Deep Cove Writing Group

Unfinished thoughts…

alaisfairlight — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 21:29:08 +0000

A pair of birds are courting in a small tree in the backyard.

Green is coming through in such a pale shade that it only registers as green when you take in the entire tree, the long row of trees that lines Wells Gray Avenue. The rain is so fine that it gusts like petals, blowing out, a skirt of moisture wrapped around the waist of the hill outside the sliding glass door. Serene, as my stormy son sleeps and my daughter attends school.

I want to write but to write–really write–means to draw blood, to tear open this sense of peace and find the turmoil beneath. Look at the ugliness inside me, the sense of failure and defeat. And it isn’t even the pain of my childhood that I shy away from, what hurts the most is the sense of uselessness of our lives, the cowards that we all have become.

As I get to know people it is always disappointing to see that they don’t seem to know what they are doing in love any more so than I do.

What I know

alaisfairlight — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:44:47 +0000

I know

travel

how to sit still for hours in a van with ten other people

let my thoughts trail behind me like the gray, white-lined road

dreaming of destination after destination

like stones across a stream where your bare foot finds the cold only momentarily

but the far shore is only a larger stone on which you step till you reach the next river

I know leaving

how not to lose your balance

or to live without it

letting the heart lag like the roar of a jet as it scratches white across the sky too fast

for the scream

I know God

I know the trick for talking to him as though he is there

turning the echo of your thoughts into divinity

suspending disbelief across a life time

tucking the question under your tongue where they dissolve and settle in the bones of your thoughts

create growing pains

I know

loss

backs turned

the weight of big mistakes

family falling apart like a coat

washed too many times

the white thread shredding at the stitch

having outlived its purpose

I know

myself

marooned in ignorance

writing furious nonsense that is painful to read

that it kept me alive

was the womb in which I gestated for 21 years or more

beyond my self making room for questions none-the-less

Stephen Page has a book review published on Gently Read Literature

alaisfairlight — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:59:58 +0000

This review of Adrienne Rich’s poetry makes me ache to read more of it.

Stephen Page has a book review published on Gently Read Literature.

via Stephen Page has a book review published on Gently Read Literature.

on Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

alaisfairlight — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:06:52 +0000

It’s the kind of novel that you don’t rush through, there is such a languidness to it. There is no way to walk quickly through the tall grasses along the shores of the lakes or through the repulsive, colourless landscape of the coal mining town that Lawrence describes. You cannot rush the interactions of the characters who must have their long silences where they wait unblinking for understanding to come, for a connection to be made. There is no turning away from the raw anguish that consumes Ursula or the iridescent love that passes like fire between Birkin and Gerald. The questions are asked slowly and carefully because they are big questions.

How I abhor small talk, the meaningless little words, the surface chatter that is as dry and lifeless as dust. How one must steel oneself to exchange pleasantries, to smile impersonally as though the seething, dark, blood-red emotions beneath the surface did not exist. Sometimes it seems that such a long stretch of time passes between meaningful conversations that I hardly know how to have them anymore and I find myself shaking like an old woman with the barely contained emotions. And I am ashamed of myself for the strength of my opinions, for not being able to keep my cool. What incredible pleasure to simply be yourself, to feel without masking or attempting to alter how you feel in order to be more socially acceptable. What a sense of release one would feel to be unashamed and naked to speak only when there is something meaningful to say.

Found Poems

alaisfairlight — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:05:28 +0000

I made these for a postcard exchange….it’s interesting how differently I approach words when cutting them out of a magazine or newspaper….

What’s really interesting about doing poetry like this is way that you make meaning based on the size of the words/whether they are in caps or not etc. How much do these things matter? As I was transcribing the poems I wondered if I should keep the line breaks, caps and size of the words as they are on the cards….also, how much do the images contribute to the meaning or richness of the poems? Not that I am saying these are masterpieces or even terribly meaningful but it certainly sparks the imagination, no?

Contact doesn’t
make
these dark times. We are finding ourselves
a little bit of us
hungry
for those running.

Free! When they flew they always kept within a few feet
walking inside the story
lost breaking blood
the stars shimmer

Low-lifes
light up
dark. Honoured
war
move.
( I especially had a lot of fun with this one, not sure why..is there an “s” at the end of “move”? Perhaps…)

Born

alaisfairlight — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:35:03 +0000

ideas paper thin

butterfly wing conceptions

iridescent scales of words

the trembling tongue of creation

I am born into each new thought

alone in the labour, vulnerable in the passage from one perception to the next

crying wordlessly

because there are no words to describe the strange animals of my imagination

no descriptors for the sensations that ripple across my mind

I would pull myself into myself

but this body is clumsy and unfamiliar

hands opening and closing like wet wings

the air thick with the scent of the unfamiliar

so that all I can do is collect

one word at a time

like a dream moving in and out

of focus

as strange as if I had suddenly sprouted wings and found that I could fly

Self-Portrait on Cardboard

alaisfairlight — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 18:16:17 +0000

Drawn on a particularly low day while listening to Lhasa de Sela who has the most melancholy, hauntingly beautiful music. The lyrics at the top of the portrait are hers….

My Mythologies

alaisfairlight — Sat, 12 May 2012 04:06:32 +0000

druids

we wear the city

its colours blotting out the sunset, its buildings making strange shapes of the sky

slightly askew

we ask for change

mumble prayers and prophecies that jingle with the nickles, quarters, dimes, penies

we carve animals that search for the earth with wooden hands

that stand very still waiting for water

and sun

to bring them to life

we sell these animals to the city

willing them to stay still long enough for us to shoot up

the needle bringing us closer to god

closer to the stories about the birth of the world

we feel the forest

feed it our piss and shit

wrap ourselves in the leaves and meditate for hours or days

until the spirit leaves us and the animals look like nothing but cheap wood

and then our hands shake and we stumble back into the city

to the new gods

stand in the glow of their bright eyes

begging for visions

asking to become one with the needle

for a rock to stand on

Sunny Day

alaisfairlight — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:12:19 +0000

I’m siting on our patio as my son has his morning nap with my Nook and a box of chocolates beside me, and my cat, Six-Toes, sitting at my feet. It is a brilliantly sunny day, though there is a cool wind blowing, but if you sit very still, stretched out on the warm red bricks you barely feel the wind at all. In this moment I am perfectly content and completely present.

Sensory Exercises adapted from: http://www.ehow.com/list_6507941_sensory-writing-activities.html

- Pick a place or room familiar to you. How would you describe it to someone who has never seen it? Write observations that fall into the categories of things, colors, sounds, smells and feelings. Write a description that calls on all the senses or just one or two of your choice.
Here is an interesting exercise that draws attention to how and why we use different senses in our writing:
- Bright Hub offers a lesson plan that asks readers to recognize the different senses to which a writer is appealing. Teachers give students crayons or colored pencils in five different colors. One color is assigned to each of the senses. Students go through a piece of writing and circle each sensory description with the appropriate color so they can see how the different senses are used in writing. They can also determine what sensory information is not being used and think about why.
  
  If you do the above exercise feel free to share what it was like on here. Was it interesting or surprising? Helpful?

Mythologies

alaisfairlight — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:44:56 +0000

I apologize to those of you who have subscribed to this blog or check in regularly, this week and last have been rough so I needed to retreat into myself a bit. But I’m back! Yay!:D

On Thursday our writing group meets in the Artemis Art Gallery in Deep Cove http://artemisinthecove.wordpress.com/. I went down there earlier this week to take some pictures of the art that is on display which I am very excited about as I think we can incorporate it into our writing exercises and that it will provide rich food for our imaginations. The name of the artist is Martha Jablonski-Jones http://www.marthajonesart.com/and if I painted I would want to paint like her. I love the colours, the clarity, the magic in her paintings and the sense of hope that I always feel when the continuity of cultures, history and life are emphasized or teased out of the fabric of life. The title of this exhibit is: New Alters for Old Gods.

Growing up I loved the magic elements in the Bible stories my father read to us, the mysterious nature of the spiritual (christian mythology). I loved Greek and Roman mythology and fairytales for the same reasons. I think it’s wonderful to entertain the idea of magic, to let one’s imagination run wild (where it really runs amok of course is when you start taking these stories literally. Which is why christianity is rife with contradictions and requires a massive suspension of disbelief that is simply impossible to maintain). Ever since I was a child I have reveled in the excitement of a mystery of the unknown and unknowable. I would like to put together a collection of poems that is all about the mythologizing of my own life and stories…..

For the rest of this week and the next the theme will be mythologies. And the first exercise will be to create your own mythology. There are some poets that are really good at this. I’ll try to post some of their work….