As you might know I'll be hosting Jedburgh's participation in the Fallow Land Project for the next five months. As part of  that  I’d like to invite writers to contribute to the art works around the project by writing one or more haiku. A haiku is a short Japanese poem consisting of three phrases composed of seventeen syllables, in a five-seven-five pattern. Quite often there’s a seasonal reference.

The primary theme is fallow which can be understood literally, usually agriculturally, or metaphorically, for example relating to spiritual growth. Other related themes are land use and ownership, soil, the food environment and sustainability.

The Fallow Land Artwalks are under way on the last Sunday of each month. The themes from February to April are word, light and sound respectively so I'll be encouraging the walkers in February to contribute their own haiku.

You can submit as many as you like on as many relevant topics as you wish. If contributors wish I’ll then figure out a way of presenting everyone’s haiku(s) in small publications using folded card and paper as well as putting them on my website where I'll be updating progress regularly. It would be wonderful if you were able to participate and of course if you want to write something more substantial please do!

Please email me your poems (as word docs preferably):-[email protected]

Provisional deadline: Friday 21 February 

There’s a very good Wikipedia entry if you want to dig deeper:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

And here’s a link to the Fallow Land project:-https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/project/fallow-land/ 

As part of the Fallow Land project I've made a good start to the the year with my plans to host a series of four artworks in and around Jedburgh between January and April. I had the idea from the excellent work done by Artwork Porty over the years. The idea is to invite people to walk and reflect upon the environments encountered during the walk. Walks can be medium specific, for example a soundwalk, or more general, for example to make connections between creative people.

The first walk is fully signed up and we'll be doing a four mile circuit along the back roads and woodlands above Jedburgh to the south-east. In preparation for this I'm learning from local farmers, informing myself about what goes on in the fields. This is an important part of the project, investigating the patterns of activity in the managed landscape, from land ownership to land use to food growing, from which some kind of art work will emerge.

My hope is that we'll get talking and learning about not only about the land and landscape but also about how we might make art in and around the topics and themes that arise. This occupies me regularly on my walks and I'm always relish the opportunity to listen to ideas from other artists. 

For the next three walks, at the end of the month from February to April, I want the groups to consider particular art forms, especially sound, lens-based media and  writing though I imagine these will all fuse together over time.

Recon Chest Rig, Black 
Beret, black
Operations Webbing Belt, Black
G3 Combat Trousers with Knee Pads, black
CHIMERA COMBAT JACKET, BLACK
LOWA Z8N GTX tactical boots, black

Hanging by two fingers from the steel grid, one foot toe-smearing the razor thin metal edge, he prepares his final move. A fully committed dyno. Beyond the vertical. No second chance. Sten Mark II submachine gun over the shoulder, holstered .45 Colt pistol and his trusted dagger and scabbard. British issue. Black as a panther in the velvet night.

Arctic warfare. Military crest position, at the ready, all white, at one with the snow and ice. Left knee articulated to 67 degrees. SAKO TRG 42, a Finnish long-range sniper rifle, manually-operated, bolt-action weapon chambered for .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. Effective range of 1100 meters. Still and vigilant as a snow leopard before the kill.

Rank - lieutenant. Service Number 5206714T. 
Speciality - intelligence, surveillance, marksman. 
Mission - to distress and pin down the enemy, eliminate hostiles one by one. 
Name: Action Man.

Action Man. I never got one for Christmas. Never ever. Every year in the days before Christmas I sneaked into my folks’ bedroom, opened the double wardrobe and rummaged around under the blankets at the bottom to see what was coming up. NO action man. And yet, hanging on to a sliver of hope on Christmas morning, round the tree, I looked at the wrapped boxes, praying for the tall oblong shape of the cardboard and plastic container. But no. Not for me. Dolls are not for boys said she. And that was that. What Mums don’t understand is that Action Man isn’t a doll. You don’t play with him. You don’t stick pins in him. He’s not scary. He doesn’t bawl and greet like Tiny Tears or pee itself like Betsy Wetsy. He doesn’t have a string at the back like Thumbelina that makes him wiggle around and cry when you pull it. You don’t comb his hair like Cindy or Tressie or buy him a poncy boyfriend called Ken like you do with Barbie. Action man’s mission is not to teach boys how to be good husbands or fathers. 

And by the way if any boy in my day ever had two Action Men ‘eyebrows would be raised’ and ‘words had’.

You simply don’t play with Action man. You set him up and look at him. You imagine stuff in your head. You behold him in the frozen moment of a great military action, a covert mission.

Then in my 30s my mother’s guilt got the better of her and she bought me one. One Christmas she handed over a wrapped box and there he was inside. The real thing with a selection of gear. Multiple missions! And so he hung for months off the rack in my music teaching studio, suspended over the synths and drum machines. Looking as cool as you like. When kids came for lessons they spotted him straight away and reached out to grab him. But nobody touches Action Man. Except me. He’s on a mission and I don’t want some ratty little bairn twisting him out of shape, especially Sophie whose Dad had the look of a ’16” googly eyes vintage doll’. He would drop her off then couldn’t get away quick enough because he had some ‘business’ to attend to and when he came back he looked like ‘scary dirty doll with red eyes’ because he’d obviously been shagging his mistress. 

Later Mum told me tearfully of her remorse. All those years denying me an Action Man. She couldn’t forgive herself. She wanted to make up for it. Of course I forgave her. It was simply a generational thing. But then, without blinking, she added ‘it’s ok though, at least you turned out normal’

Dear Mr Lugg,

thank you for your funding proposal to the Arts Council. The panel was deeply impressed by the depth of research and the bold concepts shown in your project ‘The Dark Side of the Tweed’. 

We were particularly drawn to your idea of lining up ten children from Hawick and Galashiels, then selecting three out of the ten, highlighting the fact that at least 30% of children in the Borders are living in poverty. 

Your idea of creating partnerships and forming teams to go fishing on the Tweed was well thought through and conceptually sound. The panel greatly admired the four-part composition of each team: a poor child, preferably a ‘Grand Old Duke’ of the Borders or at least an ennobled Tweed Commissioner, say a Lord or a Sir or indeed one of the many men who have served as commissioners. At the very least, a man of substance and standing; a ghillie, the river expert who would teach the child how to fish and point out the best spots to catch ‘a couple of fat ones’ as you put it, and finally an artist who would benefit from meeting ‘real people’ in your own words, meaning ‘anyone who isn’t a friend or family member of the artist, or another artist’ (this made us giggle).

The tour de force of the proposal was greatly appreciated by the panel. To find a chef from one of those ‘fancy posh hotels in Melrose or Kelso’ and to have the chef accompany the child, with fish, to their home, to cook a nutritious meal and teach the parent, guardian, grandmother, big sister or whoever does the cooking in a poor household how to cook properly. It should be mentioned that we did feel the use of ‘fancy’ and ‘posh’ to be somewhat provocative. Your suggestion that ‘this might be the most protein the poor kid has had since he suckled at the tit’, though perhaps true, might have benefitted from rephrasing.

However, there were some structurally weak points in your proposal. We felt that it would have been more effective to have the poor child fed at the castle of one of the ‘Grand Old Dukes’, perhaps the meal could even be cooked by the wealthy landowner himself. This type of robust social engagement would educate the poor person in the ways of the wealthy. We also preferred your original title to the alternative ‘Tory Poachers’ which was again felt to be needlessly provocative. Your comment that ‘it would be interesting to see how the Grand Old Dukes get on with their child protection disclosure’ was again felt to be provocative if not libellous. Not all Dukes are the same. 

Our conclusion therefore is that your proposal falls short of the standard required for financial support. The panel feels that artists and real people are all in the same boat so to speak and do need to keep the right people on their side. The Borders is a beautiful happy place to live. It benefits greatly from the status quo. Overly contentious and risk-laden political or socially-engaged art might upset the powers that be.  

Finally our recommendation to you is to develop your existing strengths. Keep producing those lovely riverside soundscapes, and especially those recordings of folk singers lilting Sir Walter Scott’s wonderful Border Ballads.

We wish you all the best for the future.

Yours etc.