Cantos-Open Horizons is part one of a text-based work documenting the collaboration process between poet Derek Mahon (1941-2020) and myself during our time together. Starting as a conversation, the notebooks list and document the thought processes and development of the work. Collected over ten years, the notebooks are treated as found text reframed and rewritten in the style of 'The Cantos of Ezra Pound' as an epic, non-rhyming, stream-of-consciousness, prose poem, and amount to a kind of self-portrait or fragmentary thought diary, exploring creativity, aesthetics, art, painting, expression, philosophy, climate change, being, politics and representation through times of inspiration, self-doubt, grief and trauma. Cantos-Open Horizons traces ideas through the development of the Horizons painting project and includes The Cosmic Handbook, a guide to accidental cosmic transcendentalism.

This work was conceived as a visual document, with layout and font integral to the concept, comprising short paragraphs, sentences, lists and quotes. (The idea for this work came about after reading 'Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age', Columbia University Press, 2011, by Kenneth Goldsmith. Derek’s copy of Joseph Joubert has kept me company, and Lydia Davis’s 'Essays' have constantly inspired me throughout the process.) It is 22,280 words (126 pages).

Also, see artwork Horizons 2014-24 and Solipsism Series 2013-15