The Poetics of Textiles - Remembering Tim McLaughlin

For more than 20 years, Tim McLaughlin worked to help tell the stories of artisans — in video documentaries, publications, photos, exhibitions, workshops and media. This work has been collaborative and far reaching. In many ways it can also be seen as an extension of Tim’s background in the arts and sciences and his personal projects.

Tim drew from his research, writing, and considerable experience with Maiwa to argue for textiles as carriers of meaning that are more important today than ever before.

Like all great arts, textiles recreate our vision of the world. We hold them up as exemplars of skill, ingenuity, creativity, and ambition. Textiles are poetic metaphors woven from ideas just as much as they are physical items woven from fibres.

On October 16, 2018 Tim McLaughlin delivered his lecture "The Poetics of Textiles" to the Maiwa audience. It was a wide ranging lecture touching on Carlyle's Philosophy of Clothes, John Ruskin, William Morris, Craft and Craftspeople, India, and our relationship with handmade things. Tim brought in Pablo Neruda's Ode to Things and drew a line from poetry all the way to Iris Van Herpen's fantastically staged contemporary clothing.

Watch the film here (click red play button to begin):

Tim passed away suddenly November 1, 2023. All of us at Maiwa have been left overwhelmed by the loss. We lived amongst Tim’s creative life. He mentored us. He inspired us. He helped us grow.

We lost a gentle giant of a man. His wit and play on words was exceptional. His quiet intellect was an inspiration.

Amongst Tim's vast writings and journals we found this poem and we would like to share it with you today.


When I am Gone

When I am gone
         I shall miss weather
         most

The thickening sky before a snowfall
The sharp crack in the air
       of an autumn morning

So often
I do not recognize
      the shift in seasons
      until I inhale the change
      startlingly subtle

And then I know for certain
       even a season can grow old

These also I shall miss:
The peculiar weather of trees
       how they seem at times
       to be playing the light

The dappled shades
      complex as memory
      Oh to be held by shadow
       and feel the sun

When I am gone
I shall miss even the air itself
       Its solace
       its quiet and becoming

And
The summer storms

The way rain empties streets
       and slicks the pavement

The anger winds make
       blasting through branch and limb
       tearing at all that is
       with glorious desperation

The way
       water drops
       halo evening lamp posts
       turning them to waiting night-saints

I will miss
       your hand
       cool in the rain
       drawn away and cuffed in a sleeve

I shall miss the earliest of mornings
       The quiet pleasure
       of being awake before others
       like a thief in the bank vault
       untended
       and alone with the secrets

My time ultimately like this:
       only a beautiful
       brief reconnaissance
       Into the world

My time ultimately like this:
      a dream of flying in which
       I swim through the atmosphere
       through all forms of weather
       all the while
       knowing it to be impossible.

       ~ Tim McLaughlin 

Tim McLaughlin