How to take it further? In the next session the course tutor (Julia Caprara) presented various strategies to the class, including "going round the room" and commenting on each others' work. Those comments are written as the green notes, and they include plangent phrases, which I used to make a "word picture" of what was going on with my figure. After that, I made some versions in cloth, which - such was my feeling that this was definitely a dead end - I had no problem throwing out.
However, it's often the troubling creative experiences that have stay in the mind and have the greatest impact on further work; so, because of the dissatisfaction with this, I've gone on to try hard with further life drawing, portrait classes, etc. Something surprising usually happens, and what more can you ask?
Now to the "poetry" aspect. At first I thought the figure was running, but through the feedback and the composition of the "word picture" I came to realise what might be going on -
walking through water
small cold stones pressing underfoot
but toes and heels are too numb to notice
knees cutting through air;
the body follows
fists punching forward from shoulders
momentum through thin air
pulling the body forward
forward through thick water
through water thick as blood
but colder
then out of water
and running
running
forward through the night
And from 1987, this bit of tomfoolery (a song lyric?) -
Your feet have fallen off
And you're yellow
Your spine is curved
Wa-oo-wo
You're a banana now
 |
| Also found in that notebook - notes on books used in writing my chapter in "Reviewing the Reviews: A Woman's Place on the Book Page"; some costings for a trip to Vancouver via an EASE conference (and visit to friend) in Ottawa; an unsent letter to a friend, with reminders of everyday life in 1987/8 |
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