practice

Four Months: Friday

| Sheree

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Friday is our last full today together. It is with great sorrow that I have to bring this circle to an end. I hate goodbyes. I usually sneak out in the dead of night, before anyone else is awake, to avoid saying goodbye. To avoid having to look my fellow travellers in the eye and allow them to see how deeply this time with them, this experience has touched me, changed me.

But today, this time, I stand before you and acknowledge how much you have brought and contributed to this retreat. I couldn’t have done it without you. I acknowledge how much our time together has left such an impression upon me. I know I’m not the same person who arrived here just a few days ago to facilitate this holding of space for you.

I don’t want our time together to end, but end it must but I stand before you saying goodbye confident in the feels that you are leaving here also changed; empowered and inspired and more secure in yourself and who you be.

Before we leave, let’s spend one more morning together with our visual journals. Let’s continue the magic one more time as we play with paint, visuals and texts. Let’s share those images of our days together; the sunrises over breakfast, the tears of recognition as we open up to each other, the smells of fresh cooked pancakes and strawberries and chocolate, the laughter late into the midnight sun. Let’s make a promise to ourselves to keep giving ourselves this time and space to think and dream and breathe.

In the afternoon, we drive to
Jökulsárlón. Jökulsárlón is a glacial lagoon, bordering Vatnajökull National Park in southeastern Iceland. Its waters are a strange turquoise blue, still and dotted with icebergs. On one side is a black sand beach. On the other, the route leads to the Atlantic Ocean. As mesmerising as this glacier lagoon is, it’s here evidence of global warming lies. What we do with this knowledge is yet to be decided. But the conversation has begun.

Four Months – Sunday

| Sheree

Four months from now, June 17, you’ll be flying into Keflavík International Airport. You’ll be filled with excited and apprehension, as even if this is your first time or fourth journey to Iceland, you can’t help the way travel and adventure makes you feel. You are filled with wonder and awe and questions. But you know in your core that this creative retreat is what your soul has been screaming out for, for so many years.

Once you come through passport control, you will get the opportunity to peruse duty free. If you like an alcoholic beverage, chocolate or even fancy a traditional Icelandic woolly, this is the place to pick them up, before you leave the airport. This will be the cheapest place to buy the these goods. So make the most of it now.

Collect your luggage. And sail through customs out into the arrivals terminal where I am waiting. Waiting with a sign calling your name. Waiting with a smile of recognition. Welcoming you to the country that has nestled deep into my heart. Welcoming you to a week of possibilities and opportunities and creativity. Relax now, you are in safe hands. Promise x.

Botanic Gardens, Belfast

| Sheree

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Day 3 – Pain as Logic and Metaphor #eatmystardust

Botanic Gardens, Belfast

The pain that lives in my body
intensifies confined under
the dome of the Palm House.

Livid burgundy blooms burst
upon ochre and gold stripes
knocking along flat sharp leaves.

How deep it roots depends
upon the heat striking the panes
of glass reaching for the sky.

Process – Part 2

| Sheree

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Sometimes when I sit down to write, I can use the journal of my everyday, my visual journal.  Other times, I need a blank sheet of lined paper with no other distractions. No image, no colour just a clean slate.

Here I might start with the impression I was left with after my walk. Burgundy. Burgundy what? Wall, poster, leaf? I would try to describe the colour for someone who hasn’t seen it. Is it a flat colour? Dull or sharp? No this burgundy was vivid because it was so shocking to the eye around so much green. There I’m starting to bring in comparisons. I’m starting to bring in feelings.

I could worry this line for ages but the aim is to keep going. Just like walking. Keep one foot moving in front of the other and so the writing of lines is the same. Keep moving the pen over the page, keep the words flowing. This is just the first draft. Things are bound to be wrong, messy, cliched. But only when you’ve words on the page are you able to start the pruning and beautifying process. You have to have something on the page to work with before you can create the masterpiece. The poem.

There are many drafts of the poem, of the same line even. Adding in words. Taking others out. Switching of verbs for more specific ones,  verbs that are really working it within this line or that.

At all times the purpose is to leave the reader with an impression. To get them to connect to the words not with their head but with their heart. To move them in some way. Create a shift.

Process – Part 1

| Sheree

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I had the urge to write a poem. My hand was itching but not quite ready to lift up my pen. So I went for a walk. Walking helps the process. Helps me think but in a very freeing way. Thoughts of my life or work flit through my mind. But they don’t stay because something in the rhythm of putting one foot in front of another allows the thoughts to enter and leave without making an impression. This is good as my aim is to get to the point where I leave myself and my troubles behind. That I get to the point of being free, unburdened and open. Open to receive.

Once I become open to the environment around me, my senses kick in. I see things,   but more importantly I start to feel things. Feel the air on my cheeks. Feel the concrete shudder through my legs. And then smell. Diesel, cut grass, midget gems.

And so it goes on the more I walk. There further I walk away from me and the closer I walk to inspiration.  And an impression is made upon me from the outside world that I carry back with me inside to my pen and paper. And usually the impression is a colour. Burgundy today.

Juggling Balls

| Sheree

A new month equals new focus. Reflecting on the month gone and planning for the month ahead. Already, I feel as if I’m juggling so many ball but I know I’ve been carrying them around for a while. And I do pick them up gladly, it’s just some days I feel a bit overwhelmed.
It’s sometimes difficult to keep a handle on everything, to engage and move things forward. It always cones down to time and never having enough of it to get everything I want done, done. And then when there might be a window of time, I don’t have the energy to complete any task. Times like these are about keeping the faith and believing in the process.

Projects on the go NOW: ( Part 1)

1. Arts Council Funded creative project with writers around the First World War.
2. Heritage Lottery Funded project with Muslim girls around the First World War.
3. Developing Living Wild Studios as a creative business. Need to update/ rejig the website first.
4. Facilitating a creative retreat in Iceland this June. Planning schedule and securing two more people.
5. Stocking Folksy Store to sell my paintings, prints and collages.
6. Complete the writing and developing of my first e-course around visual journalling.
7. Explore my Iceland landscape abstract photography and paintings.
8. Develop my self-portraiture project through further research and practice.
9. Return to my Flaneuse research to feed into an offering in Paris. Research trip needs to be planned.
10. Start the planning for a women’s gathering in The Highlands through a research/self-appointed residency in March.
11. Start responding to the writing prompts from Eat My Stardust.
12. Listen to the second recording from Liberated Lines and write.
13. Complete final draft of poetry chapbook and send to Culture Matters ASAP.
14. Start the research and writing for my next full collection around our relationship with the land.
15. Continue with my self-directed study around seeking the Goddess.
16. Complete my Creative Journey Facilitator Training with Lisa Sonora.
17. Return to my developing creative non-fiction memoir around death.
18. Complete research around further grants and funding for women’s well-being projects.
19. Continue research for social enterprise – air on skin (working title) to encourage more ethnic minorities to develop a relationship with Nature.
20. Start self-appointed residency – North Sea Writer-in-Residence.
21. Return to second recording of Wild Soul Woman Facilitator training and respond with notes.
22. Get more sleep. Drink more water. Get more exercise. Eat more greens.

Red Oasis

| Sheree

Another digital print is offered up on the Folksy Store today.
Red Oasis, a vibrant print of an original abstract painting completed while
in Iceland earlier this month.

The inspiration for this piece reads as:

Red is powerful. Red is bold. Red is the colour of my soul.

When I need to feel uplifted, if I’ve fallen into a slump, forgotten who I am, I reach for red. Anything red will do. Ink, clothing, paint. Using red as a base colour instantly shifts my energy as well as the painting’s energy.

With Red Oasis, there’s a richness that is created by the choice of colours as well as the placing of such. The red is balanced by two other strong colours, yellow and green. Together, this juicy combination creates heat; like Earth’s inner core, oozing reds and yellows, entrapped within her green coat.

With the addition of white and black there is a cooling effect. A moment to pause and rest. But the eye is soon drawn back towards the red.

Red is passion. Red is love. Red is the colour of my soul.

Go on over to the store to check out the print with details.