Poetry and Plurals

Matthew was writing poetry throughout his life, sending them to particular friends or lovers, and often to his mother. His poetry frequently expresses bitter frustration with local and global political issues, as well as fearfulness, comedy and love. It works in tandem with his art, often finding its way into paintings and Art Books. One of his short poems, Only Joy, he wrote onto the labels of a small collection of old homeopathic bottles; this was the start of a 20year bottles project in which fragments of language, originally plurals, were written and framed as remedies for all the ills of mortals onto corked and filled vials. These labour intensive pieces such as The Alphabet, Big Medicine, Write Me a Few Short Lines She Said, and Ways to Make Her Happy were often huge. He also made some framed, handwritten or typed, stream of consciousness language works, called Self Portrait, and often wrote on wood and walls; his final poems, Hurricane Matthew, and My Sh-- Doctor is Leaving were left on his bathroom wall amongst death defying graffiti and love tokens.