Collage and a poem

Continuing with Visual Narratives I started playing with the photos I had printed out which I mentioned in my last post.

I cut up a sheet that I had intended to be a zine to make snapshots of marks.  I put them into my sketchbook.

Then I tried making collages with  the different surfaces - paper, tracing paper and ohp film.

They're not totally me.

I had also printed one page of photos onto address labels. I peeled some of them off and put them in my book.

I also took words I had found and wrote them on the page using ink and then added water.

These sentences are part of a poem I wrote about canals using the phrases and words I had found in the book Canals: The Making of a Nation by Liz McIvor

The Cut
I was once a stark man-made corridor
Cut by sweaty, swearing navvies.
Now a ribbon of calm, spiralling out from the centre of the city.
Cutting lines through scarred landscapes
And meandering through verdant countryside.
Iron bridges tower over me
Looped lines from shadow lattice patterns
Fall on my surface
Disturbed by ripples from coots and moorhens
As they scurry into my reeded banks.

 
Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Lots of playing with photos

I have been playing with online editing of a few of my canal photos.  I use a free online editor called Lunapic.  As well as Microsoft Publisher. This post has a lot of photos.  And I mean A LOT!

I used these photos

And now - drum roll please - the edited ones

I also made up several A4 sheets of assorted photos like this one

I have folded these A4 sheets into zines.  I love zines as you can tell

I also printed onto tracing paper and ohp acetate sheets.  Lots of collage fodder ready to work in my sketchbook.

Well done if you got this far.  Actually I only put 19 photos after all.  Fairly average number for me!!!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Oh my word!

On Wednesday, around 10.15am, I was sat in my pyjamas and dressing gown, text messaging with a friend about how I was struggling with returning to the Visual Narratives workshop.  At the same time I was playing with canal photos in Snapseed.

Nothing wrong with that you might say.  And rightly so.  Except that at 10.25 (still in PJs & dressing gown) I realised I was supposed to be in a Write Poetry workshop on Zoom which started at 10am!

I zoomed in with camera switched off and whilst people were writing their first poem, I nipped off and put a top on and combed my hair!  Phew!

Camera on I entered the fray!

Sara-Jane talks about a poem and then sets an exercise to write our own.  I missed the first exercise as I said.  It was based on the poem: The Laughing Receptionist in the GP's Surgery by Paul Durcan

The second poem was Up-Hill by Christina Rossetti.  We were asked to write a poem where we were trying to work out a conundrum or problem, using two voices.  I was so not in the zone due to my late arrival and bothered about not being dressed properly etc.  I had no idea what to write.  However I did write this:

A Poetic Conundrum 

What shall I write?
I don’t want to appear a fool.
Just start. Do not fight
The pen is just a tool. 

A pencil is much better
I can erase the ill-place word.
The words are only letters
Keep going, undeterred. 

What shall I write?
I cannot think of words to bring.
Lead your thoughts to the light
And let your words take wing. 

The next poem was The Laugh by Michael Laskey.  For this we were asked to write about a human expression or reaction including something unexpected.  Here's mine:

Tears

A kind word,
a word of encouragement,
well-meant and well received,
provoked a depth of feeling,
an unthought-of release
of past hurts and criticism. 

Not harsh words,
but words full of kindness,
that destroyed the chains
that bound the hurts
of the past and released
unexpected tears.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice