Posts tagged August 2022
The Cat on the Grammar Mat
 
 
 

Recently I was asked to say a few words at a poetry reading in memory of a former student who died earlier this year.  

I first met Penny back in 2006, when she planted herself in the front row of "Poetry off the Page," an experimental literature course that I was co-teaching with my colleague Michele Leggott.  Penny was smart, sassy, funny, fearless, creative, questioning, collaborative -- in short, the ideal student. 

Penny turned 70 years old that year.

That was a few years before she started performing her poetry in public, her snow-white hair ceremoniously sprayed with streaks of pink or purple or blue. It was well before she established herself as a popular open-mic Master of Ceremonies at the Thirsty Dog pub on seedy Karangahape Road. And it was nearly a decade before she published her first book of poetry, one year shy of her eightieth birthday.

One audacious adventure at a time, Penny became my model for the kind of poet (and person) that I want to be when I grow up.

And her poems were hilarious! Here's one of my favorites, complete with Penny's original salty language and gender-confused feline:

On making sure that your subject and your verb are close together and your object is as near to the left hand side of your sentence as possible

(with a nod to Sam Leith, author of Write to the Point: A Master Class on the Fundamentals of Writing for Any Purpose)

The cat, a black half Burmese half unknown roistering tom from the neighbourhood, chewing and munching on a dead mouse but leaving the head and tail on the Persian rug I had bought in Iran, eyeing me as I looked at her from my position lying on the sofa after eating too much lunch and drinking two glasses of wine, which I never do these days today being an exception, sat, if you can call it sitting when in fact one leg was lifted in the air as she cleaned her bottom impervious to the disgusted gaze of my visitor who works in a sexual health clinic and finds the fact that cats and dogs clean their bottoms with their tongues very unhygienic to observe in a domestic situation, on the mat.

Even a stickler for syntax like me -- yes, I do generally believe that subjects and verbs should hang out close together, but I also appreciate creative deviations from the rule -- can't help but appreciate Penny's sense of humor, her colorful streaks of irreverence sprayed on the white hair of convention.

Rest in peace, Penny Somervaille. We miss you!


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Let the Light Shine Through
 
 
 

When I first started making this paper collage, I had no idea how it would turn out -- or what the process was trying to teach me.

I had recently purchased some beautiful art paper featuring black circles pressed into a feathery white surface. Surely, I told myself, I can do something with this. But what? 

First, I tried placing a page from my journal behind the circles: handwritten words glimpsed through handmade paper. Despite its apparent translucency, however, the pulpy white paper proved too opaque for the inky letters to show through. Texture trumped text.

Next, I decided to try gluing colorful origami paper behind the handmade paper. I was staying at a remote farmhouse in Switzerland at the time but managed to acquire from a local grocery store some school glue, a pastry brush, and a pair of nail scissors.

Rather laboriously -- it took me nearly an hour -- I cut solid-colored circles from the origami paper to match the black circles on the art paper. Here's what the back side of the collage looked like after I glued the colored circles in place.

And here's what the finished collage looked like when I flipped it over and laid it flat on a table. The result was disappointing: pleasant but not inspiring. Why had I even gone to all that trouble?

But then I held my collage up to a window. The circles glowed, and everything became clear -- not just why I'd made it but what it could teach me about writing:

  • Keep going.

  • Trust the process.

  • Try new approaches.

  • Let the light shine through!

Perhaps I should have tried writing some inspirational words on the colored circles -- an indistinct poem unfurling in spiraling letters. Would the result have looked brilliant, I wonder, or totally naff? Should I go back now and give it a try: peel away the colored circles and start afresh? 

No, I'll let this one go. That's another writing-related lesson I've learned from my collage practice: sometimes you just have to leave the dried glue in place. Sometimes good enough is good enough. 

Warm thanks to the participants in my recent Creativity Catalyst short course for helping me see the light!


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