We present a quintet of poems from The Conversation, the new collaborative poetry collection by Jo Burns and Emily Cooper.
The Conversation imagines a conversation held between Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot, three of Picasso's lovers and subjects.
More often than not these figures were not named, but titled by their actions: weeping, reading, reclining. What Picasso wilfully obscured was the women behind these paintings: their lives and works, their relationships with him, their children and careers that were indelibly marked by their connection to a man considered to be one of the greatest artists of all time.
Watch: Conversations: Emily Cooper with Jo Burns
Dora Maar
The Years Lie in Wait For You
Marie-Thérèse, it is never good to surpass the Gods
We were taught that by Arachne
Whose weaving skills were surpassed
By none, not even Athena
Who ripped Arachne's tapestry to shreds
And took her hanging body
And made it small, forcing her to live
Threading tiny webs on bedroom walls
This is the punishment for hubris
It is wise to hide your golden cloth
For there are plenty who will trample it
We have learned well, the three of us
Not to stray too far from the shadow
There are lists compiled in darkened bars
Names like ours that fade fast in the light
A protector is a guardsman too
Better not to show yourself at all
Wear gloves with sharpened nails
Marie-Thérèse Walter
Femme Torero
Dora, I’m drawn like a moth
to symbols of bullfights, tragedies in three acts.
In etchings from the Vollard Suite,
I am astride a horse
and the horse is Olga.
He is the bull, of course, entranced
by me, toreador and impending downfall.
I twist through the etching, caught up
in a whirlwind and the horse is gaunt,
struggling to breathe through it all.
In the last tercio, or suprema suerte,
of a bullfight, the bull and matador face
each other at eye level, the horse now gone
and suddenly former lovers are suspended
in a death dance. The bull, dripping blood
from banderillas, is put into a trance
by a swinging cape of gold and red cloth.
Then comes the lance before the final scene,
as dramatic and brutal as the crucifixion.
Someday all my letters will be discovered
and my voice will be in exhibitions.
For now, the sword is unsheathed and I kill
and rewrite the bull that wanted to gore me.
Dora Maar
The Fallen Bull
As a penitent I have learned how to kneel
How to allow the pain to warm my thighs
I have watched the violence around me
The crashing of drums, the crowds
Clamouring for blood, for the last great fall
I have left it all for the quiet
The bonfires have shrunk into votives
I’ve exchanged the thunder of hooves
For the soft rain of my own bare feet
We knelt together as women owned
Tethered and untethered alike
The strings that bind us are silken threads
So beautiful at times that we admire them
For they catch the light and blind us
We are marked like photographic film
There is no way to undo it
We must learn together to value the marks
The beauty of damage is that it demonstrates
Proves we were here, shows the moments
Hung together on the gallery walls
Marie-Thérèse are you still alone?
I think of you and Maya all the time
Youth is bleached of trauma until
It is not anymore. I hope you have grown tired
Of kneeling and waiting at the door
Marie-Thérèse Walter
Dove, 1936
Dora, I’m still seventeen in my heart
blessed with my daughter and memories.
I couldn’t bear the small web that he left me,
waiting for visits on Rue La Boétie,
as our tapestry unravelled, thread by thread.
Vollard lent me his home full of doves
where I stayed with Maya until the start of war..
Pic kept writing, and sent me découpés
in paper. Doves with the monogram
MTP, the M drawn like two legs spread,
the T a body, the P the head.
Long after he met you, he sent a card
telling me how every birthday of mine
was a birth inside himself. I don’t regret
the fact that all I ever did was love,
nor the fact that I never stopped waiting.
But when I look at myself in a picture he took
on the beach, of me in a black bathing suit,
I see my strong nose and determined jaw,
athletic body, tanned and muscular,
at peace, my hair bleached white by sun.
I look like Helen of Troy.
I’m alone in the photo but I’m free,
holding a volleyball on the tips of my fingers,
a Greek goddess with the world in her hand.
That’s the image of me I’d prefer to throw over.
Dora Maar
La Plage
I keep revisiting the beach
In my mind. The sand reminds me
Of him, how warm and soft it was
How it gathered under the table
When we sat down in the evening
To drink wine with our friends
I used to feel young on those days
Reading under a parasol, him
Always shifting around, making
Temporary artwork, millions
Washed away by the tides
When I go now on my own
I never swim. Something stops me
Even though I am truly free
As you realise, Marie-Thérèse
You never really were
There’s something about living on
The days adding distance
I always wanted to be alone as a child
To be able to close my bedroom door
To the world, to my parents, to everyone
And now that I have managed it
The quietness around me expands
It is no longer two-dimensional
It fills the time. Each day it grows larger
I get further away from the beach
The memories have revealed themselves
As transient, smaller with each passing year
The photographs are fading under my bed
The parasol is long destroyed by winds
Or careless hands. My skin no longer tans
But I can feel the warmth of the sun
As I drink my coffee on the balcony
He is dead, Marie-Thérèse, he is dead.
The Conversation is published by Doire Press - find out more here.
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