Giving the Worm No Hollow Food

Abstract

My presentation will examine our understanding of truth from the viewpoint of creative
expression, and take for its starting point Mervyn Peake’s statement of his aspirations as an artist, set forth in the short poem If I could see not surfaces:
If I could see not surfaces
But could express
What lies beneath the skin
Where the blood moves
In fruit or head or stone,
Then would I know the one
Essential
And my eyes
When dead
Would give the worm
No hollow food
The poem has profound implications concerning the nature of individual consciousness and its debt to corporeality. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, I want to focus on the anxieties generated by this conflict, how the creative arts are intimately involved with its resolution, and briefly consider:
the artist’s sense of identity, reliant on a close bond with the physical world.
conflict with psychological mechanisms of denial and repression intended to shield the individual from creature anxiety.
the reciprocal relationship between perception and expression, imagination and the sensual world.
how artifice can be used to achieve candour of expression.
My examples will consider Peake himself, together with other artists and poets, and my conclusions will be drawn with particular reference to current environmental and ecological issues.