Art in the Garden

These days I am doing much more writing and thinking and reading than working on my fiber arts. So I haven't really had much new to share here. Today I begin my intensive focus on Saori weaving, so hopefully that will change.  Meanwhile I'll post some things this week about what I have been doing

This weekend, my participation in a show called Art in the Garden gave me solid support for expanding my work focus - expanding, rather than shifting, for I fully intend to keep working on my writing daily as well.  The show was a lot of fun. I sold a few things and sat in a nice wisteria gazebo and wove on my small tri-loom when I wasn't chatting.

The chatting was important. I got feedback on my work, and had the opportunity to talk about it, about how I work and a little bit about my aesthetic.

Most fun of all, was meeting a 6 year old named Liam (center, in the pic above) who visited me as I was setting up, asked a lot of questions about how things were created, listened well to the answers and became my promoter for the day, after receiving an advance payment of a felted river rock. I heard he was running about saying, "There's a famous artist over there. Go see!" He even brought me apples and lemonade when I mentioned I was a bit hungry.  Every artist should have a solicitous, attentive assistant like that!

It is also lovely to do a show with an attentive organizer! Heather Wolf owns the gift shop Willow here in Terre Haute where this event took place. She made sure I had the table and chair I needed, space with some shade, and brought me salad (with a choice of dressing - great gazebo service!) and water.  She also made up nice signs to post at each artist's spot.

If you've been reading this blog awhile, you've probably seen everything in these photos! This was a fun set-up and didn't take long at all. I feel like I kept it relatively simple. Sometimes I think my displays can be rather overwhelmingly busy and the beauty of an individual object gets lost. 

NaPoWriMo2013 Report

Did it!  In fact I ended up with 31 poems.  While I can't share any of them here, I can share this screen shot of my Scrivener application window and the files:

Of the 31 poems, I feel that at least 8-10 are solid and as final a draft as any of my poems ever is. Another dozen are worth spending some time revising and a handful are more possibilities than poems.

I'm quite excited right now about my work flow and what my focus for NaPoWriMo has given me - the habit of sitting down to write every single morning.  For many of the mornings, I did arise from the writing session with my poem completed. For most of them, it was close and I would return to it here and there during the day. 

I'm going with the energy generated by the past month and continuing to write every morning. It is very nice to create a morning ritual that gets me in this chair and, the best part, signals the Muse it's time to visit. It sounds odd, but this has happened for me every year I've completed NaPoWriMo.  

If I sit to write in the same time and place every day, She knows where to find me.

It doesn't matter what time I have chosen, only the habit of it.  One year I was writing at midnight. The next year in the late morning after walking two miles.

This year my routine goes like this: wake up (some time between 7 and 9 a.m, very inconsistent on this), lie in bed opening up to what I might write today, get up,put kettle on,  pee, brush teeth, fix hot lemon/elderberry water, start oatmeal, feed Lily.  There might be some variation in there (a shower, getting dressed, a moment of Tai Chi), but those are the basics of my morning pre-writing routine.

Then I sit to write - always starting out in MacJournal.  I make a new page each month for "Poetry Notes" and there I free-associate and play with words and phrases, ideas and concepts.  I might go back and forth between that page and my journal page for the month.  At some point, there is a click and a few words partner up with one another and another joins them and....poem birth begins. I did not stop until I had at least the bones of a poem.  At that point, the poem gets to move to its own page in a Scrivener folder.

So where am I going from here?  My intention is to continue writing out of this morning routine, and starting this month, I am going to use some of the morning time for organizing and submitting my work to journals and contests. 

And I am going to apply what I've learned in the NaPoWriMo process to my fiber art.  I have not been working on anything new in so long - I feel sort of paralyzed by all my unfinished projects and all the different kinds of techniques I want to work with.  I have a lot of supplies, materials, ideas - and I can't seem to work on anything. But I know I need that work- that tactile, kinesthetic creative work - to balance the cerebral work of poetry.

Dan James at Coach Creative Space asked me a simple question yesterday in the conversation about this post on A Big Creative Yes, the blog associated with CCS:

"What if you had to chose just one artform and focus on that exclusively for a month? What might it be?"

I immediately thought, weaving. Saori weaving.

So that's what I'm readying myself for:  SaWeMo.  Thirty afternoons focused on Saori weaving. 
I'm excited!

Max Ehrmann 2013

 I am brogging today (brag blogging) or maybe blagging (blog bragging.)  Either way, it is my own horn being tooted here.

I am so happy to announce that I won the Grand Prize this year in the 2013 Max Ehrmann Poetry Competition.
And yes, that's again.  I won the Grand Prize and a second prize in the 2011 contest and a third prize in the 2012.

That's seven judges all together over the years that have chosen my work.  I keep reminding myself of that,  hoping to dispel the shadow of fraudulence I have when I identify as 'a poet' without any significant list of publications to back me up.


The theme this year was chosen to connect with the current Year of the River celebration we are having here in Terre Haute. Poetry was invited on the subject of the Wabash River or its watershed, rivers or water in general.  I chose to submit a poem that was simply written to capture a memory of a rainy day in my past.  The judge for this year was Chris Forhan, and we were treated to a reading by him after the awards were announced.

My poem follows. What is very gratifying to me is that I almost formatted it more traditionally, capitalized, etc. But it looked and felt horrible to me. This poem needed to be in just this form.  I do hope the formatting will be retained when I hit publish. Thank you for reading my brog.


         rain, leaves, longing

some time ago: a city
        by the sea
a low sky       
              gray forever as far
         and the water.

the water falling
            on the water
                 on the water falling
on the red tiles
                 on the rooftops
on the leaves
                     which trembled with it.

longing:  the waiting before birth,
before  water
                breaking.

how doors opened on the garden.
how a child napped in the next room.
how i loved the presence of small precious things.

how the word
            for the ritual of the tea ceremony      
simply means “hot water for tea.”
the tea the milk the sugar     the blessing
              of lentil soup    ginger     apples.

thunder so far away it’s only dream thunder.

but there        then:
the growing in me
               near the sky by the sea
before the opened doors
           the doors that opened on
          the garden
                     the showered earth singing
        the dripping things
the trembling leaves again and again
           the green green
                                       heart
of  water
                  beating.


---Zann Carter [2013]

National Poetry Month Is On

 Poets, rev your metaphors, get your enjambment on!

National Poetry Month began yesterday.
I'm doing NaPoWriMo again this year, but I won't be posting the poems.

That pesky "previously published."  This year I will also be making a concerted effort at publication, and many journals define "previously published" as published anywhere, including blogs.

I can write about writing my poems though....


 Wrote a poem yesterday. About place.
 Hope to write another one today. And tomorrow....and the next day....the next....for thirty days.
 I've done this twice and to complete it does many things for me. It gives me a few solid poems and a lot of first drafts to work with. And there is something about finishing this project that sets an energy for me to finish others. A completed NaPoWriMo is more than the sum of its thirty poems.

Currently I'm reading "The Triggering Town /Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing" by Richard Hugo.

Here's a bit I like from the first essay, Writing off the Subject:

"...Don't be afraid to jump ahead. There are a few people who become more interesting the longer they stay on a single subject. But most people are like me, I find. The longer they talk about one subject, the duller they get. Make the subject of the next sentence different from the subject of the sentence you just put down. Depend on rhythm, tonality, and the music of language to hold things together.  It is impossible to write meaningless sequences. In a sense the next thing always belongs. In the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout...."


For your poetry needs this month and all the months after:

http://www.poets.org/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Tender Week

So today I’m having one of those “i should be doing X, but I don’t feel like doing X and I feel guilty as hell for not doing X and for getting up so late I feel most of the day is gone….etc., etc.” days.

And then I’m being strongly drawn to acknowledging this as the week before the anniversary of Patrick’s death, a week that is a pause of sorts. A week out of time. A week where maybe I should be kind to myself and not judgmental. A week where I should just sit with the wounded part of me.  Sit and allow safe passage for what wants to flow through. 

The more I think along those lines, the more right it seems. It is at these points on the Spiral, when we come ‘round again to times of tragic events, that we learn most and grow stronger.

And I have new tools this year - a set of stones specifically gathered by Athena, Sage Goddess for grief and loss: moss agate, rhodochrosite, apache tear obsidian, and one gorgeous hunk of quartz, to power it up.

 

The Hermit card is being studied in my Tarot group this week. 

My soul card. 

A card about seeking light in solitude.

 from The Wild Unknown Tarot
(new printing in progress)

 from The Wheel of Change Tarot
(sadly op, no firm date on reprint)

...And my Nana Buruku  from Dancing Goddess Dolls

Sweet Honey in the Rock.




Oh, yes, I have Tools.



)O(

Downton Abbey Season 3 Finale

****** SPOILER WARNING *****



Whether it's a good book or a compelling movie or television show, we  invest some of ourselves in the lives and circumstances of the characters. It's Storytelling with all the implications of that - entertainment, yes, but the best storytelling draws us in and causes us to identify with the characters and the situations in which they find themselves. The best storytelling takes us on a journey with other lives and, for our investment, gives us something  with which to return home. Something useful to our real lives. The best storytelling has a healing effect, even if it has taken us on a journey of immense pain and sorrow.

Unfortunately, the last episode of Downton Abbey simply left us in shock, and gave us no blanket, no iota of comfort or first aid. Not even the wrenching witnessing of others getting the terrible news, sharing our shock. No, instead we got to have the awful knowledge, the horrid visual of Matthew lying there crushed and bleeding and see everyone in their last moments of blissful ignorance, knowing what we know.  Knowing they don’t know and feeling just rotten, and not seeing our feelings mirrored, not being allowed the catharsis. The best storytelling is cathartic.

 I think we could have handled Matthew’s death, even following so closely on Sibyl’s sad fate ( even another juxtaposition of sudden, unexpected death with the joy of birth) if they had not decided to make us wait a year for the consolation of seeing lives begin to go on, however bereaved. One more episode, one more 90-minute or 2 hour episode. A funeral. Some ascerbic wisdom from the Dowager Countess Violet.Something to let us grieve a bit with the family.

Yes, it’s all a fiction. But the best of fiction is Storytelling, healing and cathartic. We have been drawn in to be fascinated with and to care about Downton Abbey’s inhabitants. Last night’s season finale was just….mean.


picture found here

What IS it??

I am so pleased to say that after some time of not-knitting (I know!), I am at it regularly again.  First it was the video-watching-sock-spree (still going, but at a slower pace) and now I'm involved in a mystery KAL (knit-along) through the Ravelry Interlacements group. I'm not sure where that link will take you if you're not a Ravelry member nor a member of that group within the site, but thought I'd post it anyway and send you exploring.

Martha,  at my lys RiverWools, has gotten in oodles of lovely Interlacements yarn - a hand-dyed yarn that comes in some interesting textures and fibers, and is priced very reasonably for the yardage.  I bought a couple of skeins of Irish Linen, a cotton, flax and rayon blend, and it sat here for a week looking pretty. But it was mum about what it wanted to be.

On Tuesday, I popped into the shop for Open Knitting, something I hadn't done in a great while, and when I asked Jennifer and Susan what they were working on, I got the answer, "I don't know" and they told me about the mystery KAL, where no one knows what they are knitting and the pattern instructions are revealed in chunks every two weeks or so.

I was especially taken by the fact that, at least in the beginning, the pattern stitch is done with two very different needle sizes - alternating a row done with #13 with a row done with #6.  Well, I could hear that yarn calling from home, saying, "Me! Me! I want to be....whatever that is!"

And so it begins. In the colorway "Turkish Carpet." Seventeen inches of this: