Writing ritual
Apprentice to a weaver, he/she composes on the fly, to the rhythm of the shuttle. These texts are woven into the border patterns of large tapestries, mysterious meditations, destined to hang in noble halls, undeciphered. At night, dressed as a delivery man, the poet sneaks into Paris drinking establishments, to recite poetry of forbidden love in trade for wine and song.
- s/he composes texts in the borders of tapestries %
- portmanteau-style mashups, code-like, à la Mezangelle %
#jaq – Jaquilin
French weaver, adventurer, crossdresses as male
- His organized writing desk looks out over formal gardens %
- orderly, Oulipean writing style, unrhymed couplets %
#rog – Roger
French baron on his estate outside Paris; voyeur of the world from his towerWriting ritual
Obsessively organized, his writing desk looks out over his formal gardens. Servants sharpen his quill and refill his oak gall ink made from the grove at the nunnery nearby. It is there that he spies on a young novice, the object of unrequited affections. The Baron writes on the most advanced technology, a bound codex of parchment and pigskin?
- pens her poéstry in her invisible mother's milk %
- relies on noble cognates, traditional styles %
#phi – Philippa
English noblewoman kept in a castle towerWriting ritual
Her newborn child has been removed to a wet nurse, so she writes surrounded by ladies in waiting who hold a chalice beneath her breast as she expresses milk into the cup. This mother’s milk is the invisible ink she pens her poéstry in… revealed only by running a candle beneath the parchment… her long scroll of longing.
- scrawls weepy poestry in blood on silk from Damascus %
- writes subjects from the battlefield and gutter %
#guy – Guy
Troubled English knight, fled from Crusades with post traumatic stressWriting Ritual
Paralyzed with depression, he must consume large quantities of mead until he rambles from political diatribe into weepy yearnings for a maiden he glimpsed in a Holy Land courtyard. He scrawls his drunken poetry in blood onto scraps of silk brought back from Damascus.