Starting with one of the best-known poems in the American canon, William Carlos Williams' 'This is Just to Say,' Kate McLoughlin adopts and transposes Picasso's template for re-imagining Velazquez's Las Meninas onto both Williams' poem and the history of the Velazquez painting. The result is 58 variations - short poems that embody both Williams' pithy wit and the mystery of Picasso's 58 adaptations of Las Meninas; where Picasso's paintbrush transforms Velazquez's muted tones to bold colours, McLoughlin's 'I' says of Williams' Plums, 'They are the last things you'll take of mine.' 'Plums' is a tour de force of transformation, an example of how compelling art can emerge from a chrysalis of absurdity.
