Creative Tuesday
I am returned! What I've been writing, reading and working on for my luxurious day of creativity.
It’s back! Creativity is slightly curtailed thanks to a hospital appointment later in the day, but I’m up, surrounded by paper, lists and a selection of pens and couldn’t be happier.
My day got off to a smashing start with work on my poem for Magnificent Apparel with Jean Atkin. This week’s prompt gave birth to a poem about rebellion and orange crimplene. It was good to write and I’m looking forward to reading it at our zoom meeting on Friday (it’s just occurred to me how amazing it is to say that – a year or two ago the idea of reading aloud was impossible). I gain so much from reading my work as well as the thrill of having people hear and respond to my words in real time, reading aloud is a great way revise each peice. I’ve taken to recording myself too, which is especially helpful when I'm writing bespoke poetry a wedding poem that is heavy on the tongue will be heavy on ears of hungry guests.
I’ve also given a little time this morning to reading the last few poems in Ian Humphreys’ Tormentil. I’m a slow reader of poetry – I can often only read two or three a day. I like to savour and absorb and find I get overwhelmed if I try to read a whole book or pamphlet in one sitting. Tormentil is beautiful, heartbreaking and hopeful all at once. It’s rooted in the solace brought by the natural world, and enriched by the deft delineation of life in growing up as “othered” in so many ways. I love it and will return to it often.
‘I can’t face the big stuff
so I comb the moors
for a tiny yellow flower’. (Ian Humphreys - Tormentil’)
You can read more about Ian Humphreys and buy his books from Nine Arches Press
The remainder of my day has been devoted to drafting this week’s work for This Wild Feeling. I’ve enjoyed researching and writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. I’ve shifted my publication date to Friday now; not only does Friday feel like a far better fit for a column with wildness at its heart, it means I can spread my work out a little in an optimistic attempt to blindside the crash scenarios like the one that floored me last week. I’m hoping to have time to spend with the beautiful thoughts and poetry prompts from Notes from the Margin too, but I suspect this may move to tomorrow morning.
What’s happening for the rest of the week?
I’ve a couple more poetry films planned for this month too and I hope to have time to work on one of these over the rest of the week. On the subject of poetry film, I’ll finish this week’s Creative Tuesday with news that I had a poetry film selected to be shown at Stanza International Poetry Festival, which was held last in in St. Andrews. This is a huge deal to me – my default mode is “I’m no good” so I get very, very excited when anyone shows any positive interest. I follow this up with helpful thoughts like “they just feel sorry for me” and “I bet it’s a mistake” but I’m working on that! There was a “people’s favourite” prize too – no news on whether I won yet, but huge thanks to everyone who took a moment to vote and to watch the other amazing films being shown.
Happy writing, and I’ll see you all on Friday!
Kathryn xx