When sheep spin their own yarns

THE LAST STRAW: The poem's wordswill be rearranged by the random behaviour of the tiny particles known as 'sheep brains'

The growth of alternative agriculture received another boost this week with the news that an English writer has secured funding to spray-paint poetry on sheep. According to the Daily Telegraph, Valerie Laws has been awarded £2,000 to write a 15-word poem on the backs of a group of breeding ewes in Northumberland, distributed on a one-word, one-ewe basis. By my reckoning, this works out at £133 per word, or per sheep (depending on whether you're a poet or a farmer). Either way, it sounds like a great idea for a new EU farm subsidy.

Laws said the experiment was designed to break down the boundaries between literature and "quantum mechanics", a science that concerns the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. It's not an easy science to explain. But Northern Arts - the group funding her - did its best, saying the project would use the basic quantum principles of "randomness, the influence of the observer and the observed, and duality".

The word "duality" does not often occur in connection with sheep, a species that can find being one thing at a time a challenge. But effectively, the poem's words will be rearranged by the random behaviour of the tiny particles known as "sheep brains". In the right order, the words read: "Clouds graze the sky/Below, sheep drift gentle/Over fields, soft mirrors/Warm white snow." Once the ewes start moving, however, the verse is re-written and, as the author admits, "some of the time it won't make much sense".

Conceivably, it could take on other meanings, especially in a severe winter. It would be ironic, for example, if most of the words disappeared, leaving only the message: "snow drift/sheep below". But mostly, the effect will probably be meaningless - in which case, Laws can redesignate the project as visual art and win next year's Turner Prize.

Lending his animals to the experiment, the owner of the chosen ewes was nevertheless sceptical. "Our shepherd is really embarrassed," Donald Slater said. "He will never be able to hold his head up in the agricultural community again. But the industry is very depressed up here and we needed something to cheer us up." His feelings are understandable. Like many of us from agricultural backgrounds, Slater probably grew up in simpler times, when farmers saw their job as food production, and naively assumed this was a good thing. Then came the rise of the EEC butter, beef and grain mountains.

Meanwhile environmentalists were highlighting the dangers posed by modern farming, and scientists were blaming cows for the hole in the ozone layer. Gradually, it became clear that agriculture was on a par with terrorism as a global threat.

So these days the EU spends fortunes trying to persuade farmers not to farm. In doing so, it uses everything from the notorious "set aside" scheme, to the ewe premium - effectively a subsidy for female sheep, payable even if they're doing nothing of artistic, scientific, or agricultural merit.

Which is why the ovine poetry scheme should appeal to Brussels. As the Northumberland case shows, sheep poems are designed to be read from the air, and are therefore aimed - in a very real sense - at the EU's satellite monitoring system.

Above all, a scheme requiring farmers to write original poetry on livestock would keep them busy, and prevent them from drifting back into productive farming - always a risk when they have time on their hands.

We already know from those satellites that Irish farmers are no strangers to creative writing. Earlier this year, the Department of Agriculture contacted 5,000 cereal growers demanding proof of their entitlement to the EU Arable Aid Scheme, after satellite images of the land suggested many of the applications were works of fiction, or based only loosely on fact. No doubt some of the applications were explained as experiments to break down the barriers between reality and quantum field theory. But 1,000 farmers failed to provide any explanation at all.

ON FOOT of last week's column, I'm indebted to Lithuanian reader Rolandas Kacinskas, who wrote to say that aciu - pronounced "ah-choo" - really does mean "thank-you". In fact, he adds, the people of Vilnius gave President Bush a "didelis aciu!" (big thank-you!), so happy were they to see him. I have to admit this is disappointing. But there was better news from John Kinahan in Germany, who says that on a 1992 visit to Vilnius, US vice-president Dan Quayle caused amusement because of the similarity between his surname and kvailas, the Lithuanian word for "stupid". Anyway, I'd like to say a didelis aciu to both of you for writing. And may I add to all our readers in Lithuania that I look forward to your entry to the EU, and your access to farm subsidies, which I hope by then will include a scheme for spray-painting sheep.