Our Father Eclipse - politics and dystopia
Our Father Eclipse is, by far, the strangest thing I've ever written. Towards the latter end of 2019, I'd conceived of the idea of writing something vaguely political, framed by the apocalyptic literature I'd studied in my twenties, and taking in signs and portents and political events. I'd mulled this idea around for some time, and put together a couple of poems...and then 2020, Covid and lockdown happened.
My previous poetry collection, Blood and Water, was written over a period of about a decade, each poem being carefully added and edited. The birth of this collection was completely different. Over a period of about two weeks, the poems wrote themselves, obsessively, frantically, as if all of the pain and confusion of the past few years came spilling out like a fever dream. As soon as I had the poems completed, with minimal editing, I sent them to Culture Matters, my favourite publisher. I sent the email at 6pm. By 9am the next morning, I had a message in my in-tray saying 'yes please, we'd love to publish'. This NEVER happens!
I chose to illustrate the poems with 16th century apocalyptic woodcuts, which seemed to fit the themes. The result is a strangely dystopian vision of a world which feels increasingly unreal and disturbing - and a call to action. In difficult times, we can dare to hope, we can dare to dream, with radical passion and revolutionary compassion...
Here's the review from The Morning Star's Andy Croft:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/c/21st-century-poetry-andy-croft-0
"Our Father Eclipse (£10) by the Welsh poet Rebecca Lowe is a brilliant, inventive and original take on contemporary feelings of impending apocalypse, constructed around the image of a solar eclipse – “We dare not gaze directly / for fear of blindness, / but know instinctively / the gathering dark.”
Wide-ranging and eloquent, these poems barely contain their rage at the way we treat our neighbours and our planet in the 21st century."
IT'S HERE!!!
Available on Amazon, priced £9.99
Write Mindfully – Unlocking the writer within by Rebecca Lowe
Published by Talisman Arts, July 2024.
ISBN: 9798326906267
CONTACT: Rebecca Lowe on 07866 871116 or email
swanmedia@ntlworld.com to arrange interviews or order review copies.
‘Each of us has a beautiful story to tell’
Do you long to create but find yourself held back by
feelings of inadequacy or fear of judgement? If so, you’re not alone, but it’s
never too late to start writing!
I want to help you find and listen to your inner voice –
your Soul voice, if you like. Once you do that, you’ll find that writing comes
easily to you – as naturally as breathing.
Topics covered include:
·
Mindfulness and creativity
·
Dealing with imposter syndrome
·
What makes a person creative?
·
How to handle rejection
·
Embracing playfulness and imagination
·
Finding your creative flow
·
Writing using all your senses
·
Creating a writing ritual
And much more!
Never let anybody tell you that you are not good enough. You
are more than enough. You are beautiful, precious, unique. Nobody can tell your
story better than you.
So write it, Sing it,
Dance it,
Shout it,
Be it!
Author bio:
Rebecca Lowe is a Pushcart prize-nominated poet, mother,
journalist and editor, based in Swansea, Wales, UK. She has three published
collections of poetry: Blood and Water (The Seventh Quarry, 2020), Our Father
Eclipse (Culture Matters, 2021) and Grandmasaurus: Poems for children (Talisman
Arts, 2021) and has appeared in anthologies in the UK and internationally. She
is a Bread and Roses Spo0ken Word Award winner (2020) and her poetry has been
translated into Welsh, Greek, Romanian and Chinese. She runs Spoken Word open
mics and poetry and storytelling workshops for all ages. When not writing, she
enjoys climbing trees with her daughter, singing, playing the hammer dulcimer,
painting, Mindfulness and walking in the beautiful Welsh countryside.
Writing Across Borders - International connections
In the last few weeks/months I've been fortunate to participate in some wonderful international events - something I could never have imagined in the pre-lockdown, pre-Zoom days.
In April, I celebrated International Women's Day with friends from across the globe, with a poetry reading coordinated by Xanthi Hondrou-Hill at Apeiron Art:
Apeironart - Buy and Sell Art Online - Creative Diversity
A beautiful mix of subjects and themes - from the cultural oppression of women through to portrayals of Mother Earth, goddesses, and reflections on femininity and motherhood. My poem 'Conception' was featured:
I also took part in my second International Poetry Festival, run by Gobinda Biswas, in India - a tour de force of poetry featuring writers from all over the world. A couple of weeks ago I took part in a beautiful cross-cultural celebration of Easter, Passover, Holi and the coming of Spring. It was organised by my good friend Pankhuri Sinha - an amazing, dynamic poet in her own right - who invited poets from across the nations to celebrate in verse. Most poems were read in their original languages as well as English translation. Both were wonderfully uplifting events, an insight into many different cultural traditions, and a testament to the power of poetry to break cultural barriers and bring unity, especially during these difficult Covid times when we have been separated physically from friends, family and loved ones.
Another recent highlight was the Rockport International Poetry Festival, from Rockport, USA. I was invited via Bob Whelan, who had remembered Talisman Spoken Word writers from the time some of our poets visited Boston, Massachusetts to participate in a cross-cultural exchange with Merrimac Mic poets. This resulted in two books: Ten Swansea Writers (publ. Talisman Arts) and The River Widens, a joint anthology with the Merrimac poets.
The Rockport Festival was an incredible event, featuring a full 24-hours of poetry from all over the globe! It also collaborated with the Coracle Europe Poetry Festival (run by my friend Dominic Williams, from Poems and Pints Carmarthen), who offered the Rockport Poetry Festival on April 18 as Day 2 of their presentation. Some of their presentations can be seen here:
Poets without Borders with Coracle Europe (part 1) - YouTube
Poets without Borders with Coracle Europe (part 2) - YouTube
Last week, my friend and co-organiser of Talisman Spoken Word, David Churchill, was the featured poet for the Merrimac Mic writers group, in Massachusetts, USA. I logged on at 7.30pm US time, (which was half past midnight in the UK!), together with Alice Sullivan, also of Talisman. It was great to 'meet' our exchange poets on the other side of the Atlantic, especially host David Somerset, who I had heard so much about from the other poets who'd visited five years ago. The standard of the poetry was excellent, and David's feature was a treat. His book, Volcano Moon, is published by Talisman Arts, and we hope to have copies available for purchase online soon.
Finally, I took part in my second radio podcast with the incredible American poet Rick Spisack's Poets of the East show. This was my first live broadcast, so somewhat nerve-wracking, though Rick is such a welcoming host he very quickly put me at ease:
It has been such a treat to meet so many poets from all over the world (and well worth staying up til 2.30am for, though I wouldn't recommend doing it every night!) I feel fortunate and privileged to be in contact with so many supremely creative and talented people.
Most of all it has taught me the power of words. Words really are magical. They can bring people together, across cultures, across nations, and bring hope even in the most trying of times.
I have met so many inspirational figures - people who, like me, are passionate about the written and spoken word. Our voices rise together, strengthening one another as we share mutual encouragement and support. Long may it continue!
A lovely review of Our Father Eclipse, my second collection of poetry:
Our Father Eclipse, Rebecca Lowe (Culture Matters): Review | FISKBOOK
https://www.waterstones.com/book/our-father-eclipse/rebecca-lowe/mike-quille/9781912710379
Big News! - Publishing and overcoming fear of judgement
It’s been a while since I updated my blog, and my big news is that I'm now a published writer - of not one, but two poetry collections!
My first full collection Blood and Water was published by
The Seventh Quarry (available from www.seventhquarrypress.com)
in November. I also self-published Grandmasaurus, a collection of poems for
children, which I wrote with my daughter over the first lockdown. And I've a
further collection of socio-political poems Our Father Eclipse due out with
Culture Matters in April. So, all in all, it's been an exciting time!
I'll write more about the publishing process in a future article, but what I wanted to focus on today is how strange it feels to be sharing my work, and how this fear has held me back for many years.
Writing itself is an act of vulnerability. Writers are sensitive souls. If we didn't feel things so deeply, we'd have nothing to write about. Most of the time you don't really write with a specific audience in mind. You write because you have to, because you have a burning urge to get it all out of paper, because if you didn't all those feelings bubbling around inside might make your head explode. That's why I write anyway. Poetry open mics are weird. They are possibly the only situation in life, apart from counselling sessions, where you can walk into a room full of strangers, tell them your innermost thoughts and feelings, and then just sit down again. As a complete introvert, the idea of doing this once used to fill me with a horrible, creeping dread. I'd be terrified of standing up at the mic, would worry about the mic falling over, or me falling over, or everybody hating my poetry and throwing rocks at me. None of which has happened. Yet. These days, I love performing, partly because I've grown used to it through practice, and as I've done more I've grown in confidence to the point where I now find it quite empowering.
But sharing your words in print is another thing entirely. Most of the open mics I attend, or attended prior to lockdown, consisted largely of people I'd grown to value as trusted friends. But once your words are in print, anybody can read them. Strangers can pick them up. Critics can judge them. What if nobody ‘gets’ them? What if people misunderstand or misinterpret them, or judge me, or disagree with what I’m saying?
I realised when I decided to seriously seek publication that one of the things that has held me back all my life is not just a fear of failure, but also a fear of success. Back when I was at school, I was a shy, socially awkward kid. I spent a lot of my time hanging out in the library, partly because I've always loved reading, but mostly because I knew that you had t be quiet in libraries so I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. I loved reading and writing with a passion. But I was wise enough to know that if you didn't want to get picked on, it was best not to stand out. I used to hate it if a teacher singled me out for anything, good or bad, because that meant I'd be noticed. It was much safer just to blend in. But I didn't. I couldn't. I never have. I was skinny, with wild hair, and zero social skills. When the other children were listening to pop music I was into medieval Ars Nova music and Breton bagpipes. When they were talking about their latest celebrity crushes I was crushing over John Donne's poetry (and the picture of him on the cover, if I’m honest). The harder I tried to fit in, the weirder I felt.
These days, of course, I’m quite happy to be who I am. Most of my friends don’t fit into the crowd either. And that’s okay. Why would we want to? But when I thought about releasing my poetry into the world, all those thoughts came flooding back. What if I stood out too much? What if people didn’t like my words, didn’t like me? What if I created false expectations which I couldn't subsequently fulfil?
The strange thing is that, almost as soon as the books were published, these
thoughts have gone away. It’s almost as if the very act of getting my words out
there has vanquished the old demons and sent them packing. I do realise, of
course, that what I write won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s fine.
Poetry, like all types of art, has many, many different faces. You wouldn’t
turn round to a jazz musician and say that theirs wasn’t proper music because
it wasn’t classical, so why would you do that for writing? And not everybody
will relate to the same experiences as me. But I do hope that some people will
get it. I hope that somebody will read, perhaps, something I write and it will
touch a familiar vein in their life, and spark some kind of shared emotion.
Those are the moments writers live for.
I’m also learning that I can use this process as a stepping stone to learn and grow alongside others. In the past few months I’ve collaborated with other writers on translations, shared details of journals and submission opportunities, and made friends with poets from all over the world – something I could never have envisaged prior to lockdown. And what I’m learning is that moving from a fearful, competitive way of regarding others to a joyous, cooperative approach is so much more fulfilling. I am part of a wonderful community of empathic, encouraging, creative people, who are progressing together on a shared artistic journey – and that, in itself is amazing!
To anybody else out there who is letting fear of other people’s judgment hold them back, I’d like to offer this hope. We are all on this beautiful planet together. Every one of us has a unique voice, a unique story to tell. Tell yours. Tell it boldly. And then encourage others to tell theirs.
Pleased to have my poetry collection featured on this lovely creative writing blog:
http://creativewritingatleicester.blogspot.com/2021/02/rebecca-lowe-blood-and-water.html
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