What is in a nammmmme?
Persephone Grace Russell in response to Mmmmm
Mhairi Brown, The company we keep (2021). Image courtesy of Ben Douglas / @burntbongo
what is in a nammmmme?
MMMMM is delicious
mmmmm is tentative
MmmmmM is curious
mmmMM is in the affirmative but only just
m is for metamorphosis
it is transformative -
It’s the kind that turns many into
one
it’s a spell that turns a swirl into a river
a horse into a fish
myth into marking.
m is for maddening monotony
its falling like a body from a cliff
endlessly.
Its thinking inside the box
And then doing it again
And again.
Its pulling something beautiful
From something that has no right to be
m is for massive
In scale and magnitude
It’s the joy and tragedy that exists
Between the sheets
of a book
It’s a peek inside the their head
It’s reading between the lines
m is for (i)magination
It’s a bird hiding in a stick
It’s the hands that carved her beak into existence
It’s the delicate little faces,
bursting through the canvas
To greet you.
It’s mobile - it is a mobile
It’s playful and full of wonder
m is for magic
the kind that lets you peer into a dream
It’s alchemy -
turning lead into gold
and gold into a window
to a world of heat and weirding splendour
It’s the magic that gives colour to your dreams
and shape to your reality
m is for meeting,
m is for mixing,
m is for mesmerising,
m is for making.
Persephone Grace Russell is an associate committee member at GENERATORprojects. They are a person who makes art and really likes working in, around and with text. They primarily exist across the mediums of painting and printmaking. And sometimes they’re a poet, but only on weekends.
Occupying space within the Contemporary Art Practice department of Duncan of Jordanstone College, they might eventually earn a degree.