Poetry Thursday - revisiting the younger self

Back in the mid-90s, my early days of taking textiles courses (at City Lit) - mainly in "creative embroidery", I filled many sketchbooks with notes on classes and my own ideas. Sometimes the notes spilled beyond the books - and sometimes the topics we dealt with were "uncomfortable"; eg, action drawing of the figure. One term we had a session with a life model and, new to this, I did what I could and was very aware of my limitations.

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