creative ramblings & reverie

Friday, January 24, 2014

A Sea Voyage



An evocative invitation from a friend / poet / writing teacher in Malaysia—

Here's an image by the artist Odilon Redon. Try writing a piece based on your response to this painting.  How does the painting make you feel?  Who is in the boat?  Where is it going?  What is the nature of the journey it is embarked on?  What does this painting show you about your life?  See where it takes you!



—Alina Rastam

Friday, January 10, 2014

Writing Spaces








image:  Wishing Tree, kirstyelizabeth

Ode to a Turquoise Vase


       ODE TO A 
        TURQUOISE VASE


                      I have cleared my writing table 
                         just to see it there—

            a day of clearing what’s unnecessary,
            for this one right thing.

               Not weighty with significance like Keats’s 
                                              Grecian urn,
             an amphora thick-lined with pine sap and 
                                                with time

       nor yet one of the Hopi vases holding corn;

   a moment only, absolutely,
   the fullness / release of grace

 in clay and color and
 the hands of friendship

 that have cupped it, giving it to me.

  The silence of Green Gulch
  is in its lissome form somehow,

    the sonor of the temple bells
    and paper-whisper of the wish tree

       and birdsong,

             the ancient lady apple in the inner garden
             wearing only winter light.

                      And when they come to her again,
                      the appleblossoms, in another turning 
                                               of the world,

                                    I’ll interrupt its perfect 
                                        concentration, offering
                              a twig from that same tree

                                         burst into imprudent
     white flower.


—Christie