Alan Turing

m lewis redford’s Castrated
black and white and brown collage of a large machine overlaid with the words of M Lewis Redford's poem "castrated"

I have been a fan of m lewis redford’s poetry (and follower of his WordPress blog) for at least 5 or 6 years now – wow, time flies! He posted his poem “Castrated” in early 2015, right around the same time the movie about Alan Turning – “The Imitation Game” – came out in the U.S. and I was really struck by his poem about Turing. I did an illustration for it back then (you can see his post about that HERE or go the end of this post).

I’ve been thinking about his poem recently for a number of reasons – one is a history poem post I am working on for later this week. Since I couldn’t get the poem out of my head, I decided to try another illustration of it using some of my more recent transfer and collage techniques. Plus it was a great excuse to spend time again with redford’s poetry and website! For this attempt I wanted something more mechanical, more “flawed machine.” The format was smaller, so I didn’t get the whole poem on there. To read the complete poem, see my original illustration below the “read more” tag or visit his post.

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Excerpt Tuesday – Castrated – Redford

CastratedI had just seen the movie The Imitation Game when I came across this poem about Alan Turing by m lewis redford; I was immediately captivated by it and wanted to do an illustration. The illustration wound up featuring the entire poem – so it’s technically not a excerpt (but I think that’s okay) – and incorporated a painting of mine rearranged with a discarded print of Frida Kahlo’s painting Diego and I. The format was loosely inspired by the surrealist technique of cubomania, where an image is cut up into squares and rearranged randomly. M lewis redford has a fantastic blog where you can read more of his poetry and observe all of the connections and themes he explores (which he calls “wormholes”) – check it out!