Posts Tagged ‘poetry’
A Happy Story
The Ennis Street Festival was held last weekend on the 2nd and 3rd of July. Myself and a couple of others from The Altruism Movement (TAM) went to do some art, write some quotes and poetry and give away some art. It was a lovely sunny day, we met in the square. One of the group painted while two of us wrote in chalk on the pavement around the square. There was a Nazi symbol and something negative written on a wall in one corner. I thought that some poetry would be good to transform the space, so I wrote one of Bonnie Quinn Cotter’s poems called “Clean Slate” in the long narrow space under where there was the fascist words and symbol. Then we went to another area of town to write quotes. When I returned I could no longer read the racist comment on the wall, I thought that the bright sun had done something to my eyes. Or had somebody washed the wall?
Today, while I was talking to the artist that had been painting on the square, I mentioned this to her. She said when I left some man came and asked to use some of her paint. He said he wanted to paint over something. She could not really see what it was from where she was sitting, but he said that from one of the pubs across the square you could see it clearly and it had bothered him for years. So when he saw her painting he asked to borrow her paint so he at last could cover it over.
Poetry along The Burren Way
Old foot road from Fanore
to Ballyvaughan
Four windmills
Rock flowers
brown bird
first raindrops
yellow fern
young bull
two magpies cross
Stone boulders lay silently
Fast moving grey cloud
over grey mountain
rock slope shines for a moment
Low stone walls crisscross
a seagull glides on air currents
leaving no trace of where it has been
A dog barks across
a low rocky mountain
wind gnarled thorn trees
Hawk great sky navigator
suddenly a second hawk
flies low over
the sloping rock fields
Wind dried
sky road
The ocean is covered with cloud shadow
rain in the sea
A single tree clings
to the mountainside
Stillness almost
Chirps from a hidden bird
taking shelter with wild strawberries and mint
Rain drops cling to
flower petals
I wrote this on 26 July 2000
This day 6 years later our son was born! Much has changed since then in our lives but the Burren appears much the same as it did that day!
The Spirit of the Land
I feel that there are places in nature that are very powerful, where the veil between the dimensions is thinner. When I make art in nature I am drawn to these places; it is not about how it looks really, its about how it feels. The reason I love the Burren is because of how it feels or how it makes you feel I love how it looks too! In the book Spiritual Alchemy the author says that Ireland is one the countries where the veil between the dimensions is the thinnest and therefore easiest to feel certain energies. Out of all of the places in Ireland that I have been to I think Clare and the Burren area is one of the strongest. It seems to attract allot of healers and creative people. (I see healing as being very creative and music and visual art and poetry and other forms of creativity as being very healing.) I wonder was it the energy of land that attracted the people, then because of all the creative people and healers that it became even stronger? I love the idea of all of that music floating around out there echoing off the ocean and the rocks for eternity!
I was talking to someone who plays music and writes, about a certain place I have made two drawings I said that I reckoned that it was a very special place, he agreed saying that `if fairies do exit, they exist there!¨ Later that day I spoke to a woman who was very passionate about the same place and brings all of her guests there at least once. I was amazed the other people felt something there as well as myself and James.
I love the book Eternal Echoes written by John O´Donahue, who died earlier this year. The painting Secret Garden was inspired by a story he told about this garden in the mountains he remembered from his childhood. I loved the idea of a secret garden in the mountains, all ordered and cared for, surrounded by wilderness.
I am going to do some research into Aboriginal art and their connection to the land. I just read about an aboriginal woman Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996)who started painting after she was 70 years old, she was very prolific, and made up for all all those years of not painting!
The space between order and chaos
Much of the work I make explores the space between poetry and absurdity and order and chaos, it is along this shoreline that I find many great things happen; the surfers playground between deep ocean and land. Chaos is converted to order then back into chaos. ¨Journey to the moon, between two worlds astronauts sing¨.
I am fascinated by words and the ancient three lined, 17 syllabled Haiku poetry. Matsuo Bashō is one of my favourites. I have spent many years attempting to write my own versions of Haiku. In the mixed media on board pieces, Forty days travelling in India and Travels in Thailand you can see some of these Haikus. I also use text as an important aspect of the work. Such as in the painting Open your heart then open it some more and in We, where it says We both think something different but we both think the same. I see words as being very powerful and sometimes I prefer to write something meaningful to get a message across and leave the associated imagery up to the viewers imagination.
The secret gallery's blog 