Memories of the Space Age

A voice counting numbers
steam hiss on metal
the dawn is making an entrance

soon, we will leap for the skies
empty, yet full of noise

40 years after man landed on the moon, video artist Maria Santos and poet Al Robertson combine words and images to remember growing up in space, and then falling back to earth.

The performance – part of the Southwark Playhouse Secrets season – begins at 1.00pm, on the 18th and 20th August, and lasts for 45 minutes. It will be held in the bar area of Southwark Playhouse, Shipwright Yard (corner of Tooley Street and Bermondsey Street), London SE1 2TF – here’s a map.

Tickets are £5.00 (which includes a sandwich and a drink), or £3.00 for entry only, and are available here – book in advance to be sure you get one!

Image from NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.

Extracts from text

From ‘Black Dog Launch’:

Six came, a small constellation
or asteroid field that pock marked
the house with shooting memories
of pell-mell furry friends

dancing new life

the shuttle aborted
as blood and placenta spilled
across our small hearth
their first, chaotic wake

From ‘The Eunuch Zheng He’s 300 Ships’:

‘we choose to go to the moon
not because [it is] easy
but because [it is] hard’

(I heard that speech
at a ’91 rave
a vision remade
as ecstatic nostalgia)

the stars within our grasp
the moon beneath our hands
the ordered peace of the heavens
a music of the spheres

From ‘A Prince of the Broken Towers’:

Each crater is a memory
of a meteor’s punch

our minds make eyes, a
smile

from wounds

To the Chinese –
two black eyes
the moon’s a battered wife
a broken spouse

Extracts from video