I had something different in mind for this week’s blog. But then what I was working on looks a bit weak to say the least! So I am going to write about what I really want to do. More drawing and more writing.
This week was a return to poetry meetings. It felt right. Here is the poem I wrote for the meeting. It is dedicated to Richard who wrote briefly about the last breath of a moth. It is also about coming to terms about my feelings about poetry. I think it was a good idea for me to take a few months away from the other poets.
For Richard S. Webster
It used to matter
this need to be familiar
with the expectations of poetry
and my failure to understand.
It used to really matter.
Until I let it all go
stopped asking questions
so I could listen to the story
of a dying moth.
I am still writing, still working on my book about letters and getting a poem or two down on paper. But not having to worry whether I understand the words of others has made a difference. They understand their words and whether I do or not makes little difference.
Thinking about the other thing I need to get back to…drawing…brought me into the den to look through some of my favorite sketch books. Remember this one very long concertina book of creatures hidden in among the contact prints of Eucalyptus leaves? I thank the Australian student for her generosity in making me several to bring home….Lorraine O’Brien.
I used others for The Fairy Book and The Stoat Story among a few more. But today I found one more with lovely contact prints by Lorraine and it is just waiting for me to get busy and add my own imagination to. Look at these pages!
Maybe small poems tucked into the pockets at the bottom. It is the same size as the other book with all the animals, so there is quite a few pages to fill.
I also found on the shelf all the Haiku poetry sketchbooks that was instigated by friends in Australia as a way of still working together when we were so far apart. These were fun to do and made me think in syllables of Haiku based on the drawing subject. I kept going long after the others stopped so have many of these journals that I made for this project.
There are several of these Haiku books. Each one held two month’s worth of daily entries. I miss the routine of that. Something about the expectations I put on myself just to follow through with. I miss that. Now it seems all I expect of myself is to get 8,000 steps in five days a week. I need to do better than that. I need to sit with a pencil in hand filling up waiting pages of wonderful drawing paper.
Anyway those are my plans. I will let you know how it goes.
Til later…