The Heart...

My favourite Painting by Camilla D’errico; anything with butterflies...

Feeling like a child again...

The candle's being lit

Just last week, myself and a gaggle of friends went to a candle lightning event at Bournemouth Gardens. So many candles in beautiful coloured glass jars, reminded me of oversized fireflies.

    Like a moth to light, me and my other winged insects were attracted to the lights of the carousel. I can see why moths fly towards our light-bulbs, as light offers comfort when darkness surrounds, and the same goes for people, even adults, as the bright and cheeriness of the carousel brings the sweet memories of childhood to the surface.

Victory is ours!

    Spinning round and round, however, made me feel slightly drunken-like aafterwards, in both my legs and my head; staggering around, charging after people using my index fingers as bull horns, people must have thought me off my head, but I honestly think it was all the coloured lights that were affecting me. So beautiful they were…

    At the end of that lovely night I went home vowing to myself that I would one day ride the balloon at night, when I could look down and watch the lamp lit earth below me. I’ll be taking someone with me though!

Today I went out in search of peace and tranquillity among the swans. Sat on the river bank and fed the swans and their 6 signets pieces of bread. One of them, who I think was the mama swan, stretched out her long neck and fed from my hand. Unfortunately, I’d left my camera, so couldn’t take a picture, but it doesn’t matter; I shall be back…

To go with my theme of being a kid again...

     I noticed that two white feathers were floating on the surface, and I wanted to lean over and pluck them from the water like I did as a child, but alas, it was too far down, and I would have fallen on the swans and become food for the fish. I now have an idea for a drawing; a girl wading in water with a swan as her reflection, but it might just become another unfulfilled idea.

If only I could sprout feathers and fly away, jump off the roof and soar in between the clouds as a human, for I think if I were a bird in flight I wouldn’t appreciate flying as much as human’s would.

-K xx

This collage I made...

Katie was doing some painting and thus had hijacked my desk, and I just wasn't in a writing frame of mind. So I did something a li'l different, something that I used to do a lot of when I was fifteen-ish. Katie had given me this beautiful wrapping paper covered in butterflies that she didn't need, so I thought I'd use it to make a collage. It's a bit disorganised (as much as a collage can be disorganised!) without a running theme necessarily. Except for that it's inspired by animals and long hair, seemingly, and is a bit dark... :)
I'm going to start sewing and embroidery classes soon, once my book is finished and sent away, like the delinquent it is. I'd like to learn to make things, to take up a crafty hobby, but to make something that can incorporate my writing. And I still have plans for my tatty-doll books. Now...just need to find the time to do this for a while. Can someone look after me and buy me food?? I forget how to do these things :( N x x x

An obsession with birds...Kate MacDowell

I don't know what it is; the wings, I  guess? But that would be obvious. And the freedom attached to all things avian. The magic of flight, the frailty of the small bird and the power of the birds of prey. Hans Christian Andersen, it is said, related to the sparrow in his story 'Thumbelina' because flight is a metaphor for escaping  social constraint, as well as the physical freedom experienced with flight and travel. More than anything, it is something that we cannot experience, so we dream about it all the more.
     For a while I wrote about nothing but birds - they dominated what poems or rhymes I wrote, and I even thought of an idea for my second novel, which will be called, suitably, The Aviary, about a girl who loses her twin sister, only to believe her twin was turned into a bird to save herself from plunging from a cliff-top. And whenever I find work by artists that are also preoccupied with birds, I remember them and go back to their images again and again. One such artist is Kate MacDowell, who sculpts with porcelain. She creates many pieces that I love, not just birds, but all focus on nature and the impact of the environment on smaller animals. They also relate the fragility of human being's relationship with these creatures, which I find incredibly moving. Her ideas are so dark and sinister, though truthful, yet her pieces are made with fine porcelain of a bright white that lets in such light that appears ghostly and phosphorescent.

The Blackbird (written last summer)

The people won't talk to a bird,
they think it has not any word
so what's the point in being heard?

I couldn't help but clip its wings,
the blackbird, for the song it sings.
It brings to mind unnatural things.

I took the breath of this bird in
and put the body in the bin.
To me, it does not feel a sin.

But what's the point in spoken word
when all I say is just misheard?
I'd rather turn into a bird

and fly forever on the wing,
and to do fuck-all else but sing.
And conjure some unnatural thing.

find out more about Kate MacDowell here: http://www.katemacdowell.com/

- N x x x

I'm Nina...

PJ Harvey - Nina in Ecstasy x x x

Suicidal Mermaids

 The little mermaid drew aside the purple curtains of the pavilion, where laid the bride and bridegroom; bending over them, she kissed the Prince’s forehead, and then glancing at the sky, she saw that the dawning light became every moment brighter. The Prince’s lips murmured the name of his bride- he was dreaming of her and her only, while the fatal penknife trembled in the hand of the unhappy mermaid.

     All at once she threw far out into the sea that instrument of death; the waves rose like bright blazing flames around, and the water where it fell seemed tinged with blood. With eyes fast becoming dim and fixed, she looked once more at her beloved Prince, then plunged from the ship into the sea, and felt her body slowly but surely dissolving into foam.

     The little mermaid stretched out her transparent arms to the sun, and, for the first time, tears moistened her eyes.

     And now again all were awake and rejoicing on the ship. She saw the Prince, with his pretty bride. They had missed her; they looked sorrowfully down into the foamy waters, as if they knew she had plunged into the sea. Unseen she kissed the bridegroom’s forehead, smiled upon him, and then, with the rest of the children of air, soared high above the rosy cloud which was sailing so peacefully over the ship.    
- extract from 'The Little Mermaid' by Hans Christian Anderson

These drawings were partly inspired by this fairytale- K xx

Tender morsels and sacrificial flowers

'Mistress says she doesn’t want to be draped in such a sombre colour when she conceives. She is superstitious, I take it, and believes that wearing such a colour would likely result in another fatality. It is the colour of death, to be sure. Like black spot. But my, she is small, and I cannot imagine how a girlish frame such as hers could house a child bent on growing. When she holds it in her arms after it has left her womb, it will be too large for her and she will fail beneath its weight. However did she stay strong enough when caring for her other boisterous children? She brings to mind a porcelain vase: her skin is white and chilled but it is her frailty that makes the association. One year, in the kitchen, I bent my heavy head so low to provoke the master. I bent so low that I tipped over, saturated in water, and the porcelain vase I was displayed in shattered on the windowsill. I can hear the strain in her strange babblings. She will tip.'

                       extract from my short story 'Sacrificial Flowers'

*  *  *

I am preoccupied with pregnancy right now, literally and metaphorically speaking. I conceived of the idea for 'Sacrificial Flowers' when watching the period drama Crimson Petal and the White, a story also preoccupied with madness and childbirth. Why are these themes linked so tightly, like a phantom umbilical cord between mother and child? It is as if something that grows inside women becomes them instantaneously. The heart beats harder and faster as it now beats for two; or it splits from the pressure, and becomes siamese. And if we lose that precious Other we miscarry a part of ourselves - a part of our reason. We can feel pain for a time, and mourn a child that never came to be, only to become stronger for our pain and experience and move on. Or we tip. 

I love both cover art so...

...I'm displaying both

I'm reading Tender Morsels again. It is my favourite book in the world. Based upon the Brother's Grimm fairytale 'Snow White and Rose Red', it explores the duality of beauty and cruelty, and how they exist side by side upon this earth. It is the parallels, the tension, of dark and light that interests me. One cannot be without the other. We cannot be complete if we are eternally happy, and indeed we do not realise we are happy until we experience sorrow. Aside from that, her style of writing is amazing - perfect. Margo Lanagan can write about the most distressing things whilst being gently comic, and vice versa. When not reading and writing, I've been listening to Hector Zazou and Katie Jane Garside. 'Symphony of Ghosts' is on repeat in my head. It is gentle and lulling, and I am ready for sleep. Nuh-night...N xxx

A baby's angel

- k <3

Beds

Katie, asleep on her dream cloud...

Sonnet (written about 5 years ago): Beds

No mind can climb into another sleep
than that which lurking creatures terrify
to sing and lull me, while inside would creep
and pull apart the tear ducts from my eye.
The headboard of my glowing bed is warm
so I indulgently dream on and on,
who would not waken from an irate storm
until the covers of the night have gone.
But painful is the rising sunlight's gleam
upon my softened eye, stirred by daybreak,
and stolen is my melancholic dream,
my subdued state, and how my heart does ache.
Yet the sun sets, always; the memory
of day is gone, restoring reverie.

Beds, after a creative writing exercise where we fucked our sonnets up...

The headboard on my bed glowing
as I indulgently dream.
Personal life thrilled and rattled like live films.
No mind can close the unfortunate wardrobe
from experience and play
found climbing into another sleeping room.
Hours drift often from another world,
myself holds in person one glorious love
pulling me anywhere.
I refrain.
I pull covers over the wiser world
in some soft sleep.