Rehearsal / 53. Remi Graves
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Paul Dowling, a portrait held in the City of London Asylum
patient casebook, ℅ The London Archives (Reference
number: CLA/ 001/B/01/015).
![]()
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Portrait / Jordan Anderson
(© Tate, 2024)
Excerpts from Graves’ coal (Monitor Books, 2025),
a pamphlet awarded the inaugural Prototype Prize 2024 /
Short-Form Category.
BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1905. A Black Cherokee man looking
for his wife is arrested and charged as a ‘wandering lunatic.’ In
the City of London asylum, he is photographed; looking directly
at the camera, he insists and refuses. He dies in the asylum one
year later. In the absence of Paul Downing’s own account,
Graves writes from and into the trans archive, presenting a
sequence of poems and experiments mapping resonances
between selves across historical records. Through river
crossings and library passes, chance meetings and visitations,
coal is a document that interrogates what we do with the
scattered fragments of a life.
Order direct from
Monitor here.
For an introduction to these texts,
a FIELD NOTE, see here (℅ Frieze).
Paul Dowling, a portrait held in the City of London Asylum
patient casebook, ℅ The London Archives (Reference
number: CLA/ 001/B/01/015).
Portrait / Jordan Anderson
(© Tate, 2024)
Excerpts from Graves’ coal (Monitor Books, 2025),
a pamphlet awarded the inaugural Prototype Prize 2024 /
Short-Form Category.
BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1905. A Black Cherokee man looking
for his wife is arrested and charged as a ‘wandering lunatic.’ In
the City of London asylum, he is photographed; looking directly
at the camera, he insists and refuses. He dies in the asylum one
year later. In the absence of Paul Downing’s own account,
Graves writes from and into the trans archive, presenting a
sequence of poems and experiments mapping resonances
between selves across historical records. Through river
crossings and library passes, chance meetings and visitations,
coal is a document that interrogates what we do with the
scattered fragments of a life.
Order direct from
Monitor here.
For an introduction to these texts,
a FIELD NOTE, see here (℅ Frieze).
I SCAN THE DARK FOR A SEAM / EXCERPTS FROM COAL
‘I have never been dead, but it is said I have been killed.’ [...]
A fixing
I come here with my mouth
to nail the knowing to that tree, this page,
to fasten all wondering to a locatable position
I come to the image with a person in mind,
will not let them out of my sight
until their name gets my throat
their face catches my face, all stuck and sticking to
the casebook wants remembering and
remembering for as many pages as possible
to wipe the disappearance clean
I carve repair from neglect
to rearrange the past into elegy
presuming elegy possible
the soothing spume after a wave wipes you out
A dying and rising god †
you weren’t listening to anyone
sat at the window of your life
one leg in, one leg out
no single preacher proselytising
just the mouth of the world emitting its rotten breath.
You fell asleep bored to grief
of dull scripture—
all anyone in the house of the living had to offer.
You were gazing for other ways (to live)
and so you fell
three stories down in this story
or were you pushed
being named Paul after all—
having named yourself
you gathered up your body
in your own arms
brought yourself back to breath
Trouble not yourselves for his life is in him
is what we would have said,
had we been there for your first dying
a congregation of brothers wanting to lay hands on another
and on your second death
Trouble not yourselves for his life is with us
said all the people around you who cared
even if we were not there
to ward you
in the room
when you died again
Miracle
I have been in the world
and somewhere safer than it always
when time could not hold me
I sent myself to where I did belong
I conjured myself from a cloud of fire
I followed myself to nowhere
wandering over water
a colour
labouring
wide awake
man’s skirt
pauper
patient
ties
collars
pipe
two hymn books
prayerful
admitted as Paul
charged as lunatic
arrested
rambling
wandering
found
strange
coal black
mannish
over six feet tall
5ft 10
acute mania
married with a wife
dead and come to life again
survived by (no) one
come to breath
come back for a better death
abrasion
soreness between the
in the bruised mind
rubbed skin off nose
case number [ ]
one summer’s day
against the knife of this life
wandering
knees drawn
a cape
a comb
a wandering
Pitch
I follow my train of thought through a field of homophones. It picks me up at the word weight, crosses the border into French and leads me to poids, then pois, which ignites my appetite for un petit moment. Finally I get off at poix, which I thought meant smallpox but actually means pitch. Not like, oh let me pitch a tent amongst these two languages, or these two genders (gender being a kind of language). Nor like wow, who knew my voice sounded so high pitched when I talk. But a slick, tar-like substance used for repairing ships, polishing mirrors, for fuel and torches. Which gets me thinking about pitch black, an illuminating tautology that carries both question and answer in its doubleness. The pitch is a potential source of light. The term was first used by John Marston, a playwright and satirist in 1598. He wrote for The Children of Paul’s, a theatre troupe of boy actors linked to St Paul’s Cathedral and then later for The Children of The Blackfriars, before renouncing satire and becoming a deacon. Three and a quarter hundred years later, our Paul is found on Blackfriars Bridge, described by a journalist as coal-black. The past and the present are synonyms: look different, sound different, same old shit. I strike a match.
when two times touch
† The poem ‘A dying and rising god’ refers to the
Biblical story of Eutychus, resurrected by Paul the
Apostle after falling asleep then falling out of a
window during a lengthy sermon.
Order direct from
Monitor here.
Remi Graves is a London-based poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been commissioned by St Paul’s Cathedral, Arthouse Jersey and BBC Radio 4. They have led courses at The Poetry School and facilitate in schools and community spaces around London. Remi was longlisted for the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize in 2020 and their debut pamphlet, with your chest, was published by fourteen poems in 2022. Their pamphlet coal was awarded the Prototype Prize / Short-Form Category, 2024.
Monitor here.
Remi Graves is a London-based poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been commissioned by St Paul’s Cathedral, Arthouse Jersey and BBC Radio 4. They have led courses at The Poetry School and facilitate in schools and community spaces around London. Remi was longlisted for the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize in 2020 and their debut pamphlet, with your chest, was published by fourteen poems in 2022. Their pamphlet coal was awarded the Prototype Prize / Short-Form Category, 2024.
