THE STORIES WE TELL
At every Tickbird&Rhino event there are so many conversations taking place and great ideas being shared that it would be nearly impossible for us cover everything that happens.
But we also think that telling the story of our experiences is important, and the unique way in which we tell them is just as important as the stories themselves.
The poet Paul Taylor is a regular attendee of our events and since he's a master at capturing the mood of a room in words, we thought we'd offer you an alternative view of what happens when a Tickbird&Rhino crowd gathers together.
Below you'll find a selection of Paul's poems that have been inspired by our lively events.
Along with poetry, Paul is also a jazz trombonist and he's got a lot of great things going on, so if you'd like to find out more about him, his poetry and his performance, visit his site: trombonepoetry.com
LETTER TO MY MUM:
Memory And Aphantasia
The Devereux Pub, London
Nov 18, 2024
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POSTCARD FROM HER MUM
there they wait
layered and compressed
like flowers in a book
stacked in a suitcase
all the pictures
that cannot come to mind
that must be seen
to be re-lived
that re-ignite Persian summers
the perfumes of love
the warmth of Mum
the chimes of kitchen chat
the large print
laid like a mat
in the gentle garden
photographic longing
layers of seeds and writing
shawling her image
choosing what to see
learning how to look
feeling home again
relating and reframing
the lost and found
in the dark room of her memory.
EAT ME DON'T EAT ME:
Sounds From The Nightshade Family
The Devereux Pub, London
Oct 22, 2024
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LEAF MOULD MANIA
new species of biophilia
transcribing trees
in lieu of a hug
trunk stab lullabies
xylem ventriloquy
in atonal recital
adaptogenic listening
to leaf wave mood music
encultured into holy tinkle
five-petal formalism
casting mandrake spells
with the Devil's Trumpet
jimson weed delirium
carnatic manoeuvres under
bioelectric fall sensors
hallucinating healing
from organic harmonies
of goatskin and catgut
Madagascan periwinkles ask
do aubergines dream
of electric people?
Green Onions poke
through the floor
from the bar below.
HANDSTANDS IN UNCERTAINTY:
Acrobatics Meets the Quantum World
The Devereux Pub, London
May 21, 2024
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STAND
red and blue lasers
ping and shimmer
through disorderly glass
electrons liberated
to propagate
filigree harps and scapulas
flicker and weave
caustic junctions
holographing the pub ceiling
with elementary catastrophes
a triangulate cobweb spider
invited to run
Blackpool Illuminations
omega thigh legwork
spin and momenta
the slow rotation
of available observables
hardwork handstands
imported to mathematical software
determinations of inverted acrobat
aloft on a column of arm
motion recognizer
deciding to freeze
after bleeped out
glitch thud glut beat
electronica replaced
trad big top music
clowns hidden deep
inside resolutely closed
square brackets
then Isadora volatility
flings her equations
across the screen
contemporary dance calculus
perhaps for giraffes
the only non-swimming mammals
bouncing voronoi across the pool
when Isadora not adorée
bitter pint enlightenments
wine glass caustics
recalling the days
when catastrophe theory
caught the limelight
striving now
for that all-too-brief
moment of recognition
in attosecond science.
SOUNDS LIKE CANCER:
Experiments in Sonic Life Writing
The Horse Hospital, London
March 19, 2024
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SOUNDS OF LIFE
here we sit then
in a twilight corner
primed and prompted
by posters and vitrines
Albert Hall of fame
Ginsberg memorabilia
though not nudged
to parade naked
such a thing being
according to disgruntled Beatles
not done in front of the birds
sitting in darkness
in the old horse hospital
co-listening
hoping to hear the right message
contemplating apoptosis
at ten million cell deaths per second
phagocytes tuning in to
find me and eat me signalling
death ligands and falling blebs
on the extrinsic death receptor pathway
tickled pink with cancer cartoonery
Krankenhausfunk hospital radiation
drip feed speech
desert ailing discs
sonic minings and undermoanings
gayatri mantra blinking at
Ginsberg's Kodak mantra
oncology gardening
physicked by botany
leaf-wound bootlegs
plant rhythm sections
transcribed bio-electrics
for wound-healing audio
sonification of the spud's
poke me and eat me signalling
musical migrations with
the Madagascan pink periwinkle
being electrical
being soothed.
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NAVIGATING THE "NOT YET":
Anticipating the future through AI
The Devereux Pub, London
January 23, 2024
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NOT YET AND YET
tumbled into it
staring into the vid
bereft of frames
like old Teddy West's biology class
as he silently chalks a diagram
and we meekly sketch
for no good reason
a map of the college plumbing
what do we have here
the artifices of indulgence
intertriggerings of digerati
scatter flutter ensembles
haemorrhoidal polaroids
45 degree tumbleweed
videos like failed dreams
the architecture of nausea
luckily we are joined
by Bia the dog
hot on the trail
of digital footprints
ears pricking
as bird calls dance in data sets
lamenting in latent space
with ghostly signalling
we try to focus
feeling very diffracted
then up pops Bruno Latour
a temporal artefact
if ever there was one
while under the table
Bia mumbles something
gives me a nudge
giving thanks
for the unknown provenance
of unknown providence
we chew over a rhizome
fuelling our flexing
of infovasculature
overcoming lossy compression
with recursive processing
we contemplate
implied consent
promptly engineered with
implied contempt
read the farcebook phrasebook
move fast and break things
a slogan well-received
Bia's tail a blur.
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TASTING TYPE: Adventures in Perception
The Devereux Pub, London
November 27th, 2023
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X-HEIGHTMENT
a chilly Monday evening
loping through lawyerland
tracking down
The Ampersand Arms
where eager ascenders
would find a bookless book club
set up as a fontfest
a typosensorium
betwixt the temples
here we would discover
if our experience
would be congruent
with our anticipation
as the slides duly showed
enabling font ratings
and type rightings
we strived to distinguish
implied limbic meaning from
implied social meaning
while the dingbats below us
pounded a pub quiz
through the floorboards
further enabling us
to judge a pub by its signs
of impaired social meaning
tabulating the superadditivity
of shop-front semiotics
and the marginal gains
of Lord Font-le-roi
we absorbed the cranking alignments
of outspoken characters
putting a boldface on it
I ventured to point out
that claims of constructed realities
were not justified
and might even
in this old Grecian Coffee House
be greeking
it seemed doubtful too
that Sapir and Whorf
merited a raised cap
but the dim remains
of a drawn-out pint
were raised for Erving Goffman
before we headed off
to face the codes.
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EPHEMERAL TRANSFORMATIONS II
The Horse Hospital
October 23rd, 2019
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GENE GENIE
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across the cobbles
we slip out of rain
descending the ramp
by invitation
into the old horse hospital
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by invitation
a virus enters a computer
a virus entails a computation
sounding out its own designs
bleak waves hover and waver
over the rumble of RNA gongs
as we sit in darkness
pondering the sound trails
for cellular disruption
unfolding and ramifying
in an endless knell
tendrils of trouble
winding out in steel pan demonium
in snapshots along the lines
of ordered elements
in this organic system
we may try to predict variations
as we sit in darkness
feel a frown become a smile
a fidget become scribble
a stoop turn into a sip
focus mutate into daydreams
at any location
along the sequence
this may turn into that
timeline positions
shuffle spatial relations
our internal melodies
beating against noise
seeking solace in the tree of life
from Brazilian flu.
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PLASTIC FANTASTIC?
The Gladstone Arms
June 10th, 2019
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AMBER MANAGEMENT
as the light dimmed
we saw them
simulating body tissue
spinning protons
calibrating voxels
murdering ants on the doorstep
phantoms
levitating balls of chrome
secreting pineapple slices
in Archimedean solids
of paraffin wax
in the early phase
of sticky darkening
sugariness and degradation
we remained moulded in
plastic denial syndrome
decoupling from fossil feedstocks
as the ethanol kicked in
we were soon seeing triple
aloft in a Boeing Dreamliner
worth half its weight in plastic
we enjoy
a vinegar whiff
of foam crumble
in coconut oil
resplendent in cellulose nitrate
we recycle Cunard crockery
for deep sea dining
on fish outnumbered
by their own plastic ghosts
there in the museum
there in some unfathomable
double bond formation
Bendy Bunny Benjy
in his tailored suit
declines in a yellowing blow chair
his oxidized ear footloose
in plasticizer migration
unsettled by the twirling
casein knitting needles
of Larry the Lamb
ruing the bright lights of showbiz
warping and cracking
in delambination
and so we shape up
to polymerize our solidarities
for the multidimensional printing of
a cyclic economy
cartoon idealizations
a cyclic economy
fairphone mobilizations
a cyclic economy
the right to repair
a cyclic economy.
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PERFECT STORMS
The Gladstone Arms
November 3rd, 2018
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TIDINGS
upstairs at The Glad
shuffling into a little room
at the last minute
for a colloquy on complexity
we learn that
we are self-organized
into a super-confined space
and relieved to find seats
though we are unable
from the front row
to detect at this gathering
any coupling in compound systems
at the back there
as we ponder
the physics of failure
pints are plonked
next to a magic box
projecting the past
onto the wall
adjusting our focus as we go
we reel
from exploding spaceships
to the mysterious diffusion
of horse meat
across a bewildered Europe
where herded boffins
saddled with responsibility
parade box files of expertise
along a horse-shoe table
plagued by politics
and the choke-holds of commerce
our systems raise alarm
averse to dirt & dexterity
our de-skilled fingers
flit & fumble
on touch-screen toys
future generations
good luck permitting
may look back fondly
on the flightless hordes
ploughing runways for runner beans
or the Russian bikers
testing to destruction
the just-in-time system
losing to beta particles
on a chase through Chernobyl
what is it we need?
resilience & diligence
fail-safes & futured thinking
rationality
to re-cognize
the meaning of mistakes
the errors of our ways
unsure of science any more
the tickbird wonders
if she's backing the wrong horse
our answer must be
a wry no.
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SIMPLE SOCIAL NO. 2
The Islington Townhouse
June 1st, 2018
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LUFT
For Dr Giles Camplin
the pub a box of cackle
and canned music
our eyes roll skyward
our bubbles of speech
turn to balloons
I wonder out loud
about a forgotten firm
would-be airship freighters
at the turn of the century
the new face and old hand
knows first-hand
elucidates a Teutonic tale
of buoyancy & defeat
a project making Fuller fly again
sponsoring Your Private Sky
a conference for all of us
flying the flag
for Buckminster Fuller
decades of designs
geometrical journeyings
the poetry of form
the formation of livingry
technics & synergetics
summarized & annotated
celebrated there & then
by the late great Steve Lacy
on soprano saxophone
and so we rose above it all
with dirigibles
with cloud structures
till the time came
to drift away.
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SEE/SENSE
The Wheatsheaf
April 16, 2018
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WHEAT SHEET
Sarah Christie shares
the fruits of research
Professor Lemon says
ten times more data flows
from hand to brain
than heads from skull to fist
how do we feel about that?
from Thomas Couture
a picture of ill-health
Harlequin wails at the wall
Pierrot lies ill in bed
the good doctor
blinded by science
absently takes his pulse
the charlady stoops
but not to concur
as he stares blankly at the empties
ignoring the lobster
Sarah's doctors slow down sight
drawing conclusions from palpable pappules
feeling their way to ceramic sensibilities
in a bag of darkness
being patiently observant
being patiently
Jag Minhas journeyed
all the way from astrophysics
offering black-boxed visions
of the squared smile
force-fed
with the inane rictuses of celebrities
his neural networks
aggregate our grins
charting happy space
a building being
as Corbusier didn't say
a machine for laughing in
bowing to beams
the wit chief presides
red box tick box
touchy issues
leaded windows
loaded wonders
retail beach head
resting bitch face
valence & arousal
the tenderness of robots
taking the family out
on a driverless drive
is that my Mum in a Packard?
and is she pleased to see me?
how your big smiley face
can get stuffed
at a big mac kiosk
with no side order of shame
meanwhile the motion detector
shows Dad sloping off
destination clocked
by a potion detector
the tickbird has heard enough
there sits the rhino in the room
ignoring the lobster.
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SIMPLE SOCIAL NO. 1
The Islington Townhouse
Friday, March 09, 2018
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TALK OF THE TOWNHOUSE
engaging with the engaging
tapping creativities
we tunnel through noise
conversations paired and impaired
by compulsory muzak
Andrea? Angela?
Chinese whispers
without the whispering
is medical practice
enhanced by pottering?
Jenny? Genghis?
scattering references
Sinking Fast In Snow
Thinking Faster, Sloth
The Inner Game of Tennyson
The Tipping Pint
money talk
with the man raising funds
Arthur? Athol?
for the British Art Foundation
fighting the pain and misery
we and our families endure
when it plays up
when it fails.