Stanzas (verses)

The thread of a recent Write Poetry zoom workshop was the use of stanzas in a poem.

We first looked at the poem 'A Short Story of Falling' by Alice Oswald.  After which we were asked to write our own short story.  Here's mine:

A Short Story of Sewing 

Thoughts become words, inspired
by form and structure, required

to write a poem. A nonet,
a pantoum but not a sonnet. 

Words in order on the page
hoping the reader will engage

with thoughts and rhymes
and chains and crimes.

These same words written on calico,
cut up, reassembled, ready to sew.

Machined, hand stitched, and bound.
Words no longer clear or found

jumbled together, constrained by chains
The poet’s thoughts alone remain

I didn't do the second exercise which was to write a meditation using the sonnet form. We had looked at Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Prayer'.

The third poem was 'Tail' by Sujata Bhatt.  I used the poem's two opening lines for my poem.

Marks on Paper 

Meaningless black marks
cover my page, they stretch and grow
                                                into words.

The words clamour for a sentence,
the sentence for another.

The marks become the punctuation
as sentence after sentence forms
until a paragraph is seen.

The black marks write their own story
forming and unforming
bringing ideas and thoughts together. 

Until another page is covered
before the last black mark’s
                                         full stop.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

The last few days

The day we were orange picking the temperature was between 27-30 degrees C.  The next day it was around 12 degrees and wet.  We had planned on going for a walk but in the end we went to the Wollongong Art Gallery because I wanted to see the exhibition 'Dreams Nursed in Darkness'.  Do go to the website and read the description of the exhibition.

24K gold-plated razor blades as prison shackles by Abdullah M I Syed

The art work in one room was made by various contemporary artists around the theme of crime, convicts and colonial history.  The second room had work by current inmates of NSW prisons.

The shackles above were in the middle of an installation that used an image of a found Australian map progressively degenerated through repeated photocopying.

 

I'm not overly fond of contemporary art but I found the exhibition to be really interesting.  I don't know whether any of it will feed into my current theme of Captivity, Freedom and Identity.  Apart from one piece which I wasn't supposed to photograph so I'll not show it here. However I can show you the description!

 

If you go to the NSW Department of Corrective Services website and scroll down you will find it!

I am thinking about making a textile piece called I Am Not A Number using all the numbers by which I can prove my identiry eg passport number, NHS number etc.

The weather was a bit better the next day.  Still needed my vest on and a coat and waterproof!  We found that there was a free bus that we could get to where we wanted to walk.  We walked through a nature reserve and then along the coast path back into Wollongong.

 

 

We had a hot chocolate at a cafe right next to this beautiful Art Deco building.

These were the only people on the beach because it was so cold! 16 degrees C or so.  Back in England I'm pretty sure there would have been people in coats sat behind windbreaks!

We went back the next day when it was back to about 26 degrees  and there were loads of people in the sea and on the beach.

Anyway, back to the walk.  We finished the walk by the lighthouse, with its view over the city of Wollongong.

We used the free bus again to get to the Botanic Garden where we met up with the family.

And so to our penultimate day which I have already written about here.

Our last day involved a short visit to an art gallery.  Then off to the airport, lunch and the flight home.

I hope you have enjoyed the last few posts.   I have many, many more photos of the 3 weeks we were in Australia with only a very few posted here.  I hope it has given you a flavour of the places we visited.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

A long weekend

We went away as a family, firstly to Cessnock and then on to Gwandalan.

Whilst we were staying in Cessnock we visited a small village called Wollombi.  It had some really interesting buildings and lots of rust.  Guess what you're going to see now!!

There are more photos of rusty chains but I'll spare you!

The next day on our way from Cessnock to Gwandalan we went to a Putt Putt (Pitch and Putt) place where all seven of us played.  It was harder than I thought!

The Airbnb in Gwandalan was amazing.  The garden backed onto a saltwater lake - it looked like a lake but there was a small inlet from the sea.

There was everything there for the kids to play with so we didn't go out except for one visit to Caves Beach.  I didn't climb down the rocks to the entrance to the cave so I have no photos of its interior.

On our way back to Wollongong we stopped off to pick oranges.  I didn't know oranges grew in Australia.

We were now into our last few days in Australia.  Come back on Tuesday to find out what we got up to.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice