[-art, photography, alterations-]

‘lingering doubt’

© 06 - 07 angela petsis all rights reserved

Today we have a wax collage done by Angela Petsis. She says that she’s only been doing collage a short while but it’s obvious that she has a natural affinity and skill for gathering, and the layered construction that collage requires. The transparency of this image - with words and background images showing through the figure - give it a dreamy quality. The wax she uses in lieu of glue gives it depth and an aged look.

I am always more drawn to an image when it’s been given an evocative title like this one. “Lingering Doubt” immediately draws me in. I look more closely at the woman’s image and begin to wonder about the look on her face, her stance, what she’s wearing. But more so, it makes me think about what’s going on within her. Both ‘lingering’ and ‘doubt’ are ambiguous words. They can lead to positive or negative outcomes, but they are evidence of an internal struggle that helps to give meaning to this complex image. The combination of title and image result in visual poetry.

- See Angela’s great tutorial on how to do Polaroid transfers
- Showcase of Angela’s Polaroid Transfer artistry
- Be sure to visit Angela’s beautiful website to check out what other kinds of art she’s doing: angelapetsis.com

Thanks Angela for your evocative collage!

Originally published in the original Practically Creative blog, February 2006; edited for re-publication

[-poetry, how-to-]

by Nancy Waldman

detail, Genji Scroll, Goto Museum, Tokyo, Japan

I recently returned from a Writing Retreat planned and presented by the members of my local writing group. One of our participants, Krista MacKeigan taught a wonderful workshop on poetry and inspired me to try some found poetry.

I chose the words for my poem from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, translated by Ivan Morris.

The process is, on the surface, simple.

Find a piece of prose and turn it into a poem. Use every word as it is found in the original. Krista suggested first trying non-fiction rather than novels or short stories. Newspapers, she found, were generally lacking in enough figurative language to make it interesting.

My suggestion is to choose a piece of non-fiction prose not for its subject, but instead for the language and imagery. Find words that interest you about a subject that you wouldn’t ordinarily write about.

Remember it is ‘found’ art, so don’t agonize over this part of the process. Play with it. Choose *lightly* and see what develops. In that way, you can be surprised by the results.

I found that this kind of exercise was instructive in the areas of line breaks and overall pacing of the poem. Because I was using “ready-made” words it took away that pressure of choosing the right ones and allowed me to focus on other parts of the process. This is very much like learning about composition by using magazine scraps for collage or even painting by numbers or tracing which –while perhaps not an artistic goal–can be instructive about how artists achieve certain effects.

Once you have done several, choose one to take a little farther by rearranging, removing and adding words. You can also experiment with doing a Parallel Poem.

Parallel Poems are derivations of existing poems rather than prose. The result is a poem very like another the original but using slightly different words, images or subject matter. See below for links to some examples of parallel poems. Use can one of your found poems, or take a poem you admire and make it your own while always, of course, giving credit to the original poet for his or her work.

Other online links:

- Parallel Poetry Workshop
- Found Parallel Poems
- an online word rearranger
- See another PCQ Found Poetry article
- Our Poetry links

about The Pillow Book:

Sei Shonagon was born in approximately 965 and served as lady-in-waiting at the Court of the Japanese Empress during the last decade of the tenth century. The Pillow Book was a kind of diary or journal, though whether only for herself or written for a contemporary or future audience, no one knows.

Here is another Found Poem from the same source:

30. Insects

The bell insect
and the pine cricket
the grasshopper
and the common cricket
the butterfly
and the shrimp insect;
the mayfly
and the firefly.

I feel sorry for
the basket worm.
He was begotten
by a demon,
and his mother,
fearing
that he would
grow up with his
father’s frightening
nature,
abandoned the
unsuspecting child,
having first wrapped him
in a dirty piece of clothing.

“Wait for me,” she said as she left.
“I shall return to you as soon
as the autumn winds blow.” So when
autumn comes
and the wind
starts blowing,
the wretched child hears it
and desperately cries,
“Milk! Milk!”

The clear-toned cicada

The snap beetle also
impresses me.
They say the reason it bows
while crawling on the ground
is that the faith of
Buddha
has sprung up in its
insect heart.
Sometimes one suddenly sees the
snap beetle
tapping away
in a dark place
and this
is rather
pleasant.

The fly
should have been included
on my list of hateful things
for such an odious creature
does not belong with ordinary
insects.
It settles on everything
and even alights
on one’s face
with its clammy
feet.

I am sorry
anyone
should have been named
after it.

The tiger-moth
is very pretty
and delightful.
When one sits
close to a lamp
reading a story,
a tiger moth
will often flutter
prettily
in front of one’s book.

The ant
is an ugly insect;
but it is
light on its feet
and I enjoy watching it
as it skims
quickly
over the surface
of the water.

Originally published in the April 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations; edited for re-publication

[-photography, poetry-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

it is, afterall, all about the sky

Originally uploaded by nuanc.

I took this photo last Sunday as I was pelting through New Brunswick trying to get home as fast as possible. Since I was driving and it was raining, I didn’t take time to compose the shot or focus it or choose it with care. The taking of it was as much about entertaining myself during a long drive alone as it was about trying to capture something of the amazing sky and the New Brunswick landscape.

When I uploaded this, I was immediately struck by two things. The proportion of sky to land and the tiny angled snippet of road in the lower right corner, with the even tinier cars and their miniscule headlights - all lost in the vastness of that sky.

It’s inspired this haiku:

I travel again this weekend.

take care, all

Originally published June 2006 in the Practically Creative blog

[-photography, poetry-]

by Nancy Waldman

Ljubljana arches

Originally uploaded by daerice.

This morning I spent some relaxed time viewing a slideshow of the images that have been put in the Practically Creative pool. The variety, the color, the sense of play and humour, the emotions, the places, the depth, the creativity are inspiring. Viewing these images in thumbnail as they are in the sidebar of this site doesn’t do justice to any of the images. Sometime take some time to delight your eyes and your soul with a slideshow of them.

I chose daerice’s photograph from Ljubljana, Slovenia because my posts have been focusing on the alteration of our world by natural elements. Here is a beautiful part of our world that is showing signs of age. The arches have a rich patina of flaking and peels and cracks and discoloration.

This image and my time[lessness] spent in looking at the others inspired me to bring up this, an excerpt from Winter Hues by 19th century Canadian poet Archibald Lampman,

Life is not all for effort: there are hours,
When fancy breaks from the exacting will,
And rebel thought takes schoolboy’s holiday,
Rejoicing in its idle strength. ’Tis then,
And only at such moments, that we know
The treasure of hours gone—scenes once beheld,
Sweet voices and words bright and beautiful,
Impetuous deeds that woke the God within us,
The loveliness of forms and thoughts and colors,
A moment marked and then as soon forgotten.
These things are ever near us, laid away,
Hidden and waiting the appropriate times,
In the quiet garner-house of memory.
There in the silent unaccounted depth,
Beneath the heated strainage and the rush
That teem the noisy surface of the hours,
All things that ever touched us are stored up,
Growing more mellow like sealed wine with age;
We thought them dead, and they are but asleep.
In moments when the heart is most at rest
And least expectant, from the luminous doors,
And sacred dwellingplace of things unfeared,
They issue forth, and we who never knew
Till then how potent and how real they were,
Take them, and wonder, and so bless the hour.

thanks, daerice, for giving us this view of your world.

See all our poems and poetry articles

Originally published February 2006 in the Practically Creative blog.

[-poetry, art-]

poem by Sherry D. Ramsey
images by Travis Sutton and Flikr

They’ve made me comfortable, or tried

arthritis-pocked bones protest every surface now

muscles fatigued beyond resting

Death beckons a bony invitation–

I decline.

I choose the upload.

A week now, neurojacked into the console

threadlike filaments tracing

the secret convolutions of my brain

compiling the message that is me

Eighty-nine year-old ET

phoning myself home.

Today.

I write this poem because

I have ciphered my life in poetry

the only immortality

to which I dared aspire

So many words, so many years

and now reduced to words–

is it such a poor reduction in the end?

Is this the last poem I will write?

Will my uploaded self

still think in the cadences

of line and stanza

emotion and image?

Or will I compile/compute/calculate/respond

in precisely packeted bits of data;

filtered through thought loop and memory engram code

of this particular elderly female poet

but emerging as something other.

This poem will be

uploaded like all the rest

will I read it later and wonder who I was

to write such a thing?

Who will I be?

Decoded/recoded/encoded/uploaded into my new APC

Ambulatory Personality Console

intuitive interface, self-directed motion

best they can do right now,

but in ten years, they say, we’ll have RPR’s

Robotic Personality Repositories

arms, legs, face

Save a picture

it can even look like me.

The preparations pause

one last chance to reconsider:

death or discontinuity?

My daughter is here

truest poetry I ever wrote

She holds my hand, smiles through tears

Will she recognize me

talk to me still in keyboard stutter

fingers skittering over the keys of my APC

if she finds it too unnerving to speak to a machine

while I blink-flash my responses

upon the screen of my face

answer in synthesized mother tones

Will she still read love in my pixellated, digitized eyes?

I nod.

The neurojack tugs at my scalp.

Somewhere, someone taps a key.

Eighty-nine years of

thought and word and memory and me

stream out of my brain

like atmosphere pushed rudely aside by vacuum

like blood welling up in a vial

I still feel my daughter’s hand…

[Darkness. With a silicon flavor.]

Sensory inputs blink into being

I see the room [too sharp, adjust filter]

And there is my [beautiful] daughter

She hesitates, torn between the husk on the bed

and the ergonomic contours of my new APC

“Mom?” she asks.

“I’m fine.”

[synthesized mother voice operating

within normal parameters]

[soothing]

I offer the pre-programmed equivalent of a smile.

More tears. But I think she understands.

Her mother is still here.

I take stock.

[no pain]

[no fatigue]

No blood, no heart, no hand, no breast, no brain

but still the words, thank God;

I am reduced to words

but the words are enough.

Travis Sutton’s work can be seen at flickr.com/photos/travissutton.

Flikr’s work is here.

See Sherry Ramsey’s other work in The PCQ:

I, Galaxy
Accidents Happen
Seven Creative Ways to Enjoy your Garden

Originally re-published (poem) and published (artwork) by permission of the poet and artists in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations

[-tutorial, process, art-]

words and creations by Karen Hatzigeorgiou

One of my favorite altered book techniques is to use the text from a hard cover book as the base for developing poetry and related imagery.

When I choose a book to alter, I am most often guided by the title of the book. I pull the book off the shelf and look more closely at a few things. I look to see if the binding is stitched securely and if the pages are heavy enough to stand up to some gluing, painting, stitching or whatever else I might try to do to them.

When I’m ready to start, I scan the first few pages of the book, looking for words and phrases that speak to me of a poem waiting to be found. I discovered these words of gold on page 9: “. . . swam away on another wave of dream. . .” This phrase appeared on the ninth line of text, so I looked above it for a pronoun to start the poem. There was the word “she” on the very first line. Perfect.

From there, I look at each line of text, trying to find ways to connect words and phrases to create my found poem. I search for imagery and word combinations that I like. I write the poem down on paper as I go along, referencing the paragraph and line numbers so that I can find the phrases again later.

Creating found poetry this way is an exciting process for me. Of course, I am relying on the original author’s ability to use descriptive language in his or her writing. A lot of the prose written in the earlier part of the 20th century was very flowery and overdone, compared to much of what is written today. These works are wonderful for found poetry because I can pare down the dense text and create something new, spare, and sometimes beautiful. But just as playing with the text on the page can yield exciting results, it can be the source of frustration as well. Many times I’ve gotten into the rhythm of a poem that seemed to be turning out nicely, only to come to a dead end with no text left on the page to create a satisfying conclusion. Sometimes I can wriggle my way out of it; other times I have to turn the page to make a new start. That’s the beauty and the challenge of creating poetry in an altered book.

When I’m happy with the poem, my next step is to mask the text out so that I can create artwork around the poem without obliterating it; this is one of my favorite altered book techniques. I use liquid Masquepen for this. It’s a little bottle of blue liquid that feels like rubber cement when it dries. It’s rather expensive, but a little bit goes a long way….Once the masque has dried, I create the art for the page.

Here, Karen shares with us the most personal kind of altered book. A tribute to and remembrance of her mother, in a book called, The Gift.

My mother has Alzheimers, and I am watching the woman I knew vanish before my eyes. This altered book is about what that feels like to me. I use a bird’s nest and eggs that she threw away along with images of her as a child and young woman to create one of my Found Object Assemblages :: The Gift.

This found object assemblage was created using a very fat children’s board book that I got at Half Price books for a few bucks. The fact that it was so thick and that it had a window in the lower half of the cover made it perfect for this altered book project.

I went through my usual preparations for altering a board book. I sanded the pages that I knew I would be working on and put down two coats of gesso to cover up the original text and illustrations. I used my monster Exacto to cut down about an inch into the book to make a niche for the nest and eggs. Then I glued that block of pages together. I don’t glue the top page until the very end. That makes it easier for me to work on and to wrap papers around to the back side of it.

The nest and eggs were glued into place after I had completed the cover and finished every other part of the book. The nest and eggs are extremely fragile. I sprayed the nest with matte fixative, hoping to keep it from unraveling, but little flecks of it continue to fall off. I had seven eggs when I started, but broke three while making the book. I suppose that was fate, since four eggs in the nest makes perfect sense–one for each of my mother’s daughters–me and my three sisters.

Check out the Practically Mperfect article that Karen did for The PCQ -
You, Me and Leonardo da Vinci
Other related PCQ articles:
Found Poetry
Other kinds of altered books
Nancy’s first [and perhaps, last ] attempt at making an altered book
Altered photographs:
- Maureen Shaughnessy - thread of winter-quiet
- Baywhale - how to make a photosandwich
- Angela Petsis - Polaroid transfers

about the artist/writer:
Karen Hatzigeorgiou is a wife, mother, seventh grade English teacher, an artist and a writer. You can email her at karen@karenswhimsy.com. Karen has carefully chronicled her altered book process on her webpages, Altered Books Gallery. Her website is karenswhimsy.com.

Do yourself a favor, go there and spend some time with Karen and her creations. Thank you, Karen, for sharing your work with us here.

Originally published by permission of the artist/author in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations

[-poetry-]

by Richard Metcalf

A poem ought to make you think
Upon lined paper in blue ink
To use suggestive imag’ry
Such as a kiss or cheeky wink.
Poetry should always rhyme
And keep to the most strictest time:
Though syntax stretch and grammar lapse,
Free verse is worse than any crime!
And every line should burst with humour,
Witty smut and dirty rumour
To keep the reader well amused.
Avoid composing ‘bout your tumour.
Further, keep it short and sweet
To keep the reader on his feet,
Or else he’ll tire and drop your book
And never read your work complete.

© 2005 - 2007 Richard Metcalf all rights reserved

About the poet:
Richard was born in Bromsgrove, England and has lived in the small town of Kenilworth, in Warwickshire, ever since. He is studying European Studies with German and Italian at the University of Bath. He says of himself,

I started writing poetry two years ago, though only very slowly and with mixed results. I paint sometimes, with acrylics, particularly portraits of friends. I also play the piano and violin, whereas the only relationship I can really say I have with my guitar is that I own it. My favourite poet is the ancient Roman Catullus.

Originally published by the permission of the poet in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces

[-poetry, collecting-]

by Ben Shepard

Long ago
In a little boy far, far away… Read the rest of this entry »

[-poetry, photography-]

by Carson A. Metzger

Father made the last sale - a stop

watch bought vacationing off

a South Padre beach, used to time the sprints Read the rest of this entry »

[-poetry, photography-]

by Teresa

One by one the pile grows, Read the rest of this entry »