Can Serrat, El Bruc, Catalonia, 23 May 2019

The two weeks have been busy, Can Serrat Residency hosted a day of experimentation at the El Bruc town hall, ran a day trip to Barcelona for a gallery opening at one residency space and an open mic at another. A book club was also organized, as well as multiple paella (paellas?) cooked.

I’ve also managed to make progress on three chapters of the book, Tomas Brown, past Canberran and another of the residents here, translated six of my poems into Spanish and I’ve managed to get feedback on my work as well as provide input into Tomas’s writing project.

The experimentation day on my first weekend here involved a past resident’s work, and building three concurrent narratives from images they supplied while using simple scripts, then turning those into a film. The process took up the entire day for selecting different images, then arranging them. It was a bit hard to follow for me so I am probably missing a bit, I’d only just arrived and was adjusting to the different languages being spoken.* But it was a fun process to watch and I found a way to engage with it alongside some of the other residents who were similarly on the fringe of the event. It was one of those days that will percolate and maybe something creative will come out of it, but even if it doesn’t it was useful to see all the visuals of past Can Serrat residents.

During last week all the residents of Can Serrat travelled to Barcelona for a day and night of engaging with other residencies, we first went to a gallery space and residency called La Place for a Q&A regarding the installation there. Three hexagon tubes were suspended from the ceiling, you could stand up into each of them and a sound would play while (it was explained to us) a smell was released - I completely missed the smells. There was also an abundance of rock salt all over the ground that made a very satisfying crunching sound as people walked on it. The gallery doubles as the work-space while upstairs is were the resident lives. They are looking for people to apply to undertake residencies and exhibitions, and sound installations are one of the things they are about.

The next stop in Barcelona was an open mic at the now closed Jiwar Barcelona Residency. The open mic was a chance for all the current Can Serrat residents to present some of their work, and we heard poetry from one of the past Jiwar residents. My favourite part of the experience was hearing poetry in Catalan, I’ve heard poetry in Spanish before, and in French, but to hear a Catalan poet perform work he’d written about locations in Barcelona was a first for me; the space was excellent too, we were in the back garden of the Jiwar Residency surrounded by apartment buildings, so we had to finish by 8pm out of consideration for the neighbours.

We had a book club this Tuesday gone too; all the residents were asked to read a passage from what they were currently reading or present something that had influenced them. I can’t check the book out of the library here as I don’t have membership (I walk up to the library each day to read), so instead I read Ron Padgett’s The Fortune Cookie Factory, it was the first poem by someone else that I performed and it has stayed with me since I first read it in the Bible of American Outlaw Poetry. We each provided context for our reading and the group then discussed it. This discussion was pretty wandering and interesting as we explored some of the concepts behind the different residents’ work, my favourite discussion centred on the positives and negatives of deconstructing people’s beliefs (to way over summarize).

I will write a about where my project is at in part two of this post, as well as how I’ve interacted with the work of some of the other residents. Until then, here is a photograph of one of the permanent residents, he was sick when I arrived, and so pretty stand-offish, but after a dose of antibiotics he has become really talkative and keen to hang with us temporary residents.

* When I was here in 2014 the majority of residents were from English speaking countries, so it was pretty comfortable. This time while everyone speaks English, the majority of people are from Spanish and French speaking countries and it has taken a couple of days to adjust to hearing those two languages so frequently.

Can Serrat, El Bruc, Catalonia, 10 May 2019

For this residency at Can Serrat I am focused on turning around 60-70 poems into two chapbooks and writing new work for both collections.

I attempted one poetry book from this collection of poems, written between 2008 and 2019, but have decided there are two different books.

Joan Miró Foundation

The difference is not due to changes during the extended period of writing that these poems are drawn from, though I think my writing has changed, and initially I had hoped to reflect the developments within the single collection, but for thematic reasons two separate manuscripts is now my approach.

When I go through the manuscripts a substantial portion of one book is made up of much older material while the other contains a large amount of newer work. But each has a selection of recent or older poems respectively that fit thematically; so, there are themes and concepts I keep returning to. The working titles are: Fighting Poetry and For Whom the Red Ticks, both titles will likely change as I work my way through the poems in each.

In preparation for the residency, I have been taking notes and collecting material to write new work for both collections.

Montserrat from El Bruc

This has included writing in the Woden food courts- thanks to taking a contract with a Commonwealth Department -I had never been to any of the Woden food courts previously. This nine-month contract is also part of the reason I can afford this trip, so thanks to the people who employed me.

I also re-visited the Joan Miro Foundation during my jetlag recovery in Barcelona over the last two nights, I found new perspectives since my last visit in 2014 and am hoping I can work these into new poems.

Poetry For Fighting

I have a new poem at Demos Journal. 

They offered this description, ‘Responding to the pervasive influence of America, Andrew Galan explores imagery of place and identity’. The piece is titled Poetry For Fighting (They Say). 

The image is by Amanda Coghlan and was taken in El Bruc, Catalonia during my 2014 residency at the Can Serrat International Artist Residency. 

Thanks to Demos for publishing the poem.

The Timbaler of El Bruc

About a week has passed in Catalunya, I’ve been up Montserrat Mountain to the abbey and experienced an El Bruc festival.

The abbey is Benedictine and a major pilgrimage and tourism destination to visit a Black Madonna. It is an experience to look out over a congregation gazing up at the statue. People crying, people chatting, people shushing, people checking their phones.

I’ve sent a postcard off with some of the feeling of the monastery written onto it. The abbey has a museum holding artifacts from the Middle East, as well as artwork by Salvador Dalí. The work they have by Joan Miró is travelling as part of a touring collection of the 100 best works from the abbey museum.

This weekend was the Drummer Festival celebrating the legend of the French army fleeing from El Bruc due to a local drummer boy who made the French think a huge Catalunyan army was descending upon them.

The festival opened on Saturday evening with drumming teams in a grand procession down the main street, the locals in orange were chaotic and led by a drummer with a red mohawk. Three teams visiting from nearby towns also took part, they were purple, yellow and blue.

I was asked where my vote went, it went to blue. They were having the most fun with their small team. I don’t know if there was a winner, I hope so.

Sunday had the French army invading the town. There was an evil French general who had excellent crazy eyes.

And who ordered his soldiers to steal the daughters and wives of El Bruc and threaten them with execution.

And then threaten their fathers and husbands with execution, he then pretended to let them go, and then he had them shot.

A blind drunk raised the town to fight. He talked and talked and drank and drank and kept smacking his drummer boy guide on the back of the head.

There was the firing of blunderbusses and muskets into the air, pork crackling and pig face was eaten, and tea and sweets from Morocco were given away.

To close the day Catalunyan irregulars attacked the French camp on the edge of town. Pitchfork and reaper armed militia came down a large cliff on ropes while drummers and blunderbuss armed troops came up from a creek. They seized a French canon, then battled the retreating French into the centre of the old town. The air was full of smoke and rolling barrels and flung sandbags. There was fake blood. And to the crash of blunderbuss and with the smell of sulphur the last French soldier was pitchforked to death where the earlier executions had occurred.

Sunday is a recreation of events on 6 and 14 June 1808. On both days much smaller forces from Catalunya defeated the invading French military.

During this week gone I’ve managed to finish one poem, and with Amanda’s help, give the manuscript a restructure and edit.

This Tuesday I’m headed to Barcelona to visit The Joan Miró Foundation and the Museum of History of Catalunya.

I’m still listening to the Transistor soundtrack, but mixing it up with the music of FTL, Pitiri 1977 and Samorost 2.

All the photographs are by Amanda Coghlan, except the one of a postcard.

Canberra to El Bruc

I am in Catalunya, just north of Barcelona, in a town called El Bruc. I am staying a month for a residency.

I’ve set some objectives for the time here, structuring and editing a new poetry manuscript, identifying poems to form into a performance, putting together a new poem for the Queensland Poetry Festival, and developing performances for that and the Red Dirt Poetry Festival in Alice Springs. I have a few other things to pursue but they overlap with these.

During the flights and stop-overs to Barcelona I started collecting images from different newspapers I managed to grab in airport lounges. My favourite three are from the International New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

I'll also be writing postcards while I am in Spain. My first is to my mum.

El Bruc is that stretched town below the mountain. I am looking forward to going up that mountain. 

For the trip I bought the game Transistor so I could listen to Darren Korb's new soundtrack.



l still enjoy listening to his soundtrack for Bastion, I think this new music is also excellent.

The building I am in is an old winery with plenty of space and there are only nine other people here.