Hard Times

We all hit times when it's difficult to keep going.

When we do we have a Choice:

We can let it get to us, we can falter, lose our step, lose our Self.

OR

We can stand against the threat. We can believe we have what it takes to get through.

We can believe in our Self.

It can be that we need encouragement to choose the second option.

I wrote the poem below last night for a little self-motivation, a reminder to Self of who I am and what I can do.

May it remind you too, whenever you need it to.

With my love attached.

I Will Stand

I will stand against the rain,

Beneath the clouds,

In the face of thunder.

I will not bow

To the lightning strike

Though it set fire to my soul.

I will not shelter from the storm

Though it rage through the branches of the elm

And through my heart.

I will lift my head

And drink the rain,

Let the cool flow of it

Coat my throat,

Let the sound of thunder

Echo through the stone,

Let the wind shout its secrets

To my bones.

I will lift my head.

I will stand against the rain.

Louise

A Mother's Day Poem

I feel like I have been away from here for too long, but real life has taken over for the last couple of weeks and I have had to take a break from blog land. I think going computer-free for a bit is a good thing for us all. I didn't plan my break, though I saw it coming and chose to enjoy it. But it's hard coming back to know where to pick things up from.
So I was pleased to find this post about linking up with a poem about mothers (L.L. Barkat offered me inspiration a few weeks back concerning fairytales so I'm happy to join the fun again).
This is supposed to be in honour of approaching mother's day (U.S.? we had ours here in the UK back in March) and incidently it is my own mother's birthday this week, but...
That life that has kept me away from here is still going strong so rather than write fresh I've pulled an old poem from my files which doesn't exactly have the celebratory tone it should. But relationships are tricky things, and often not what they should be...

Mother

Mother is due at three with her hawk-eye
Out for every stained surface, dust-darkened nook
And unshelved book.
So I scrub and scour, feeling like a woman
At the river flaying clothes against the rocks -
Disinfectant my new incense.

Duty done, my mind plays back a childhood day,
When hid in the branches of the damson
I wrote my secret journal while Mother called,
All my woes and then my dreams -
The aubergine ribbon bookmark a bloodstain
Running like a river down my thigh.

Louise

Seasons of Challenge and Healing

Life is so full of seasons, of unexpected twists and turns. Sometimes it's a rollercoaster ride of fun, sometimes the rapid-fire ups and downs can make you nauseous.
Sometimes the changes are slower, the shifts less perceptible.
Life brings its seasons of challenge and then of healing.
Othertimes, life plateaus - this is a good season too, a season of rest, of comfort or fulfilment.
I'm in challenge at the moment. Its not easy, but it's a period of growth.
Where are you?
What is the good in this part of the journey for you?

This poem is an account of two life shifts: from the challenge of loss, to the healing of new companionship.

Transitions

Earth-spattered roses marked you transition
From one life to another, but unlike your love,
The move took you to no higher world,
No paradise where you might breathe lightly again,
But left you treading the same patterns through the day
As always; at night lying alone beneath an empty sky.

Roses on a coffin lid; the first handful
Of cold dirt fell like rain, but lifted
No regenerate beauty from her cold bones.
You walked away (I imagine all of this)
With the same dignity you have carried all the years since:
Uncowed by fate or chance, bereft not beaten.

The heavy harness of bereavement has not bent your back
(Though the dullness in your eye was absent I am sure
In youth). If I am able to lighten your future
I will never seek to quench your past.
Never will you walk blindly through sun or shadow,
But may I be the blessing you count nightly beside your loss.

Louise

The Secret To Great Art ??

Perhaps I know the secret. Or perhaps I know 21!
The collaborative art course 21 Secrets is now open and will remain so until the end of July, giving us four months to learn the secrets and experiment under the guidance of 21 different artists. If you haven't already heard about it, go check it out.
Here are some little faces I drew by way of introduction in Jane's class:

I am also aware that it is National Poetry Month in the US. Where I am here in the UK no such luck. I would like to post some more poetry and some tips or prompts for my American friends during April, but I must be realistic. As well as having secrets to learn, my children also have nearly three weeks of holidays coming up. The environment may not be ideal for writing, painting or posting!
So please patient with me and we'll just see where the month leads us...

Fairytale Poems

I never much liked fairytales as a child, but nowadays I find them fascinating. Or rather, the re-telling of fairytales, the more subversive the better.
L.L. Barkat wrote a poem this week (brilliant poem - did I say brilliant? Well, I meant to) inspired by Cinderella  (see here) and challenged whosoever was willing to do the same.
This was so timely as this week I also bought myself The World's Wife: Poems by Carol Ann Duffy which opens with a magnificent poetic re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood.
So I decided to be a willing fairytale poet.
My poem is inspired by the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

The Name Spinner

You may think I was fortunate to have a father
Who saw fit to boast in a daughter,
A miller who would have his daughter queen.
But I could not spin gold.

I wept three nights as the straw mountains multiplied,
And sighed three nights as the magic man spun
Life from gold for me. My crown was won
With a pendant, a ring and an empty promise.

I have been a bargaining chip my whole life long -
Traded by my father for a royal name,
By the king for riches magic-made,
And now my desperation played on for a babe.

But hear now that I am queen and I have means!
He spun gold from straw, but I spin names from tears.
I sobbed three nights to claim the name of my sovereign king;
The worth of his could not exceed three more.

Louise

Stretching The Poetic Muscle

With all this sketching and painting filling my free hours, my poetry writing has just about dried up. My thoughts are elsewhere with pretty-faced girls and art journal pages. I am not sitting still for long enough with pen and paper and a jumble of words in my head.
I need to rectify this. So this week I have written two short poems. They were written quickly and fall far short of the masterpieces I would like to write (!!), but they serve their purpose in just flexing those poetry muscles a little in preparation for some more serious exercise in the hopefully near future.
I share them with you because their simplicity allows us to ask some questions about poetic technique. I would love to know your thoughts on the points I make below.

The house I grew up in had a line of poplars at the end of the garden, a lasting image of my childhood scenery that came to mind as I racked my brain for a starting-point image:

Standing Sentries

Poplars stand sentry
As the field is ploughed
As the soil is turned
As the seed is sown

Poplars stand sentry
As the crop is grown
The harvest taken
As you come home.


And as it is painting that is keeping me from the poetry, I took the hindrance and charged it to be my muse:

Hidden Portrait

Painting your portrait
I take care
As my brush sweeps the tender
Curve of your nose,
As I colour your eyes
With the shine of experience.

Painting your portrait
I swirl joy
Into the curls of your auburn hair,
But at your cheek
My brush slows to uncover
The tear I know is hidden there.

How about a little analysis?

Do you notice how each of these poems repeats the first line in each stanza? I used this as a simple technique to lengthen the poems, by building on the same ideas a couple of times.

Do you notice how there is a slight twist at the end of each? This provides a reason, a justification, for capturing these scenes in poetry in the first place: they are not quite as ordinary as they seem. Having these changes at the end of each poem also provides a proper end, a completion, without which the poems may have just petered out unsatisfactorily.

The first poem is not very creative in its use of language: "the seed is sown" is unoriginal and an automatic, common description of the activity. Should the seed have been "flung" instead?  Or perhaps it should have been "bedded?" But neither of these would have created the uneven rhyme with the later word "grown".
"The harvest taken" is a very minor improvement on "the harvest gathered", not because it is a better word, but just because it is slightly less obvious. Do you think the use of familiar descriptive language is sometimes helpful to the reader, or does it simply make for a poor poem?

The inspiration for the second poem came from the drawing you can see here. This one I posted without the tear, but I have a copy of this girl in my sketchbook, with a tear on her left cheek. Hence the hidden tear. However the poem changed the girl substantially: the poem paints her in colour and curls her hair. What do you think of these developments? Should I have disciplined myself to describe what I first saw, or was it better to let the poem go where it would?

I would love you to let me know what you think of these ideas.
And why don't you follow similar inspiration to write a simple poem or two of your own? Again I'd love to see.

Louise

Return of the Poetry Workshop

Back in October I wrote a post about how disappointed I was that my daughter's inter-school poetry workshop had been cancelled due to a lack of participants. I am thrilled to be able to tell you now that last week another day was held, this time with full support. So I take back everything I said last year about how our schools are letting young poets down!

I attended the day with my 10 year-old daughter, ostensibly to help the children, but really to gate-crash the workshop and get a few poem-writing tips.
The highly entertaining children's writer Valerie Bloom was our guiding light and she soon had a full classroom of unfamiliar primary children from six different schools confidently joining her in games and the creation of poetry.
Over the course of the day she taught the children to write three different types of poem.

•  The Kenning - which describes an object by linking related nouns and verbs in rhyming couplets. The ending should reveal the creature, but I will leave you to guess what is described here:

Sky flyer

Song cryer

Dawn singer

Joy bringer

• The List Poem - rhyming couplets of 4 words per line in which each word must be related to the words (only) either side of it. The final line should return us to the beginning:

Claw, creature, dragon, flight

Sky, sea, monster, fright,

Dark, cold, shiver, skin,

Bones, white, ghost, jinn,

Angel, blessing, joy, sadness,

Tears, rivers, drowning, madness,

Asylum, patient, anger, fight,

Claw, creature, dragon, flight.

• A dream sequence poem - Valerie described a dream for the children to base their poem on, but ideally one would write of an actual dream. These poems have the freedom of following an unpredicatble dream-like narrative.

Interestingly I have written several poems in the past in response to waking from a dream. I remember very few of my dreams these days, but those I do recall often carry emotions or memories that I feel compelled to save in poetry. I will find you an example for another day.
My daughter enjoyed the day and was particularly taken with the list poems, beginning her second last night. These are not the type of poems I would usually write, but I found both the Kenning and the List poem excellent as exercises to play with words and make creative connections: vital practice for the poet.
Why don't you try your hand at one or both of them, as we did?

Louise

Flying Free

Flying free would be such a glorious sensation! Feeling the air currents lift us, seeing the earth below nolonger constraining us with vast distances we cannot cover.
Much of my poetry over the years comes back to this theme of flying. There must be something deep in me that longs to soar, that doesn't fear heights, or speed, but revels in freedom. There must be something in me that strains to be rid of constraint.

But I always also tend to write about relationship because it is our dealings with one another that connect us, that give us joy or sadness, purpose or pain. Creativity and Relationship, in my opinion, are the key things that set us apart from the animals. (And memories, reasoning, planning, imagination...)
But I feel myself digressing onto another topic, so lets's pull back...

My poetry is most frequently about relationship and flying is a theme I keep coming back to. The combination of these two more often than not reveal a desire to escape, to leave relationships behind and be free.
Ironically this is not something I am quick to advocate. In my life I tend to do the exact opposite: constrain myself within the bounds of a relationship.Yet my poetry keeps pushing the theme. Plenty here for the psychologists out there I'm sure, so before you or I get too analytical and start uncovering my secrets how about I just share the latest poem with you...

Flying Free

Raise your eye to the sky
And see me there, winging where
The clouds pass by.

Know I have escaped your heart
And watch as I race free,
Against falcon, goshawk, eagle, kite.

Do not call for me. The wind
Flutes your voice into a song
That no more sings for me.

Louise

Christmas Poems

Snowed in and ill like everyone else it seems. Here are two small poetry offerings I have penned this morning for the season:

Melting

If snow sticks fast
to the fields and the firs
of the forest, then why
do I melt
at the sight of you?

The Wise

Were those men wise to follow a star
and scriptures not their own?
To step outside their comfort zone,
camel-stiff and weary, to worship
a foreign king wrapped not in royalty,
but only in godhead?

Merry Christmas!

Louise

Pink Sunrise

I looked out my bedroom window this morning and met beauty in the clouds. There have been some magnificent skies lately. It was sheer glory one day last week sitting in my car waiting for my daughter after school - the clouds were strips of gold. I so wanted to capture the moment, but I didn't have my camera. This morning, though, I took these snaps:

Of course they must inspire a couple more "droplet poems" (skies are becoming a theme: see droplets-from-sky).

Pink Dreams

Rising sleep-laden still from bed
pink comfort beckons me back
to dream-land in the sky.

And the one, being camera-less, that I can show you only in words:

Strips Of Gold

If I were a giantess I would
reach to the sparkling skies and rip
each strip of gold away
and sew them into a scarf
of light to warm my neck.

Louise

A Bird for the Future

The last day of AEDM. Like any anticipated period of time, this month promised to be long, reached the halfway mark and sped to its end like a runner sprinting his final lap.
For my last offering I have illustrated a short poem I wrote a while ago as a poetry workshop exercise, so it is nice to make use of it in another group setting, so to speak.



Here is the poem:

An Unknown Bird

The future threw a flash of colour past my window
Like an unknown bird caught in sudden flight
And finding my own wings, I rose and followed,
Forgetful of the day I'd planned -
A new one in my sight.

I feel this is appropriate for today for two reasons.
Firstly, those few snowflakes that fell around my visiting fox yesterday increased overnight changing my plans for today. This is the scene outside as I write. I know lots of you have snow too.

The second reason is this: this blog was still new when we began AEDM so now the month is over what will this blog become? The future is full of promise so please do stick around (like snow) and see what's still to come!
This month has been great. Thank you to everyone who has visited me here and offered such encouragement. Thank you to Leah for stretching me so much at the beginning of my art journey.
Let's follow that unknown bird into the future together!
love,
Louise

Droplets from the Sky

The sky is an endless source of fascination and beauty, always changing, whether blue, cloud-heavy or red with the sunset. Here are two droplet poems fallen from incredible skies:

Masterpiece

Crazy sky scribbled
into abstract art
by the hand of God
and the setting sun.

After the Storm

Stormclouds ruptured by Silver
Sun-rays - like a Second Coming
Without the Trumpet Call -
Rapturous.

Why don't you try capturing a sky in a few words? Aren't we human beings amazing? We can hold the entire expanse above us on our tongues (sorry, that last bit might be a little weird :) ).

Louise

What An Angel May Bring

The final week (for now!!) of Willowing's Art, Heart and Healing course gave us the task (or opportunity as I prefer to think of it) to create an Invitation Angel. This encourages us to be open to (rather than demand) something more in our lives. My angel immediately, though simply, offered LOVE.
Here are two photos of her taken in different light:

Now we all love a beautiful feminine angel, and I delight in mine. But actually she is a million miles from what I believe a true angel to be. An angel, for me, is a strong, powerful, awesome warrior and to the extent that one may ascribe gender to a heavenly being, male. He is to be feared - in a good way. Now a male presence like that would be something to celebrated as much as my gentle, beautiful love angel. He would be determined to bring love too.

How interesting to explore how radically different figures might carry the same message. The wonderful thing about this AEDM month (apart from the art I'm doing in it) is the inspiration that will be carried over into the months to come (I'd like to try painting my male angel).

Which leads me to another thing. It will be over soon (remarkably quickly, don't you think?) and that begs the question, what will this blog look like post AEDM? I am anticipating a certain melange of things - a continued display of Art as it happens , and of Poetry which is more where I started and also a return to my search for Beauty beyond the obvious (like my angel!). I also hope to explore some Philosophy of Life (such as the angelic guises in which love may come) and I really hope you will want to join my exploration because it will be so much more of a growth journey with your thoughts linking with mine.

So please hang around next month too and join in the journey. Let's go arm in arm together!
love,
Louise

Heart of Darkness

Yesterday was a dark day for me and I wanted to paint with black. So I decided to experiment further along the background route I began a few days ago and this is the result:

Needed to add a little colour to the black, then I found this old eclipse photograph which I turned round and discovered it looked a little like a heart, so suddenly I had my wording and the painting came together. Suddenly the darkness seemed to have something bright at its centre. Hope where I had expected to find only bleakness. Psychologically interesting.

Today I'm back to working on bigger projects, but until we next meet, here's a droplet poem for you:

Upon your absence

O my sweet, sweet love have you
fallen from the edge of the earth
as you searched wide for me?
Or have you in madness
just fallen for somebody new?

Louise

Messy Art Is Great!

I've missed a few days posting, but have been busy with art and general creativeness, so it's time for a catch up. I'm not displaying a piece for every day I've missed - some of my work is still in progress (isn't that great!), but here's what I've got so far:

I said, having painted Eve last week, that I needed to learn how to paint backgrounds. Well I got down and messy and loved it - threw the paint on, didn't panic when I wasn't happy, just threw on more until I was. This is what turned out:

I overcame two lifelong aversions: tearing up books and losing control. It felt great!

I've found that it's ok to mess up photos too. It's exciting to be going mixed media too:

I'm 20 years older and greyer than this photo, but who cares - it's how you feel inside that counts, isn't girls?!

And finally a little poem droplet:

Dragon's Breath

If I could breathe the fire of dragons
I would not need to catch my breath
At the thought of you.

Louise X

Poems and Pictures

I've missed a few days, but have not been idle! So below are 4 offerings from ADEM days 6-9.
Day 6 brought a droplet poem:

Stormclouds

The slate tiles that we generally call clouds
roof in the sky, but provide
no shelter from the storm they herald.

Day 7, a face:

Day 8, another poem written on the train on my way home from work in London. Due to disruptions I spent longer travelling than I did working yesterday. Glad I had a poem to write!

Train Home

As the cramped carriage hurtles homeward
how can you tell
if the man whose knees mirror yours
has a tender tongue or a harsh hand?

How can you tell
if the woman whose eyes hide behind dark orbs
nurses open wounds, carries secrets
or basks in a moment of serenity?

Today, day 9, I have painted a tulip with watercolour crayons:

Hope you like these. X

Yellow Leaves - AEDM days 3 & 4

I didn't manage to post yesterday - crisis time at home kept me away from the computer - but I did carve out a little time for a quick painting inspired by the gorgeous trees at the top of my road.

Trees were the only thing I could paint when I was at school, but I'm afraid I'm well out of practice now, especially when squeezed amidst a crisis.
Today I'm working on my bigger art project for Willowing which I'm hoping to maybe finish tomorrow and then show you...
So today comes my first little droplet poem on the same autumn theme:

Yellow Leaves

Hidden wind chimes sing accompaniment
To the leaves that fall in yellow
Showers from the beeches at the roadside.

If they're short enough I'll tweet my droplet poems too. (Link to my twitter page at the bottom of this blog). X

Mini Art and Droplet Poems

Call it a sign. Call it serendipity. Call it an opportunity.
Like many opportunities I almost passed it by. But then I chose not to. This is what a beautiful life is all about: grasping opportunities, embracing what they bring.

Last night I stumbled across Art Every Day Month due to begin today, 1st November. It being the eve of the month it was a perfect time to sign up, so why did I hesitate?
Because it seems like a big ask - Art Every Day - even for a month. And I am still doing Art, Heart and Healing. And I am so new at this - a baby artist, not a month old.
So I hesitated. Then I took the bull by the horns and added my name, commiting myself to the opportunity.
Being still a babe in arms, the steps I take over this next month will be baby ones. But that's ok. Making something manageable, makes it possible. So with perhaps one or two exceptions, I intend to embrace baby art.


Yesterday my eldest daughter and I let ourselves loose at an art store, beginning our stamp collection and stocking up on a few other goodies besides, some water soluable wax pastels, some shiny bronze mosaic tiles.
So I will practise using our hoard on pieces of mini-art, small experiments. Here is today's offering:

The original is only an inch across - I've just added colour to a stamp. I know now I won't manage to do the art and post every day, but I hope to offer you a fair selection with some frequency.


Of course my first artistic love is poetry and that comes in mini versions too, so I would like to try my hand at that as part of my art month, interspersing the art of words and pictures as the month progresses.
Back in the summer (remember the summer, now the nights are closing in early?) during my holiday in Normandy, France, I picked up a wonderful book at a vide grenier (that's an empty attic sale, garage or car boot depending on your origins). It is called "Il pleut des poemes" and it is an anthology of mini verse, collected together by Jean-Marie Henry and illustrated by Zau. Each poem is a snippet - two lines long, six at the very most. A brief picture in words. Here is the introductory poem by Jean-Pierre Simeon:

Le poeme est une goutte d'eau,
il donne au desert l'idee de la fleur.


A poem is a water droplet,
it gives the desert the thought of a flower.

(my translation)

So here's to mini-art and droplet poems! (Glasses clink, can't you hear them?)

Autumn - Where My Poems Spring From!!

I have discovered L.L. Barkat's On In And Around Mondays writing link and it reminded me of where my poetry sprang from.
As a teenager I wrote anguished poetry, as certain souls do. Then I grew out of it for a while. Four years ago I grew back into it (much of it still anguished, but not always). I ventured back via Autumn leaves - my first poem then swirled with the colours of Autumn, weaved into a royal rug of red and golden hues. Since then the weather and the seasons have been a strong element in my verse.
 But today's offering is in keeping with where I am around this Monday (yesterday). I write this looking out at my Autumn garden, here in Essex, England.

          The Autumn Garden

The rain is light, but unhurried as if wishing
To be somewhere else entirely.
Drops catch on the four webs
Which drape the iron fence,
shimmering.

The bare patch in the yard
Where the summer's swimming pool
Stripped the grass from the earth
Is sprouting again, green heads
Like lost friends returning.

A squirrel, settled migrant, interloper,
Tight-ropes the bough of the cherry
Severing leaves. A blue tit
Emerges from a drainage gap
In the brick wall.

Beneath the misplaced gum, stones
Mark tiny graves where the children
Buried platys and guppies
From our tank after disease
Swept through.

The rosemary bush in the southern bed
Lifts the upturned triangle of its branches
In welcome, but the rain
Still reluctant, ungenial,
Peters out...

So now you know where I am as I send out my posts.
If you write poetry, what was your springboard? Was it the weather, a season, a mood, a drama in your life? Do share the story.
And remember to check out the other poems and seasonal writings linked to L.L. Barkat's link above.

Schools Fail To Breed Young Poets - But They Can't Silence Us!

I was sooooo looking forward to today. My daughter was one of 4 children from her primary school to be invited to a poetry workshop for the day. They a needed a mum to accompany the children so of course I volunteered - even poetry skills for 10 year olds would be something I could benefit from (not too proud here). We were going to learn how to express something wonderful through children's poetry - not an area I've ever ventured into before.
But despair! The day has been cancelled because not a sufficient number of schools signed up to support it!!! If our schools don't promote the wonder of words strung together in surprising and  revelatory ways, then how will our future poets hone their budding skills? My girl and I are beyond disappointment.
So I have tried my hand at an out-of-character little ditty. Who needs the guidance of a professional anyway? (Maybe me you'll say after you read my feeble offering...) So here it is, but be sure to read it with a lilt to your voice:

The Seas

The blue seas, the red seas, the every-type of colour seas.

Rise on the swell, fall back from the land,

Swash and buckle, ripple the sand.

Ripple the sand on the clean sea shore,

Lift the waves high, smooth the sea floor.

The blue seas, the red seas, the every-type of colour seas.

Salt the earth well, wash away the foam.

Blast the world with colour wherever you roam.

That one's for my beautiful girl. I'm going to see if she would like to write a poem too...

If you've never written a children's poem, why don't you try it too. Post them here - I'd love to read them. It's our poetry workshop day after all!