There is a poet in Everyone.
During the course of this week of the CIVIC exhibition I have been conducting two 2 hour poetry workshops every day at the Mission Gallery. The poetry workshops have been incredibly engaging. I have found that the power of the poetry of Dylan Thomas, Shakespeare and Plath inspired incredibly original imagery which the participants integrated into a beautiful poetic space of meditations on the physical and metaphysical dimensions of windows. They explore the heart of window metaphors which each participant constructed in really incredible forms. The windows of the heart; the existential boundary of the self were motifs the participants mediated in incredibly original ways.
Emily franks’s poem explores the theme in the context of hope:
‘The sky sash trades
Poverty for a portal.
A silvered opening.’
Juliet Llewellyn explored her own creative process and linked it to her own sense of the creative mind:
‘Nakedness is emptiness
Glazed space’
Rene wards saw the esoteric window in terms of a
‘Moon at a dreaming height’
Ann Shabbaz viewed through the metaphorical window a vision of her mother:
‘Raw earth and liquid languid eyes is what
I saw that day long ago when leaving home.
Maybelline breeze envisioned the experience of the adventurer:
‘The wanderer white chimed by
Flat ringing echoes’
Silva huws saw the reflection of the moon:
‘The purity of the cold sliver of moon.’
Jean James saw the heart of female identity through the poetic glass:
‘She is moon framed…in the flat light of a muted room.’
Eva saw a positive light:
‘Quiet hope absorbs the void’
Nathan Collins saw the echo of fragility:
‘Fragile eyes open with broken beginnings’
Claire Moore saw a a view of splendid isolation
Elizabeth Taylor saw a marginalised picture:
‘Sealed imprisoned I absorb my daily sun’
All poets performed their work which is played on a loop throughout the rest of the exhibition period. Their poems are exhibited on a plinth which is getting fairly full of the most inspiring work. Here is a picture of the plinth:
and my experience of conducting these workshops always remind me that there is a poet in everyone.
Catriona Ryan
CIVIC 