More ‘Random’ thoughts

Posted on April 5, 2011 by SallyJ

Setting up this very small event, the book signing, at Waterstones has had many more aspects than I imagined. Setting the date and time was the easy part – persuading them to stock the book a little harder.

The volume is being sold at the Runnymede Gallery and as of yesterday at the Chertsey Bookshop, an independent store that is thriving against all the odds – good for them and long may it last. While I was talking to the manager, another poet approached me and suggested we set up a local poetry group. We have exchanged email addresses, and that is an exciting possibility for the future.

My next task was setting up the link to Help for Heroes and their organisation and expertise made that relatively easy too. My skills were stretched when I was asked to put together posters and handouts. What to say? What look should I aim for?

I do some graphic design work for a charity, The Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group, ( the Manhood Peninsula is in West Sussex, near Chichester), and have worked with the publications team to put together a series of illustrated leaflets for walks in the Selsey locality as well as posters, banners, a logo and newsletters. The hard part of this was getting to grips with the Creative Suite software – there were three brains working on the design, but initially I was the one with InDesign and Illustrator and so had to figure out the way to make our ideas actually happen. The Dummies guide was invaluable, as were the Adobe user forums and other online design communities I found. I know many of the experts despaired of my ignorance, but nonetheless they were incredibly helpful.

However, back to Random! I am so lucky to have Gary Rogers’ brilliant painting as a cover design, so that would be the centrepiece of the material – I have absolutely discounted putting a photo on the posters – but what next? I find myself struggling for words – should they be chatty or formal? Oddly I have also encountered a deep seated reluctance to write my name BIG on the material. In fact, I have just referred to myself as a local poet. Now what is that all about I wonder?

Help for Heroes’ logo, which I am allowed to use, has all manner of restrictions about the way it is used, so the material has to be approved by the charity – no pressure there then…

Then there is the suggestion that I found on a site advising authors about ‘events’ – would it be too presumptuous for me to have some matching bookmarks printed? I like the idea, would pick one up if there were some on offer in a bookshop, but am I real enough as a poet to have some of my own on offer?

As I have written this I have recognised that the root of the matter is that actually, I really don’t believe in myself as a writer / poet. I’m signing off now and taking myself aside for a jolly good talking to!

Posted in book signing event, Help for heroes, poet, poetry, Uncategorized, Waterstones | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Anapestically Over Exposed

Posted on April 4, 2011 by SallyJ

I know I need to be more disciplined in my poetry – take more time to refine and hone what I write. I must also stop dodging the issue of metre and the self talk that has led me to believe that ‘I don’t do iambs‘! Truly, I do find it easier to use a trochaic foot most of the time, but is this because I am too lazy to find a different way?

The One Stop Poetry exercise today could have been written specifically for me and yet twice I have shuffled off to do other things and twice returned, knowing I need to work at getting better.

So, I took yesterday’s One Shoot poem, ‘Over Exposed’, https://sallyjblackmore.co.uk/other-poems/over-exposed/, and tried to rewrite it using iambs, or even in anapests -I always give myself an escape hatch!

I have managed one verse. It is not the same poem, but holds part of the same message. I think it is anapestic, but I may be manipulating the lines to convince myself I have done what I set out to do.

Every click leaves me less of myself,
My white skin , tissue thin, is like clay
To be moulded in your preferred way.
I agree with the wise men of old
on that film you have trapped my soul.

Maybe I’ll manage more and better after my Tai Chi lesson…

 

Posted in One Stop Poetry, poet, poetry, Uncategorized, writer, writing | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Mothers’ day

Posted on April 3, 2011 by SallyJ

Today’s blog will not have great appeal to anyone except my family but I have to write about how lucky I am!

I heard from Dan in Afghanistan. Katie sent me a wonderful card, with such a thoughtful message that it left me with damp eyes and Lou rang too.

Thank you, all of you for being so thoughtful, and just being great! I am blessed and one lucky mother!

Posted in Family | Tagged | 3 Comments

Rag Tag Saturday

Posted on April 2, 2011 by SallyJ

Just finished the portrait Masterclass run by Caroline Bays at the Chertsey Gallery and boy was that intense! She is a great teacher, patient and extremely knowledgeable as well as having a grand sense of fun There were six ‘pupils’ and we did three seven minute poses, two five minutes and three two minute ones before settling down to the long pose with four hours left to produce a finished portrait.

The short poses are so difficult – having to catch an angle, an expression, even making the eyes and the nose the right size and distances apart, takes so much concentration, such sustained ‘looking’ at the model.

Then the long pose is as tough, if not tougher because it seems to me that the more I look, the less I know about what I’m seeing. What is worse I have to render it in colour. Drawing I can just about get my head around, but the way colour works is a completely different language for me. The mixing, the tonal values, warm and cool, colour perspective, the way one colour changes when set against another, achieving shape with colour – all new skills to learn.

Then there is the business of the likeness our efforts bear to the model. If I paint a tree or a flower, it just has to look generically like the specimen I am depicting. Sadly this is not so for a person – it would appear that my generic ‘face’ just won’t cut it!

But before all of this comes an equally puzzling task …just how does this easel go up again?

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Untitled poem

Posted on April 1, 2011 by SallyJ

We lurch from paucity to plenty;
from ahimsa to inhumane;
great charity to brutality;
our world – so full of strife and pain
swings, in wide and outspread arc
and yet its balance can maintain
and not stumble in time or space.
Our world, so full of strife and pain,
its wonder and its vast potential
to nurture, delight and sustain,
makes enlightenment essential.
The world, so full of strife and pain,
needs us all, with hearts wide open,
to set the stamp on our domain;
to teach, protect, encourage, pardon
and free it from the strife, the pain.

Posted in poet, poetry, Uncategorized, writer, writing | Tagged | 9 Comments

Take a repetitive task…

Posted on March 31, 2011 by SallyJ

This week’s exercise for one of the writing groups I attend is to take a repetitive but rhythmic task and make it into poetry…my list of repetitive tasks so far is less than inspiring:
hoovering the floor
mowing the lawn,
polishing the dining room table,
chewing toffee,
a tug of war
hemming a dress
ironing a sheet

Nothing so far takes my fancy. I hate times like this. Normally there is something tugging at a corner of my imagination, but this time there is nothing.

Now, I could just say, ‘bother it’, and move on. It is not as if the exercise is compulsory, but I believe that I must apply discipline to my writing.  It would be very easy to be self indulgent and write only when the words are dripping from my fingertips but I know that if I am to take myself seriously, I have to work harder. I have to be able to make it happen.

I can hear the counsellor who attempted to help me combat the M.E. say that this driven attitude is exactly why I fell prey to the disease in the first place…and I still disagree with her.

Surely the striving is a big part of the end product, the reward is satisfaction of a job done as well as possible? If I allow myself to just push this aside because it does not instantly inspire me, then I am playing at being a writer, pretending to be a poet.

It is inevitable that some ideas will be more fertile than others, some pieces almost write themselves, but I know I have to develop enough craft to just get on and write!

 

Addendum

I decided to write about having to plait my daughter’s hair on school mornings – repetitive and traumatic for both of us! See the poem (first draft I hastily add) at

https://sallyjblackmore.co.uk/other-poems/monday-morning-hair/

Posted in ME, CFS, poet, poetry, Uncategorized, writer, writing, writing groups | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

How much can be imagination?

Posted on March 30, 2011 by SallyJ

As I posted my poem on One Shot Wednesday on One Stop Poetry.com  I wondered yet again how much it is allowable to embellish what started out as ‘life writing’.

My poem (https://sallyjblackmore.co.uk/other-poems/the-heather-tweed-cable-knit-jumper/) started out as an exercise to write ‘in the style of’ Maurice Devitt’s poem ‘The Watch’. No problem there. Yet as I started to write about an imaginary jumper belonging to my father, I strayed closer and closer to a truth, and my conscience began to prickle.

Just how much of the truth can morally be revealed when some of the prime characters are still alive to be hurt or angered? Of course, this is an old discussion – one which raged long and hard on the forum of the OU writing courses I studied.

I thought I had sorted it out to my own satisfaction long ago, yet had to remind myself as I wrote the jumper poem , that the truth I know is only my truth. It is as I remember and not necessarily even recognisable to the other parties as anything remotely real or truthful.

And so, I followed my poem to its conclusion. It is fiction. I think.

Posted in Life writing, One Stop Poetry, poet, poetry, writer, writing | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Things I noticed before lunch time today!

Posted on March 29, 2011 by SallyJ

Pasque flowers

 

When it’s raining, the dogs all walk in different directions when they come in with wet paws, the better to spread as much mud around the floor as possible.

A little wren was having a wonderful shower as she scurried in and out of the wallflowers. She was almost wriggling with delight. (see the poem this inspired  at https://sallyjblackmore.co.uk/triolet/the-wren).

It is always better to have my specs on when I am vacuuming the carpet and cleaning the bathroom. I am short-sighted and I thought I had done a good job until I looked at it with my glasses on my nose.

Conversely, it is much better to take my specs off when I trudge into the garden with the dogs when it is drizzling, or very soon I am peering through and around spots and blobs on the lenses.

One of the most enjoyable things is to be dressed in comfy ‘house’ trousers and to curl up with various dogs on and around me, sip a cup of coffee and watch the rain dappling the windows.

Three very fat pigeons, crouched beneath the shrub next to one of the bird tables look for all the world like gossiping goodwives at a church meeting.

It takes half an hour for the Jack Russells, all three of them white and moulting ferociously, to find the newly hoovered rug and then roll on it until it once again sports a light, all-over, furry covering.

The peace lily that I moved into direct daylight a short while ago already has new leaves appearing.

The Pasque flowers in the garden have sprung into bloom overnight…it must be the rain that has encouraged them.

It’s high time I took the red chilli (Christmas) wreath down in the hallway and replaced it with something more seasonal!

How much more I notice when I am trying to take note of what is happening around me.

Sitting still, with no sound to be heard other than the gentle snores of sleeping dogs makes it very easy to doze and daydream the day away.

Shake a leg – it’s time for lunch or the whole day will escape while I sit here pondering.

Posted in birds, dogs, poetry, Spring, Uncategorized, wildlife, writer, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Room

Posted on March 28, 2011 by SallyJ

photo via istock.com

I just need a small room, maybe a shed
A bare space, plain painted, lilac and white;
fitted with shelves where my books will be spread;
large windows, uncurtained to usher in light;
A deep squashy chair to curl in, at ease,
Feet tucked beneath me, eyelids closed tight,
to listen to birdsong, hear waves on the breeze,
Chat to the cast whose stories I’ll write.
I’ll need a big table, solid and stout
for laptop and paper, a rainbow of pens,
to think, to dabble, to scribble without
doorbell or phone line and yes, maybe then
the idea that’s tickling, tormenting my brain
will flood from my fingers, like storm driven rain.

Posted in inspiration, poet, poetry, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Lullaby

Posted on March 27, 2011 by SallyJ

One shot poetry image by Roger Allen Baut

This lullaby is my effort for One Shot Sunday

Spirit of water wash over me
and with each returning sigh
lift me, drift me further
from my fears;
balance me deftly in your salty
arms; spin me,
spin me round
and round again, a languid,
lazy,
drifting curl.

Cleanse the twisting, burning words
from my over-furnished mind; scour
my guilt as we tumble together,
woman and water
and water and woman;
float me to
and fro
and to;
wrap my weary limbs with weed;
lead me home.

Little by little
strand me on the silver sand;
rock me,
lap on watery lap,
slip,
slap,
slip,
sleep.

Posted in imagism, inspiration, natural world, One Stop Poetry, poet, poetry, sea, water, writer, writing | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments