BLACKBIRD

 

You woke me.

Your voice sharp

with vibrant zest,

an alarm call

from the top of the apple tree

urging me to get up

and celebrate the spirit

of this post-rain morning.

Sun-rays like fingers

open the eyes

of your sleepy babies 

in their ivy nest.

We are waiting for breakfast,

and still you sing and trill on.

 

JTD, April 27,2015

CLOWNING ABOUT

I've always enjoyed clowning about and have been known to be especially wild after a few drinks. How refreshing then to be wild without the alcohol. Holly Stoppit was brought up in the circus and for the past 15 years has been entertaining people, running workshops and groups in the art of clown. She is also a drama therapist and understands the earthquake potential of releasing our inner clown.
If you want a weekend of madness and mayhem, fun and frolic, creativity and connectedness and be in a pair of very safe hands,
see https://www.facebook.com/hollystoppitworkshops

skindancing

Last week I attended the launch of Susan Richardson's new collection of poetry, skindancing (Cinnamon Press, 2015)  at the Waterloo Tearooms in the Wyndham Arcade  Cardiff.

   'skindancing is themed around human-animal metamorphosis and our dys/functional relationship with the wild/our animal selves. Its sources of inspiration include shapeshifting tales from a number of different cultures, from Inuit to Celtic, Native American to Norse, as well as Susan's ongoing engagement with shamanic journeying. As with Susan's previous collection, Where the Air is Rarefied, it features illustrations by visual artist Pat Gregory, who also created the mesmerising cover.'
     Susan was my creative writing tutor for several years and helped me write my book Soothmoother's saga. She is a brilliant performer and her poetry is poignant, funny, bawdy, surreal,  moving and quite unique; to use just a few describing words. The intricate and clever pencil drawings by Pat Gregory contain Susan's world within the framework of Celtic knots and patterns.

The Exhibition of poems and images goes on until Monday 1st of June.

Then it transfers to Waterloo Tea, Stanwell Road, Penarth and will be on until Thursday 2nd of July 2015.  

 On Tuesday 16th of June Susan is reading and performing her work in Penarth. If you want to be entertained and hear poetry from a mistress of the craft -Don't miss it!*
For further info: see www.susanrichardsonwriter.co.uk/poet/skindancing
A3 prints of Pat's drawings can be had for a mere £15 for black and white and £20 for a coloured front cover print. They can be ordered from patj-gregory@gmail.com

*Waterloo Tea has a lovely selection of teas served in ceramic pots and delicious cakes are very good too.

WRITERS IN THE PARK SIZZLES

Writers in the Park, the group I set up in January this year has taken on a life of its own. We finished for the summer last month and members are keen to encourage each other to go on writing. Members have set up a closed Facebook page. One member is sharing a 5minute writing exercise each day on it which is getting some to write and others to think about writing.
        Today we went on a Writers walk along the River Taff. The subject was a Fungi Foray and one of the members Jane, who has some knowledge in this area lead us to look closely in patches of rotting wood for shrivelled jews' ears and other fungi. She showed us part of the old Glamorgan Canal and inspired us to think about its industrial history-the horses that pulled the barges of coal coming down from Merthyr and questions as to who carved the building stones, how many men did it take to lift them, why are there three arches in the wall, was it a house, an engine room, a store house. What was life like for the working classes who built the means for landowners to become rich?
      Lyn took photos of unfurling ferns, patches of violets, primroses, and a selfie of us on  a grate over the Radyr Weir (was afraid we might be writers in the water). Then as Jane left us suddenly a turquoise kingfisher darted along the river, not once but twice. I hadn't seen one since just after my hip operation nearly four years ago.
     'In Arthurian legend the Fisher King, or the Wounded King, is the latest in a long line charged with keeping the Holy Grail. Versions of his story vary widely, but he is always wounded in the legs or groin and incapable of moving on his own. In the Fisher King legends, he becomes impotent and unable to perform his task himself, and he also becomes unable to father or support a next generation to carry on after his death. His kingdom suffers as he does, his impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a barren wasteland. All he is able to do is fish in the river near his castle, Corbenic, and wait for someone who might be able to heal him. Healing involves the expectation of the use of magic. Knights travel from many lands to heal the Fisher King, but only the chosen can accomplish the feat. This is Percival in earlier stories; in later versions, he is joined by Galahad and Bors.'  (Wikipaedia)   As Barbara said afterwards it was a perfect gift  to end our stroll.
     Next week for the summer months and without my input, Writers in the Park becomes Writers in the Pub as the writers take on more initiative and organise themselves to meet weekly at a sizzlers' pub for breakfast, chatting and (supposedly!) writing. They are also providing a mutual support network encouraging each other and friendships are blossoming. I'm a proud Mum!
    

THE IMAGE AS A BURDEN -MARLENE DUMAS

'Marlene Dumas is one of the most prominent painters working today. Her intense, psychologically charged works explore themes of sexuality, love, death and shame, often referencing art history, popular culture, politics and current affairs.
     ‘Secondhand images’, she has said, ‘can generate first-hand emotions.’ Dumas never paints directly from life, instead choosing to use pre-existing images for her source material. Her subjects are drawn from both public and personal references and include her daughter and herself, as well as recognisable faces such as Amy Winehouse, Naomi Campbell, Princess Diana, even Osama bin Laden. The results are often intimate and at times controversial, where politics become erotic and portraits become political. She plays with the imagination of her viewers, their preconceptions and fears. She cherishes the potency and physicality of painting and what it brings to the image.
    Born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa, Dumas moved to the Netherlands in 1976, where she came to prominence in the mid-1980s. This large-scale survey is the most significant exhibition of her work ever to be held in Europe, charting her career from early works, through seminal paintings to new works on paper.' ( Abbreviated and adapted from Tate Modern catalogue)

        I didn't know Marlene Dumas' work, but now exposed to it some of her paintings and images are incised in my psyche. Using colour to create mood and psychological impact, some are very disturbing, such as the child in The Painter, whose hands could have been dipped in human blood not paint. I loved the sad jazz note of Amy Winehouse's portrait so much I bought a print. If you don't know her work, this is another MUST SEE

Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden

Tate Modern: Exhibition

5 February – 10 May 2015

Adult £16.00 (without donation £14.50)
Concession £14.00 (without donation £12.70)
Help Tate by including the voluntary donation to enable Gift Aid
No booking fees with this exhibition
Under 12s go free (up to four per parent or guardian). Family tickets available by telephone or in the gallery.
Learn more about Dumas through related events

Please note: This exhibition includes some works with explicit content. Please contact us for further information.

  

MAN TO MAN -WMC LAST DAY TODAY!

Wales Millennium Centre presents a new version of  Man to Man. Today is the last day. IT's not an easy piece to engage with but it's a definite MUST SEE. It is the first full in-house production under the new artistic direction of Graeme Farrow. Translated and adapted by Alexandra Wood from Manfred Karge’s masterpiece ‘Jacke wie Hose’, the production  ' reimagines the one woman show as a visceral and virtuosic piece of physical theatre.'
       After her husband dies, Ella Gericke adopts his identity and continues working his job as a crane operator in order to survive in Nazi Germany. Compromising her own identity for survival, Ella is plunged into a new masculine world of beer, schnapps and poker; a claustrophobic lonely existence dominated by the fear of discovery and the changing face of authority in a volatile twentieth century Germany. In the opening speech, Ella, in the guise of her husband Max, shouts out of her window at the layabout youths on the street corners, “Work will set you free”, and the mantra from the gates of Auschwitz hangs over the entire production until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    Margaret Ann Bain playing Ella switches from husband to wife and back again with alacrity and virtuosity, changing her accent from the hard consonants of a male Scotland to the softer tones of a female England. Sometimes the switches are so quick-fired that I found myself dizzy trying to keep up. To play yourself and your alter ego and remember your lines for 70 minutes is an amazing feat. 
      The design of set, lighting, video, sound and effects brought together by a team including Richard Kent, Andrzej Goulding, Rick Fisher and others is extraordinary for its ingenuity, atmosphere, mood, and adding layers of suggestion and meaning to this one woman show.

WMC   Weston Studio. Tonight 27 March 2015 at 8pm- box office 029 2063 6464   web site: www.wmc.org.uk

WRITERS IN THE PARK

We finished our first term yesterday. The feedback was very positive and we're hoping to continue in the Autumn. I wanted to set up a writing for well being group that could use the park and our beautiful environment for inspiration. I have been really impressed by the quality and freshness of the new writers' work. I feel humbled to be facilitating such hidden talent. It reinforces my belief in the power of creativity to inspire, explore and express what it is to be human. Each member has a thousand thousand stories to tell and write. The group provides a safe and friendly environment to be heard, to share and offer mutual support.
Now I need to get back to my own writing.

CONCENTRIC: GROUP EXHIBITION BY 6 WOMEN ARTISTS AT CARDIFF MADE

This is a 'must see' exhibition celebrating the diversity and quality of women's art in Wales today for International Women's Day 2015. Hung in the sparkly little gallery of Cardiff Made, 41 Lochaber St in Roath with its café, and shop selling local crafts and organic marmalades, the exhibition includes painting and drawing, installation and text by Jacqueline Alkema, Penny Hallas, Leona Jones, Kay Keogh, Lydia Spurrier-Dawes and Sheila Vyas.
      'Concentric is a coherent group of very individualistic entities, questioning, pushing boundaries, experimenting with making processes and subject matters, all playing with the notion of what and how it is to be a woman and a woman artist.'
         I  particularly liked the intricate and detailed mandalas of  Sheila Vyas, the disturbing imagery of Kay Keogh and the surrealism of Penny Hallas. I laughed out loud at Lydia Spurrier-Dawes, 'siblings' and then thought about it and found the knitted jumpers with long arms wrapped around their bodies like strait jackets, strangely disturbing. Leona Jones text is intriguing and funny. I loved her idea of using moving words in such a way that enables the viewer to visualise the scene.
          The Exhibition is only on until Saturday 21 st of March.  See www.cardiffmade.co.uk for further info.

PS The Portuguese custard natas are a must eat.

HOMEWORK DESK

 

I am polishing my old desk. She sits in our Edwardian hall.  Fifty-five years ago she sat in a chilled bedroom next to the maroon-quilted double bed I shared with my mother. I was about to go up to ‘big school’ with expensive uniform, a two-bus journey, nuns and homework. I would need some privacy away from our common room- the kitchen- a postage stamp of cooking smells, Players cigarettes, Old Holborn roll-up, a two bar electric fire,  black and white TV, Joey the green budgerigar and a younger brother.  

        The oak desk had a dark mahogany stain, a pull down top to write on, and inside small compartments for letters from pen pals, letters to be written and a tiny secret compartment for my diary. Three drawers below contained underwear, lambswool jumpers and mothballs. She had cost 5 shillings in a second-hand furniture shop in 1959. She was overlooked by a thin shelf of books that were my staple; What Katy Did?  What Katy Did Next? Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, The Bunty Annual, The Schoolfriend Annual and some volumes of an Oldham encyclopaedia published at a time when Britain ruled the waves and we had colonies. I don’t remember my parents reading anything other than the Daily Mirror. The desk was their gift and imagined passport to my academic success. I left school at 16 with three O’ levels and a job in the local library so I could keep my mother company at lunch times.

        After my father’s death we brought her here to our adult home and had her fashionably stripped. Each week I take my earth friendly furniture polish made from natural olive oil and buff up her good memories, see her oak grain deepen and shine. I am rubbing hard, harder, trying to erase her other memories.

 

JTD, 2015

HAIKU WORKSHOP SATURDAY MARCH 7 CANCELLED!

Although the workshop is cancelled you can still take part:

Haiku is a poetic form and type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku combines form, content and language in a meaningful yet compact way. Haiku poets often write about nature, feelings and experiences. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines, usually containing 17 syllables; five syllables on the first and third lines and seven on the middle line.

Would you like to respond creatively to Rhys Daniel’s art work by writing your own haiku?  

On the post card provided in the exhibition, write the name of the painting, print your 3 line/17 syllable haiku, and give your contact details. Post the card in the box provided. 

Alternatively, you can look at http://ieuanrhysdaniel.tumblr.com and email us your haiku  at janetdaniel125@hotmail.com

The best haikus will be displayed during the exhibition.