A meeting of minds: poet Owen Lowery puts artist Paula Rego's work into words
“It’s marvellous. We come from different countries, but he knows instinctively what the pictures are about, when most people don’t.” That was renowned artist Dame Paula Rego’s reaction at the Poetry Library on Tuesday night to hearing Owen Lowery read from his new collection, Rego Retold – poems written in response to Rego’s works. Poems such as ‘Getting Ready for the Ball’, ‘Sit’, ‘Moth’, ‘Pieta’, ‘Love’, and ‘Departure’ were read by Lowery at the Poetry Library in quick succession, pausing only to take a few sips of water between each poem. The Lancashire-based poet and former judo champion was left paralysed from the shoulders at the age of 18 by an accident in the ring, and breathes with the help of a ventilator. It gives out a regular, discreet sigh in the background as he delivers each long poem with skilful timing, his delivery enabling the listener to savour lines and words such as “a tear and a flash of skin”, and “her cracked Pinocchio”.
He told Write Out Loud that it had taken “about a year” to put the poems together. At the end of the reading artists and poet greeted each other for the first time, and spent a long time in animated conversation. Rego, who was born in Portugal, studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, and and was an exhibiting member of the London Group with David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. Her style has evolved from abstract towards representational, and she has favoured pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects feminism, coloured by folk themes.
Lowery began writing poetry seven years ago. Before last night’s reading the Poetry Librarian, Chris McCabe, paid tribute to his “fantastic achievement” in completing such an “incredibly ambitious” project. Rego added that she felt that the poems in the book were “so alive. I’d never spoken to him at all. It’s amazing that he feels that way.”
Rego’s art has been described as enigmatic and ambiguous, rendering the sinister seductive and the grotesque beautiful; and Lowery’s response has been seen in one review as “far-sighted”, his poems acting “as an unusual form of art criticism, redirecting our focus”. Rego Retold is a stunningly beautiful book, produced with the aid of the Arts Council, and on sale for a remarkably reasonable price from Carcanet. Lowery’s first collection is Otherwise Unchanged, also published by Carcanet.
Visitors to the Poetry Library at London’s Southbank Centre can find out more at an exhibition about Rego Retold at the library until 3 May.
PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE OUT LOUD
