Hi! I just dropped by to let you all know that I have a new poem and accompanying collage that was published inThe Winged Moon magazine, a beautifully curated collection of poetry and art.
This online publication just keeps getting better, and I’m proud to be in such great company. The quality of the poetry and art is just astounding! I encourage you to check out the publication and see all the beauty it has to offer. Issue three was completely inspired by nature.
In the second half of 2020 I started a book-long erasure poetry and collage project: The Summer Book project.
I have been mining Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book for poetic lines that express the isolation of living with a bewildering chronic illness and the struggle to keep a sense of purpose. This came about after reading a line in the introduction about how “an island can be dreadful for someone from the outside” and how it “has no need of you”. I just couldn’t decide if I’m the person the island has no need of or if I’m the island.
Progress has been slow, because I’m constantly distracted by a million things. Then there was some growth.
I wrote a post a while back “Where to go from here“. I talk about how I realised that this victim narrative was keeping me trapped in my discomfort. So now I’m making a conscious effort to draw out the positive instead of the negative.
I’d like to share some of these newer erasure works with you today 😊
Something lovely walked on music, and everywhere was a drawing full of gold.The minutes poured into her hand and opened up the night.Follow me. We’re safe on this island.Calm hours have smooth spines, as sleek and pale as the sea of summer.A crack turned into a canyon of peace and quiet.
In the early of summer of 2020, I made a digital artwork featuring a doe. This was during the first pandemic lockdown.
We all saw the images of animals expanding their foraging or hunting grounds into urban territories, while we were mostly locked inside our houses. But I couldn’t help thinking about how quickly we’ve regained our terrain and have sent animals scurrying to the boundaries again. How soon we forget in our hunger to return to a “normal state”.