Cantos-Thinking Vessels 2023 is part one of a text-based artwork which uses visual art notebooks collected between 2019 and 2023 as found text, reframed and rewritten in the style of The Cantos of Ezra Pound as an epic, non-rhyming, stream-of-consciousness, prose poem, where unmediated inner thought processes are exposed as a kind of self-portrait, exploring ideas about the act of creating, aesthetics, art, painting, expression, being, politics and representation through times of inspiration self-doubt and trauma. Cantos-Thinking Vessels traces ideas through the development of the Vessels project, which was started as a dialogue with poet Derek Mahon and continued after he died in 2020. This work is conceived as a visual written document and comprises short paragraphs, sentences, lists and quotes. The idea for this work came about after reading Uncreative Writing by Kenneth Goldsmith, who introduced me to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. It is 8,200 words (56 pages).

This project was supported by an Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award 2022

Also see Artwork Vessels (parts 1 & 2) 2019-22