Hilda Sheehan Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“I spend a lot of time trying to work things out only to find that I can’t work things out - there’s weird stuff everywhere so we may as well simplify it to bring about some clarity. The world is brutal and careless. What fascinates me is the challenge of normalising fantastical ideas and Frances and Martine gave me a dialogue to explore that.
Daniil Kharm’s poem, Falling Old Ladies, is a favourite – there’s something fascinating and wrong about this idea. I still don’t know what really happened there, at the end. Did he buy a rug? I’m not sure, which is why I love it. Things happen over and over again, we never learn. Robert Vas Dias helped me find a way to my own angels of absurdity. Simple conversations in the domestic, a garden with an angel in it that might like a cuppa - For me, Frances and Martine are my own way of addressing everything I can’t work out. Why things suddenly land upon us - there are no answers - only wonder!” —Hilda Sheehan
The Storage Unit
Frances, I have moved my final marriage contents into one of those Big Yellow Cupboards- it means all my life can be activated by a pin code and is individually alarmed if I call for help in my loneliness of old books and expired National Trust cards.
Like a panic room?
Yes, with 24/7 externally monitored CCTV and staff are on site seven days a week during trading hours.
Sounds like a psychiatric unit. Is it a psychiatric unit?
No, it’s a storage unit with fire and smoke detection systems.
Are you planning a cry for help using fire and smoke Martine?
No, Frances, I’m just moving into a storage unit, cheaper than a flat and with all my home comforts in a modern purpose-built store this side of Bristol.
There are no windows Martine and you can’t lock it from the inside. What about your other storage unit neighbours? Will they intrude on your new uneventful life of stacked cushions and flat-packed love letters?
They’ll never know I’m there. I’m taking my funeral arrangements and a well-chosen coffin.
Sewing Machines
If you take six sewing machines and then times them by themselves you end up with many more sewing machines than when you started. Keep timesing the sewing machines - it looks like a kaleidoscope. The world is then over-populated with stitches. Imagine how many stitches each machine can create and the things it stitches together by mistake. This is the world of reproduction - the noise of stitching is unbearable once those machines all get together in say a warehouse. Listen, Martine. Listen.
The Gifts
Can you put into words what I’m looking for in my new man, he’s rather confused by my meandering emotions, my proclamation of need.
Ask for the 24 Preludes of Chopin, nothing less, Frances. This should add some clarity.
And if I have such high demand, what do I give in return?
The three Sonatines by Ravel, of course.
Is it a fair swap? Will he not be giving more than me Martine? And am I up to giving three whole Sonatines?
You could try asking for the 4th Ballad of Chopin, all the energy of the Preludes plus more depression. He’d be a lot more placated.
Socks
For Kim Moore
If you were a pair of socks Martine, would you display yourself in dirty little piles about this room, sitting about with other dirty socks failing to reach the wash basket in such a demonstration of filthy deeds? How long would you hang about with such vagrant items, itching and holing around, the muck of you an irritant to those who love and care for your well-being, those who share your foul spaces, cluttered moments, inconsiderate escapades of slattery? If you were a pair of socks would this behaviour continue, or would you strumpet and slurf your dirty way to the wash basket with a face like Desdemona in her final moments, waiting for Othello to forgive her in that last leap to the basket, the denial of your love for other dirty socks. O Martine! I can not walk by. This makes men mad, it is the very error of the moon.
O Frances, a guiltless death I die.
Art
Your art is very beautiful today Martine - not an I in sight. I terribly approve. But where am I?
Here, next to the window - I am praying you don’t fall out of it? Please don’t take another step.
It’s out of my control now you’ve characterised me in the sunset. If I step, I step.
You are tied to a tree in the forest by lyric poets, those bastards. You’ll not stop me from there.
I’ll untie myself and denounce all lyric poets!
Too late. The art of this forest is so full of lyric poets, there are more poets of this type than branches!
A forest loves a lyric.
Ha ha - the branch-ness of the branch they know the meaning of.
If I were me I’d leap into the torrent, but this is art, we are all left wondering what happens next.
Hilda Sheehan has published The Night My Sister Went to Hollywood (Cultured Llama Press, 2013), a chapbook of prose poems, Frances and Martine (Dancing Girl, 2014) and The God Baby (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). Her work has featured in such places as Tears in the Fence and Shearsman magazine. She was Director of Poetry Swindon Festival and editor of Domestic Cherry. Since 2019 she has been a primary school teacher at the European School, Luxembourg.
