Martin Christie
Martin Christie is an artist based in West Yorkshire with an interest in music, writing and drawing. He has written several books including the musical adventure series Open Mic Travels and Electronic Music Travels. The latter book describes events that took place as a result of the Electronic Music Open Mic movement which Martin founded. Martin was lead singer and song writer with the band Old Man Pie which had an album released in America and many successes with their online animations. He now plays as Poet & the Loops combining electronic music with sung/spoken word.
I have recently collaborated with Martin to dream up a random poetry generator. The initial work involved
our separate development of 500 words and phrases suitable for inclusion in the poetry generator. The
poetry generator was envisaged as an app or online tool that could create abstract and concrete poetry at
the click of a mouse or touch of a button. The technology has not yet been developed, but the
collaboration gave rise to several beautifully abstract poems plus the lyrics for a monastic piece called
The Human Muzzle. Martin and I have a shared interest in poetry that is not obviously ‘about’ something
but points towards the complexity of life, death, emotions and human frailty.
Follow Martin here.
390 x 285mm - Kingsthings spike, gothic bastarda & cadels on 1836 vellum indenture deeds.
(I photographed it on a light board to show the natural transparency of the calfskin)
This piece stems from an experimental poetry collaboration between myself and Martin Christie and his
monastic inspired song of the same name can be heard here.
