NATURAL OCCURRENCES....

I will say up front I love a bit of nature. Am happy to spend time watching birds and animals...have been known to stop the car to watch an echidna scramble up a bank, to help a blue tongue cross the road, to stand in awe as the wedge tailed eagles soar over the house.

I'm captivated by spiderwebs glistening with dew; the silhouette of birds nests in winter's trees; enjoy the scrape of beak on palm as I hand feed the king parrots. But I can never capture the experience on paper.


I'm forever with a camera in my hand. Trying to get a glimpse of what lies before me. For that frame to share the smallest part of what I have seen. It rarely works.

But that is nothing to the frustration I feel when I try to capture some natural occurrence. The words become thick with clunky cliches, purple prose trips off my tongue....and I am left with a pile of nothing.

And yet I keep trying.

Inspired by poets such as Anthony Lawrence ( I fell in awe of his poetry many years back)
'I'd like to think that a couple of my poems achieve this tricky balance: landscape veined with humanity, flora, fauna, what's imagined and what's experienced....I write about nature to define my life.' Anthony Lawrence, in an interview with John Kinsella,  Thylazine.

That is what I would love to be able to do....'landscape veined with humanity'.  But  I can not sketch the landscape. That is the frustration. What I put down on paper resembles nothing of what I have seen, or more importantly what I have felt.

So I will keep taking photographs...keep trying to grab that image. That moment of time. The experience.




And I will keep on trying to find words...the right words.....

Got to love a girl for trying.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UNTITLED....

Image
I must admit to a difficult time thinking of titles. Most of my work at the beginning has a very bland and often generic title, simply because the computer needs a title to save the work. I do have autumn 1, autumn 2 etc...not to mention many poems that simply have a date as a title. Perhaps it would be better to say these are working titles. 29/05/12 is such a catchy title isn't it? Makes you really want to read it.... But when I do send my work out, not only do I edit, re-read and work on the pieces to make them the best I can, I work very hard on the title. Because this is the first thing an editor/publisher/ reader sees. And we do want it to stand out from the crowd, to grab attention. Every time I open a short story collection or a book of poetry I read the contents page.  Looking for a title that grabs my attention, that makes me smile, makes me ponder, wonder what that is about.  I'm sorry but having a poem entitled UNTITLED is a bit of a cop out. I am left t
Read more

PLANNING AHEAD...

Image
In my day job I do a lot of planning. In fact the school holiday program that runs for two weeks in January was planned four months ago. And we are just about to plan for the Easter school holidays. In so many ways, it is difficult to plan so far ahead. Once chosen, these programs are locked in. They are in booklets and flyers and are advertised. Not to be changed. We have no idea if a new theme or program will work until it has been tried and tested. Just because it works in another library, doesn't mean it will work in ours. Different space, different people, different reactions. And when we trial a new program, which we are next year, as well as new days and times for programs, it is a step into the unknown. Will they work? How long before we know? When can we tweak? When it comes to a lot of the programs, we have to give them a year. And of course during that year we are planning for the next year's programming. It is a continuous circle of planning months
Read more

FRESH START....

Image
There's something about the beginning of a new year. Fills us with inspiration, hopes and dreams. Lets us believe that anything is possible. That the year to come can be anything we want it to be. And it can. And of course there are resolutions...I'm still debating about what tack to take. Whether to focus on poetry or short story, the novel(s) that I wrote last year....hmmm too hard to think about just yet. I'll let it percolate, ponder on the pros and cons, on what I WANT to do, not what I SHOULD do. Personal resolutions are so much easier- I have plans on health and wellbeing, on the house, on the garden, on myself spiritually as well. The writing ones are so much harder. And of course there is knowing when to stop. There is no point in having a list a mile long ( I so used to do that)... totally unachievable and so daunting. So it's better to have a few solid ones on the list...ones that can be achieved within twelve months. And also goals that I have contr
Read more