Sarah-Clare Conlon
‘Repetitions and Pauses’ was conceived for a commissioned performance project as part of Manchester Histories Festival. Six writers and a sound artist were each invited to respond to the Tootal scarf, a Manchester export, premiering their pieces live in September 2024 at Manchester’s Central Library for a sold-out event called Tootally Wired. I enjoy working within constraints and my approach to writing the piece was to consider the construction of the garment, and how this might be applied to my own creation. Traditionally Tootal scarves are woven and repeat printed silk with hand-applied tassels, and I wanted to incorporate this into the fabric of the poem – the ‘choruses’ not only evoke the process and the product, but also the musicality of the looms and machinery used in the manufacture, and the rhythmic back and forth of the supply and distribution network involved. As a former journalist on fashion glossies, I was interested in exploring both the history of the brand and the craftsmanship involved, so I spent some time at Edinburgh’s world-renowned tapestry studio Dovecot and with a textile artist at Manchester’s Rogue Studios, who explained the intricacies of passementerie and other weaving practices. As they require a hands-on, human skill, and with silk a natural product, I was also compelled to consider the industry’s impact on, or implication in, the landscape, where, even in the most urbanised and polluted of settings, nature manages to creep into the cracks. This in turn had me thinking, and writing, in a circle.
Repetitions and Pause
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.
Drape your scarf around your neck now, and follow me.
Follow me on a trip to treelined Tootal Grove, green
as a bluebottle, a petrol slick, a silky scarf, grass.
Kingfishers and frog princes live up the way at Winterbottoms,
the pond used by Engels for his scutching and bleaching,
times he wasn’t drinking and thinking, seeing red at conditions.
Commentator Tocqueville, in from France, was overheard over the river:
‘From this foul drain, this filthy sewer, pure gold flows.’
Cottonopolis, capital of the global textile industry, thumbed its nose.
Manchester is an area of significance for endangered craft passementerie.
Up and down, back and forth, backwards and forwards, pause.
Left to right, right to left, bottom to top, pause.
Under and over, over and under, to and fro, pause.
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.
French passementerie is the art of making tassels and trimmings.
The act of making tassels and trimmings is fiddly, finicking.
A fine art, you might say, accurate, delicate, intricate, elaborate.
Nimble fingers snag floss and bullions, hangers, drops and jasmines,
the cord-maker combs, tames, dangles, untangles, angles the fancy fringes.
See them now cascade, mini waterfalls shimmering, catching the light,
trickling, drip-drip-dripping, pooling in the fluid folds of your lap.
Fabric absorbs rather than repels or reflects. Feel that sunshine?
High above us, band of cobalt, pinpricks of luminescent ferns.
Furred with moss, the walls are foxed, softening the echoes.
Left to right, right to left, bottom to top, pause.
Under and over, over and under, to and fro, pause.
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.
Up and down, back and forth, backwards and forwards, pause.
It’s cooler canalside, crepuscular and cave-like, calcified shapes casting shadows
on mizzled cobbles, buddleiaed and bulrushed bridges criss-crossing the cut.
Don’t slip on slime and sludge slip-slopped onto the towpath
by those loaded boat shuttles chugging by, up and down,
back and forth, fetching and carrying boxes, bags and bundles.
Back and forth loaded boat shuttles zoom across the looms,
dragging weft across warp left to right, right to left,
bottom to top, under and over, shift heddle, over, under.
Always work upwards in your weave, from bottom to top,
guide your shuttle evenly, tug, nudge and beat against drop.
Under and over, over and under, to and fro, pause.
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.
Up and down, back and forth, backwards and forwards, pause.
Left to right, right to left, bottom to top, pause.
Set your loom taut but not too tight, just right.
There’s tension in textiles – ‘Perfect obedience leads to perfect chaos,’
said Bauhausian Anni Albers of her adventures in colourful grids.
You’ll know when you’ve got it, the rhythm, the quiet
tip and tap, click and clack, the creak of yarn,
the hairbrush scrape, dander motes floating by like dandelion clocks.
Look at your loom, a piano’s inner workings, a harp,
stringed from skeins and spools, bobbins laden with lustrous thread.
As your shuttle navigates the shed space your heddle opens,
give thought to the weaving shed on a grander scale.
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.
Up and down, back and forth, backwards and forwards, pause.
Left to right, right to left, bottom to top, pause.
Under and over, over and under, to and fro, pause.
This room looms large, factory floor in a handsome block
shouldering the Rochdale, showing off striped yellow and red bricks
to the outside world, stripped Victorian men at the windows
shouldering ornamental lintels, bearing the burden of the industrial North.
Ah, Telamons, ah Atlantes, keep the roof over our heads,
keep the celestial bodies in the skies – except these ones:
the starbursts and orbs, alongside the paisleys and polka dots,
our patterns and echoes and motifs and effects and sequences,
repetitions that rhyme and chime with both weaver and wearer.
Drape your scarf around your neck now, and follow me.
Follow me on a trip to take in Tootal: green,
polka dots, blue, paisleys, red orbs, gold starbursts. Follow me.
Up and down, back and forth, backwards and forwards, pause.
Left to right, right to left, bottom to top, pause.
Under and over, over and under, to and fro, pause.
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.
Up and down, back and forth, backwards and forwards, pause.
Left to right, right to left, bottom to top, pause.
Under and over, over and under, to and fro, pause.
Warp and weft, repeat repeat repeat, pause, repetitions and pauses.