Janine Pinion
I moved to Liverpool from Belfast in the late 1970s to study at Liverpool College of Art, and have been involved in the arts since then. Dead Good Poets Society have been a great support over the last 8 years. I run a reading group and occasional writing workshops for DGPS and other organisations. Recently I’ve been developing therapeutic groups using art and writing.
My focus is poetry as I like the intensity and mystery of both reading and writing poems, though I still produce artwork for enjoyment, exhibitions or commissions for book covers etc. I’ve been published in magazines and anthologies, involved in collaborative projects, and broadcast on radio. My first pamphlet was published in 2003. My poem ‘Missing’ (http://www.mungrisdalewriters.org.uk/Members/member_profile.cfm?fullname=Janine%20Pinion) was made into a film and broadcast on the BBC Big Screen in Liverpool during the Biennial in 2006.
Much of my work expresses a sense of dislocation. Even though I approach new writing from an experimental angle, this theme continues to emerge, perhaps a reflection of my Ulster background – neither Irish nor British, here nor there.
Sound is also important to me – the music of a poem can relate experience more accurately than narrative.
Home
is dust from the joiner’s saw,
is the smell of fungicide
and a broken tile.
Is forming
in the stack of stone blocks
and the red sack of yellow sand
outside.
Is small
as a matchbox, and lost
between the third and fourth rib,
a tin of paint
and hope.
Is in the fear of theft
or gardens gone to seed.
Is in pictures
cut from a magazine.
Is remembered
across the river
at a different address.
