poetry

My Creative Year in Review – Part 2

| Sheree

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In recent years during December I’ve taken the time and space to reflect back on the past twelve months in terms of my creative life. It is always inspiring and surprising to remember the things I have achieved as well as the mistakes I have learnt from along the way.

Following this practice of review means that I enter the next year, fired up and focused about the choices I want to make going forward.
If I had to sum up 2017 in 3 words it would include courage, voice and business.

Let’s take a look at each month ( the year is split into two part,  part one here) and see what happened along the way to carry me into 2018, older but so much more younger in terms of wonder and curiosity.

July offered up the opportunity to share my practice with others as I became one of the women in residence with Idlewomen for a week on a canal boat. This was such an amazing experience, one I was most thankful for as I got to share my love of visual journaling with other women who were in need of a safe space to explore their own voices. I also felt reaffirmed in my desire to support women, particularly black women in their relationship with the natural world.
Hence me putting feelers out there on social media about who was interested in the creation of an Iceland Creative Retreat.

August was downtime as I took the family for a tour of Southern Iceland. It was lovely to return with the family and witness them fall in love with the country just like me. The only problem is now is that they want to return so it might mean I don’t get back there alone ever. But it’s not really a problem as I love sharing my experiences of Iceland.

After the summer break, in September, I came back to business with planning a visual journaling workshop just down the road from me. I also completed an important draft of the chapbook focusing upon black women’s bodies in society due to be published with Culture Matters in 2018.

October was a month of upheaval and change as we were forced to move house and downsize. But it was really a blessing in disguise as it gave me the opportunity to declutter, to become more minimalist as well as to prioritise my creativity. As a reaction to less time, I made time to blog more consistently through the move.
I started my next creative non-fiction project around the theme of death. More to talk about around this soon.

November was earmarked as a period of time to settle into the new home but that didn’t go to plan as I did withdraw from social media again but I was still beavering away behind the scenes. I was interviewed by Amanda Fall from The Phoenix Soul, as part of this digital magazine’s Truth Tribe Interviews. I had a soft launch of The Iceland Creative Retreat and filled half the spots. And then I enjoyed a women’s gathering in Pendle Lancashire called Shifting Loyalties when I enjoyed the challenge of sharing my visual journaling practice with over 30 women all at the some time. To be there, to witness this transformation in creativity made my heart sing.

December was time to wind down and get ready for the holidays. I took the time to explore December Reflections on IG hosted by Susannah Conway. With a much needed rest again from social media, I spent the time gained to read as well as fire up the creativity with completing Tara Leaver’s Practical Intuition course to create my own Iceland Oracle Deck. This fed into #IcelandInsights where I am sharing text and images each day in January in relation to my love of Iceland. There are more Oracle Decks in the pipeline for 2018.

So on reflection of 2017, on the whole, was very productive and successful in terms of moving forward with my voice as well as increasing my courage in being present as my authentic self. I hope to build upon the gains made here into 2018. I have learnt that the downtime and rest is just as important if not more so than the productive times. In these quiet moments, conversing with myself, I am learning to listen and observe more deeply and truthfully.

#sheofthewildwrites – the sound of lightning

| Sheree

Day 5 – the sound of lightning

let me sit in the silence a moment longer
let me bury my worries in the heart of a friend
and yet
like an uninvited guest coming to my home
it tattoos its energy across the sky
altering the motion of the sea
altering the colour of the night
as a gang of seagulls take up its chorus
I can only hang up a net to trap the notes
hoping in time I’ll come to love the rage
hoping in time I’ll appreciate its music
#sheofthewildwrites

#sheofthewildwrites – Wounds

| Sheree

Day 3: in my mind

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of us.
– David Richo

My wounds ooze daily,
festering on the tip
of my tongue, lodging
in my throat.

Sometimes, they swirl
like a cyclone
through my ribcage,
aching deep inside.

My wounds are hidden,
hidden deep within my gut,
wearing away the lining,
washing away anything good
anything whole.

My wounds are fleshy and harsh
and vibrant and painful.
But you wouldn’t know
to look at me.

I smile. I laugh. I perform
kind gestures. I pretend.
My wounds are hazardous to life,
carrying a warning sign.

In my mind, I am healing.
I do the work, convince myself
all can be well. That I am worthy.
That I am enough.

But this is useless
if not translated
into the body.
These healing vibes
need to be transmitted

along my blood lines,
pumped into the centre
of my wounds
as it’s the body
that remembers.

#sheofthewildwrites #writersofinstagram #womenscreativity #poetsofinstagram #iamwriting #poetry

My Creative Year in Review – Part 1

| Sheree

In recent years during December I’ve taken the time and space to reflect back on the past twelve months in terms of my creative life. It is always inspiring and surprising to remember the things I have achieved as well as the mistakes I have learnt from along the way.

Following this practice of review means that I enter the next year, fired up and focused about the choices I want to make going forward.
If I had to sum up 2017 in 3 words it would include courage, voice and business.

Let’s take a look at each month ( the year will be split into two parts) and see what happened along the way to carry me into 2018, older but so much more younger in terms of wonder and curiosity.

January came in cold and dark. The ideal time to go deeper into my practice of hygge. During my winters walks #TheHealingPeopertiesOfTheSeas was conceived as a one day symposium all about our relationship with water. This has still to take place but the concept is out there and can be found on IG  and Twitter. Holding this idea throughout the year has meant that I’ve been curating short 10 second films around water. These will be available to watch and add to during 2018.

February was the beginning of my exploration of voice. Having been chosen to take part in an Arvon foundation residential course for writers wanting to make change happen, I met a whole heap of interesting people who supported me on my journey of claiming and using my authentic voice around the theme of my body in the environment. This led into further publications of my creative non-fiction poetic writing here. I was also exploring my voice through painting by completing Painting the Feminine with Connie Solera. This was another opportunity for me to embody my multi-layered identity, providing the tools and techniques to support my self-expression.

March saw me return to Iceland as part of a self-directed residency with The Westfjords Residency. To spend an extended amount of time in an isolated village miles from a major town was testing. I questioned what I was trying to achieve by doing this, in terms of my creativity as well as my life. It was unsettling to some extent as all my usual boundaries were missing and for a while there I did flounder. I also experienced some racial abuse while in Reykjavik which made me question my relationship with the whole country. March was definitely a learning curve which manifested in a deeper love of Iceland which meant before I left I made plans to share this love with my family.

April was another month of learning as I not only completed a Woodland leader training course in the Highlands of Scotland but I also went live with my new website and brand name Living Wild Studios. I’d procrastinated enough and it was time to be seen, showcasing all of my creative adventures under one roof.
It was a scary time but one that I wouldn’t change as I went with my gut and created a beautiful website I’m proud to call my home. It’s varied and dynamic and changing to reflect how I’m changing.

May seemed to have gone in a blur. I know it was a time of disrupted plans due to Alan’s mam being in hospital for an extended stay. It was a time of sticking close to home and putting my family first and foremost. But I did try to keep moving forward with Living Wild Studios as a business, extending my reach through social media. To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy this month as I was trying to operate in a way that wasn’t being authentic to me. I had to explore my relationship with social media, with the pubic arena at large and withdraw to do so. This was good for me, for my sanity.

I continued my social media hiatus into June. I felt I was just settling into my own space and voice by the end of May so wanted more time away from distractions to listen within. This was an important month for me to dive deep into the Creative Facilitator Training I had started with Lisa Sonora this year. I had been building up a resistance to the course as it wasn’t as I had thought it would be. I expected more. But then I realised that this is an experiential course and I get out of it what I put into it. All along I’m using myself and my experiences and beliefs as the learning examples so in order to learn and move forward I had to be more engaged. A light bulb moment which saw me returning at the end of the month to social media to share my visual journaling practice, the foundation of my creativity, much more extensively and thoroughly than before.

#SheOfTheWildWrites

| Sheree

She of the Wild announced this challenge at the beginning of the year. We’re doing a daily writing challenge for January 2018.

Use the prompts to fuel each day’s writing, then you can share what you write with the writing community on social media, Instagram mostly, using the hashtag #sheofthewildwrites.

This is a great way to get back into a daily writing pracfice. I am most grateful to Beth Morey for organising this as I know this challenge is going to stretch me but in a good way. Join in.

ten: four

| Sheree

1. The roof opposite holds the snow steady.
2. Our central heating blows out slow white smoke.
3. I don’t seem to be able to get warm.
4. I switch the Christmas lights on to create some cheer.
5. Slow is the pace for everything this morning.
6. Let me make peppermint tea and spend half an hour curled up with a book.
7. No school today even if we are up in time. To the doctor’s instead.
8. We slide along the street all bundled up.
9. We sit. Her small chubby hands small in mine.
10. Our deep brown eyes meet and smile.

best day of 2017

| Sheree

Day 3 of December Reflections and the prompt is : best day of 2017.

This year has been long and short, amazing and disconcerting, a breeze and a challenge. But I started with an intention – this year was one of the ‘voice’. My voice.

In January I attended a writers’ retreat for finding our voices to talk about the issues we care about.

Visiting #Iceland twice, strengthened my relationship with the land, my vision as well as my voice talking about my body in the world.

And now into the final month of the year, my time with @Idlewomen #shiftingloyalties is coming to an end and the signs I have been receiving are that I am on the right path. Sometimes that path might be lonely, I might be the only loud voice quaking ( we have ducks here) about an issue but support and encouragement is not to too away.

Last night I shared my poetry for the first time since I lost my voice in 2015. I’m emboldened. I heard my voice. My voice is strong and true and she is me.

red

| Sheree

For me, at the moment, red signifies anger. There’s a fire burning in my belly, it’s been stoked by my time away at Shifting Loyalties this last week.

My forthcoming e-book with Culture Matters is an exploration of this anger. My anger at how black Woman are treated in society. How we end up at the bottom of the pile in terms of being treated with decency, respect and love.

This piece is part of this collection.

‘Death by persons unknown’

Pain provides the common language of humanity; it extends humanity to the dispossessed and, in turn, remedies the indifference of the callous.
– Saidiya V. Hartman

(Picture the scene).
It’s a Sunday afternoon
& the bees are busy hovering
around blousy peonies,
at a church picnic.
The crowd moves in closer as the fire’s lit.
(Look at them gathering, working up a sweat, working up a frenzy as the barbecue takes hold).
They linger in the smell of flesh,
in the smell of blood.
The only shade is thrown by the kill;
the swinging charred remains of a black body.
(Try to shift your gaze).
From the hanging meat to the sea of red-faced, smiling white people hungry for violence fed on a diet of hate for generations.
There’ll be a photograph produced of this social ritual. You might receive a postcard making
the past very present.
& if you’re feeling it,
it could burn a hole in your heart.

ten:two

| Sheree

1. Up at 5.30am.
2. The whole centre to myself. Silence.
3. The mist rising off the reservoir into grey.
4. The warm glow of women gathering.
5. Smearing colour across white spaces claiming voice.
6. Hummus, falafel, kebabs and naan.
7. Hot boiling black tea with a hint of cardamom.
8. Walking out back amongst the pines.
9. Larch cones clinging to dark branches.
10. Joy.