorted by water.

I know how I would look to myself through a wall of pungent smoke.

I am born to another name and the birth is still taking place.

My old husk of a body is behind me, staggering toward this new alignment.

Ever onward, ongoing breach inside of which there is always another newer relation.

My torso is a crystal’s interior: both are in a state of ceaseless refraction.

At any moment you can reach out, deflect and scatter the light— *

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Roger Caillois, The Writing of Stones, 1970.

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About Roscommon Arts Centre's Visual Art Writer In Residence

by way of cautious touches

Visual Art Writer’s Sue Rainsford and Joanne Laws are the Roscommon Arts Centre’s Visual Art Writer’s in Residence for 2020. During this time, Joanne & Sue are invited to write critical texts on selected exhibitions and projects happening across the county. The intention of this residency is to allow writers to experiment with their writing style and explore new ways of disseminating their work. Their writings will be available at Roscommon Arts Centre and online as they are published.

Sue Rainsford is a fiction and arts writer. Her practice is concerned with hybrid, lyric and embodied texts, explicit fusions of critical and corporeal inquiry, as well as with questions of transcription and otherness. She is a recipient of the VAI/DCC Art Writing Award, the Arts Council Literature Bursary Award and a MacDowell Fellowship. Her debut novel Follow Me To Ground received the Kate O’Brien Award and and was long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Award. Her second novel, Redder Days, is forthcoming with Doubleday in March 2021.

Barbara Knežević is an Australian born artist living and working in Dublin. Her work is primarily object based and sculptural in form, appearing as complex, networked aggregations of objects and digital moving images. Recent exhibitions include Immurement, STATION Gallery Melbourne; Lithophone, Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin; The Last Thing on Earth, MAC, Belfast; Exquisite Tempo Sector, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin; City Agents, EKKM, Tallinn; Gallery Augusta, Helsinki. In 2021 she will present a solo exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin.

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Sue Rainsford

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