‘security gel activated

middle finger saturated

nectar check completed’

 

forage narration fed now

straight into my ears

sonic patterns of pain

 

anthidium manicatum male

anthophora pumpies male

osmia bicornis male

 

all togethertogether their sound

exterminates the language of the human

repeat these lines of survival

 

Rucha Helena Duzia

Rucha Helena Genesha

Rucha Helena Bathsheba

 

we began by feeding caffeinated nectar

soaked with odour of strawberry flower

to chart the increased memory of commercial bee

 

they would remember only the strawberry flower

they sucked the strawberry flowers dry

sucked and sucked and sucked until they died

 

anthidium manicatum male

anthophora pumpies male

osmia bicornis male

 

the wild pollinators were driven by starvation

to find our holy alphabet

to keep their kind on terra two

 

the commercial females found the wild ones

no strawberry plant lived. Language;

the prohibited possibility became their nectar

 

Rucha. Rucha. Rucha.

 

 

Commentary:

‘strawberry flower’ was written at a workshop for the Terra Two project.  It had been some time since I had participated in working together with others around a theme; since my work began to be published fifteen years ago I have mostly written in that quiet solitude of one’s own space.  But the Terra Two callout drew me – a chance to look at life in the future and to “pollinate” ideas amongst ourselves. Ahead of the session we were asked to checkout the website which had a link to the Kew Gardens research on bees – I was shocked to find that commercial bees are fed with caffeinated nectar which is associated with strawberry flowers.

The whole afternoon was spent in a profound, free flowing exchange; that zone where poetry dances in research and research dances in poetry.  My recent writing and installations on the survival of my family, of the chaos and loss of assimilation followed by the hunt for the source of our own history and identity, is embedded into the poem.

 

Working in text, clay and textiles discovering poetry and narratives. Dichter; (poet/researcher, researcher/poet) Julia Davis-Nosko has published exhibited and performed internationally, including Nottingham Contemporay (Lodz Tapes) the Edinburgh Fringe (Demarco European Institute), Vitebsk (Belarus State Theatre).  http://davisjulia.wixsite.com/julia-davis-nosko