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A (not-good enough) Poem for Tom McGuinness

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Musing On Mining ART

 Tom McGuinness entering the cage with others & going underground

You-Tube still with part of commentary transcribed. BFI (2016) ‘Tom McGuinness: 1972 profile of County Durham’s famous miner-artist’ in National Coal Board The Mining Review London, British Film Institute. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eUlRGPd7kQ&feature=youtu.be (Accessed 23/04/2018).

To Tom McGuinness (on The Hewer 1995)

Mining Art or miner-art is not minor art

But trawls along deep roads

For memories that might endure.

Through the shaped artefacts he finds,

Then to put it like a miner putted,

Putting them into motion –

A full tub of shapes that consume by being consumed,

And in their togetherness find meaning.

Kandinsky found expression in abstractions of shape

And colour. Tom’s Hewer

Performs those shapes – spiritual triangles

Underlie those tentative moments

Where the pressure of a world above

Content in its warm housing

Finally and unthinkingly

Crushes his lines and elegance.   

 


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