Happy National Poetry Day! The theme this year is Vision, so here's a poem about one of my favourite characters (on whom I wrote my undergrad thesis), Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard was a twelfth-century cloistered nun and Abbess, who, from a young age, experienced a series of strange visions. An artist, healer, composer and prolific writer she left a rich legacy or work behind her, including an early medical treatise (Causes and Cures), three books of her other-worldly and End Times visions, poems, and scores of music that broke all the normal conventions of her time. The picture is from one of her paintings. The phrase 'Feather on the breath of God' is Hildegard's own.

Hildegard

Listen –

My mind’s a jangle

Of words this morning,

My head a flash of light,

I have seen...strange things:

Dragon with many heads

And stars that whirl

And swirl to myriad music,

Things that make little sense

To you men of reason.

We nuns have been taught

To whisper through cloisters,

Silent, submissive;

That is not my way,

For the voice within me

Commands me to shout –

And shout I shall,

Against injustice,

Against your male

Dominion,

That still, small

Voice within me,

Rising, clarion call.

And I have seen...such things:

The greening earth

In vortex of ash and flame,

Spinning soul sucked dry,

A cloud formed like

The head of a mushroom,

Tell me...What does it all mean?

You call me small,

And despise my femininity,

Wishing me to fit the moulds

Your ancestors made for me.

A little woman, yes,

And yet one through whom

The voice of God is

Powerfully heard –

Rallying call

For the strange,

And the feared,

And the odd:

Feather on the

Breath of God.

We are living in such strange times at the moment! I haven't had time to update my blog recently, but here's a poem I've written inspired by recent events. I hope people like it and find it helpful:

What I Shall Always Remember

That impossibly clear, blue sky,
not a plane to be seen anywhere,
roads you could walk down,
devoid of the choking influence of cars

How the neighbours left their rooms
and rediscovered the beauty of being outside,
chalked artwork on garden walls,
playing music in the sunshine,
rainbow pictures in the windows

How we shared half-smiles
and offered, from a distance,
assistance to people we’d never
bothered speaking to before

How we learned to put
our own needs behind
the health and welfare
of others, how we cheered
those who kept everything
going – doctors, nurses,
care workers, bin collectors,
teachers, shopkeepers,

How, suddenly,
the world stopped,
became smaller,
turned inward,
causing us to rethink
and reflect upon
the things that really
mattered, how a wardrobe
full of fine clothes became
superfluous, how
toilet rolls, pasta and soap
became valuable commodities

How quickly we learned
the difference between
‘want’ and ‘need’,
and how disease
refuses to discriminate
between rich and poor,
How plush hotels
flung open their doors
to the homeless

How the churches
closed, and for
the first time, we
prayed like we really
meant it, and God
left the building
and hit the streets

And we fell to our knees
and got on with
the sacred task
of serving
one another.

By Rebecca Lowe, 27 March 2020

Cut and Paste Exercises

Last Friday, I decided to try something different. My daughter was off school sick, which meant cancelling all my plans. I couldn’t even go out of the house, and all I had to entertain us both was a pile of old newspapers and some biscuits. We ate all the biscuits, and then we started flicking through the newspapers. Then I spotted an interesting headline, and a line here and there and another. Before I knew it, I was chopping up the newspapers, making poems out of the lines. Yep, you guessed it, I had discovered Cut and Paste poetry!
Cut-up as a technique is, of course, nothing new. It goes back to the 1920s when, during a Dadaist rally, Tristan Tzara offered to create a poem on the spot by pulling words at random from a hat. Collage, which was popularized roughly contemporaneously with the Surrealist movement, sometimes incorporated texts such as newspapers or brochures. Prior to this event, the technique had been published in an issue of 391 in the poem by Tzara, dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love under the sub-title, TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM.
It was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, and has since been used in a wide variety of contexts. Many famous writers have incorporated the cut and paste technique into the work, most notably TS Elliot in the Wasteland. Both David Bowie and Kurt Cobain experimented with cut-up techniques, writing their own paragraphs or poems and then cutting them up and reassembling them to create new and surprising lyrics. 

So here’s what I did:
1.      Select two newspaper articles at random. Longer features work best as they tend to include more descriptive words.

2.      Skim through and underline any particular words or phrases that catch your eye. Don’t think about the meaning, just choose what sounds interesting or surprising.

3.      Do this for both newspaper articles. When you have finished, either physically cut out or write down the words/phrases you’ve chosen.

4.      Reassemble the phrases from the two articles, in whatever order you like. This could be completely at random (drawn out of a hat) or, as I did, linking phrases which seemed to work together stylistically.

5.      Admire your new, shiny poem.

Some of my examples are given at the end.

A WORD OF WARNING: Borrowing other people’s words is plagiarism! There’s a very fine line between reusing a word in a different context and stealing somebody else’s work. So I’d recommend doing this only for your own amusement, not for publication. It’s about playing with words and having fun, remember, NOT stealing other people’s words and claiming them as you own!

Alternatively, make like David Bowie and try this method instead:

1.      Think of a subject, any subject. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, how to make the perfect cup of tea.

2.      Think of another unrelated subject, say how you felt in a recent relationship.

3.      Write a paragraph on each subject. Don’t think too hard. You want it to be a stream of consciousness.

4.      Cut up the lines of both and reassemble in a random order.

5.      Ta da! Your very own David Bowie lyric!


Here’s what happened, for example, when I combined a poem I’d previously written about the sea with a description of a friend suffering from depression:


Threnody

Blue and grey, rolling with rain,
And the darkness moved in,
Spreadeagled an invitation,
White limbs lost to a pitiless tide

Bent and twisted,
Tongued by lolling waves,
You shouted all night to keep the voices out,
An abandoned layer of bones,
Painted your arms red to feel something real

Whirlpool clouds made of steel and dust
Loom long and heavy on the other side.


NEWSPAPER CUT AND PASTE EXAMPLES:


Final Home/Love triangle
One the mudflats of the River Roach
A love triangle involving two giants,
The clear outline was produced
thanks to a drone fitted
with a specialist camera –

Clue of an adulterous relationship,
An enigmatic figure in the background,
Burgeoning romance,
Dangerously sexual feelings,
Darwin’s ship
Circumnavigating
A static watch vessel.

Google Doodle/Clocks Back
Nobody wants to go to and from work in darkness
A Google doodle may sound trivial
In the face of awesome creativity,
1.5 billion users active daily
So, winter is coming,
A twee-looking woman holding a notebook
Gazing up at the stars,
We could twiddle the clocks to achieve
All-year-round summer
She could almost be smiling,
The winter trees around her
Look almost festive –
A lipsticked woman holding a compact mirror,
The titles in swirling cursive:
Yes, ‘cheery’ was ironic.

A Load of Hot Air
I’m folding all my clothes wrong,
according to Mari Kondo,
I’ve consumed dubious tonics and teas –
Transformation to fluid experiments in style,
A painting made in extreme close-up.

Breathing is unconscious –
Inhale and exhale –
Staring at pale flesh with a
grim butcher’s intensity,

When I’m jostled by a rushing commuter,
Carving them up in the mind’s eye,
Fretted, fleshy tones and textured mottle,
bring me back to an even keel,

Silhouetted by the merciless dawn light,
Hands thrust in pockets,
The painter locks eyes with us
in the space beyond.


I Like the Stress of a City
Stark evidence of faultlines developing
Between hardline and conciliatory elements
Within the chaos,
Sending shockwaves,
Police armed with batons
Throw stones and flares, grappling.
You find your own oasis,
The white sands covered by the grey,
The catch is worthless and often dumped:
Every now and then
I fling it all up in the air
And see where it lands.

Autumn

The ivy strangles the
music from each folded vein,
The pulse of each contending thing,
The rhythms of rain,
Their striving shadows.

Inspiration...or perspiration?

So, yesterday was National Poetry Day! A friend and fellow write Gill Kirk, posted this lovely poem by Charles Bukowski in celebration:

So you want to be a writer? - Charles Bukowski:

if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

The poem provoked a lot of debate online, by myself and fellow creatives. To what extent can it be said that writing is all about seizing that moment of great inspiration and running with it? Obviously, there are those moments – those sudden flashes when the Muse (or whatever it is) seizes you and grabs you and you write, paint, compose or otherwise create in a blind whirling fury of inspiration. But it’s not all like that. In my experience, a lot of is hard slog. If I sat around waiting for inspiration to strike before writing a word, I don’t think I would get around to writing very much! Apart from anything else, the sheer pressure of feeling like every word I wrote was ‘inspired’ would be enough to paralyse my pen for life.

Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb, famously said that ‘genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration’.  We writers would probably like to think of ourselves lying back on a chaise longue waiting for the Muse strike whilst we spout witty monologues, but unfortunately the reality is just not like that.

Perhaps it’s one of the reasons we’ve developed the myth – if that’s what it is – of the ‘tortured artist’ (of which Dylan Thomas, my literary hero is, of course, a prime example). The star who burns bright, but ultimately can’t contain their own genius and ends up burning out. But even this is a myth. In the biography of Dylan Thomas I’ve recently been reading, written by Gwen Watkins, Dylan’s friend and fellow poet Vernon Watkins describes his behaviour and public persona as a ‘mask’:

‘His infectious humour deceived everyone but himself. His method was not to retreat from the mask but to advance beyond it and in that exaggeration remain completely himself. He agreed readily with his detractors and did not in the least mind being misunderstood. Then, in the private dark, his exhuberance was subjected to the strictest control.”

And there’s the rub. Genius – if that’s what you wish to call it – is all very well, but it can’t be sustained indifferently. At the end, there is always the need to control. Dylan Thomas, it is well-attested, could write one hundred or more drafts of the same poem, often spending a day pondering over a single word before he was entirely happy with it. Inspiration – yes. Perspiration – most definitely.

As someone who aspires to write, the way I look at it is, like an athlete, I have to put in the practice, to learn the craft before it can become second nature enough to flow. I do a lot of writing exercises, I write an unbelievable number of terrible first drafts, I read and read and read until the rhythms of poetry become hammered into my brain. But then when it happens for real, when inspiration strikes, my brain knows what to do, instinctively. I don't have to think; it just happens because it has to, and that's when the good stuff writes itself.


This happens pretty rarely, to be honest, but when it does, it’s the greatest adrenaline high in the world. You look at the thing you’ve just written. You think: ‘Where the heck did that come from?’ Or you’ll be midway through writing a ponderous piece of prose when suddenly something takes over and it starts writing itself. Fifty or a hundred or two hundred and a thousand words later, you put down your pen.

Even then, the work isn’t finished. Because once you have your first draft, there’s still always work to be done. Sometimes my poems come to me in a stream of consciousness that I barely have to alter. Other times, they’re left on one side to come back to, often months or even years later. Sometimes, particularly for prose, I write multiple drafts. There’s no rulebook.

But the important thing is that I regularly show up. Every day I write something. As a good writer friend once said, it’s not rocket science. The more you write, the more chances you have, even by fluke, of producing something good. It’s the monkeys producing Shakespeare principle. Sort of.

I think what’s most useful in the Bukowski poem, though, is the implication about false motives. What am I really writing for? I’m talking about my poetry here. I’ve written paid journalistic pieces, and the process there is very different. It’s still creative, but much more ordered. You’re given a brief, you do the research, you write it up, you (hopefully) get paid. But creative writing is a whole different thing. There’s no brief, as such, though you can create one. If you’re lucky, you might make money out of it, but unless you’re the next JK Rowling, that’s absolutely not guaranteed. From my experience, if I set out to write Great Poetry, that’s when I produce my very worst doggerel. It can’t be forced. It has to grow, organically.

I think if I was writing for money or fame or any of those things, I’d have given up long ago. The fact is I write because I can’t help it. I’m an addict. I consume words and stories wherever I go, like a hungry worm. I write things in notepads, little phrases or word pictures or conversations or mini scenarios that have caught my eye. The idea of not writing, or not creating, is as alien as not breathing. It’s just impossible. If I tried it, I’d be dead.

Another of my favourite quotes is from Rumi:

"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."

I think this is closer to my own experience. It’s the act of falling in love with beauty and words that provokes me to creativity. It can’t be forced, or taught – though the craft of perfecting how you put the words together can be learned. But ultimately, that ‘spark’, the one that’s dancing inside our chests – that’s something that’s available to all.

Heddwch - a painting of resilience

The online world can give a false impression. Like most people, I rarely post about failures. So you could easily be given to believe that everything I do turns out just fine. Most of the pieces I write, and most of pictures I paint, eventually end up okay, but not all. Today’s picture has an interesting back story.


This weekend, as well being my birthday, is  the weekend of the Wales Air Show, which is held annually in my home city. This is a big event that a lot of people look forward to. For me, it comes with mixed emotions. Whilst I can admire the spectacle and the skills of the pilots, especially the stunt teams such as the Red Arrows, I find the militarism surrounding the event extremely off-putting. As a Quaker and a life-long pacifist, the idea of pointing at the sky and marvelling as a bomber plane thunders past just seems plain wrong. This feeling has only increased since I’ve been doing voluntary work for Swansea City of Sanctuary and have heard first-hand of the devastating effects of bombing campaigns – some of them financed or supplied by our own Government – upon innocent people.


So this morning I was sitting drawing and painting my latest Celtic design. Normally, I play music as I paint, and I like to think that some of the beauty of the music goes into the painting as I do so. But this morning, I didn’t have music on. Instead, I had the sound of the Typhoon fighter jets as they thundered over our house, leaving contrails in the sky. I tried to block it out, but my frustration seemed to bleed into the paint, and nothing would work. I could feel myself growing more and more restless, as none of the colours seemed to mix properly. My attempt at creating a rainbow with colours blending from one end of the spectrum through to the other hadn’t worked. Instead, the colours clashed horribly. I felt like throwing it in the bin. I decided to leave it to dry, and went off to do the washing up, intending to throw it out later.


When I got back, the colours had dried and blended a little, but it still looked horrid. The pinks and reds clashed violently with the greens and blues, and it all looked amateurish and, well, angry. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, not after all the effort I had put into drawing it. So instead, I decided to experiment. I closed the windows, switched on some gentle music, and let the rhythms wash over me for a little while. Then I took out some metallic silver, bronze and gold, and got to work, washing over the tops of the offending colours, and re-blending them. And the gentle music and the shimmering paints worked some magic. The resulting picture was very different to my original intended rainbow design, but still had its own unique form of beauty. It was more beautiful still, to me, because I knew it had evolved from a place of anger to a place of beauty and calm. I think there is an edge of resilience to it, beneath the layers of gold and silver – a refusal to give up. A refusal to let anger and violence win.


I don’t always name my paintings – it feels pretentious – but this one has a name. I have called it Heddwch – the Welsh word for Peace. It feels appropriate somehow.

Love Tokens and Bad Pennies – Collect Connect Exhibition, and the joy of 'found' art

Stella Tripp's artwork, waiting to be found

There’s something about the idea of scattering little pieces of art in random locations that appeals to my inner child. I’ve always loved the idea of discovery – of venturing forth and finding new adventures. Perhaps that’s partly why I adore visiting charity shops. It’s that sense that you never quite know what you will find. Another person’s cast-off might yet turn out to be the beginnings of a new adventure. I shall never forget the excitement, for instance, of finding a hand-printed Victorian book of love poems, languishing in a pile of postcards at my local Oxfam shop. But it’s not just shop-bought treasures. All small things have the capacity to thrill me. I’m a nightmare to go on a walk with because I can never resist picking up a heart-shaped leaf or a beautifully polished pebble.


There’s something of this thrill of discovery in Alban Low and Dean Reddick’s creative exhibitions. I say ‘exhibition’ but, really, that word seems wholly inadequate. Imagine an exhibition with no walls, whose gallery is the wide-open spaces, and whose visitors are anyone who happens to walk past.

Each of the small artworks in ‘Collect Connect’ are placed in public spaces, where passers-by can connect and interact with them. There are no rules; no money changes hands. Only adventures to be shared and enjoyed.


In keeping with the month of Valentine’s Day, the theme of the latest exhibition is Love tokens and Bad Pennies. This is explained on the Collect Connect blog:

“Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turns up?

Both the Love Token and the Bad Penny are part of the currency of life, two sides of the same coin. These everyday objects are defaced or distinguished to help us remember those who we hold dear and those who we would rather forget.”

Artwork by Alban Low at #unsettledgallery No.10

Artworks from 17 artists will appear placed in or beside fountains and sacred waterways in London during each day of February. Accompanying the artworks are new written works by a poets or authors, which appear on the CollectConnect blog.

https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/
https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/

This is where I come in. I volunteered to write responses to three of the artworks because it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. I love the idea of ‘found’ art. I also relish the creative challenge of responding to somebody else’s art and, in doing so, finding new creative forms of expression. My selection was based purely on emotional response. Those artworks that seemed to stimulate words or ideas were the ones I chose to write about. In fact, the poems (and one short prose piece) wrote themselves. I’d come up with a vague idea and often find that, once I started writing, the words ran away from me and took on ideas of their own. So a story that was meant to be about first love quickly became a study in dangerous obsession. And a poem about the interconnectedness of things turned into a sort of folk riddle. I like the fact that the three pieces I wrote are each completely different in character, each identifying a different form of love. That wasn’t intentional; it just happened, as these things so often do.

Anyway, I hope you’ll take a look at the blog https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/ and if you happen to be anywhere near London, specially around Walthamstow/ Twickenham area, see if you can spot one of the artworks. Who knows, it may take you on creative adventures of your own…