Reading

The White Gaze

| Sheree
Visual journal 06/05

I do love a white gel pen on a black gesso page. I love the contrast but I also love that it reverses/ subverts the norm.

Quite fitting really when I was exploring my understanding/ operating of ‘The White Gaze’ today.

From Wiki: ‘ The White Gaze is the assumption that the default reader or observer is coming from the perspective of someone who identities as white, or that people of color sometimes feel the need to take into account the white reader or observer’s reaction.”

I wonder who wrote this definition? Loaded much, ‘assumption’ , ‘sometimes’ please. It’s our reality. It’s White Supremacy Culture. It’s the norm.

I’m learning ( all the time) how to survive the white gaze. And taking my lead from Toni Morrison, I know I have meaning and depth without the white gaze. My life has meaning without the white gaze. ‘ But we do language. That might be the measure of our lives.’

It might be a daily practice with need of constant reminders but I’m learning to create not for the white gaze, in spite of the white gaze and it’s repercussions.

I am learning to be free.

Let’s Go Outside

| Sheree
Visual journaling 04/05

At the moment, I’m using an altered (romance) book as my visual journal. I go with my moods when it comes to deciding what to use next for my visual journal. I listen to my gut and what she’s calling for in terms of size, shape, texture of page, of journal she needs in order to show up daily for the next month or so.

So with an altered book as my journal I was calling for space to explore colours but also layering, composition and found text.

There will be pages that are heavy with colour and my handwriting while others I’ll crave colour with space and some text cut ups applied.

I’m using Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye at the moment to create found poetry for double page spreads. The Bluest Eye was the first book I read in which I found someone who looked like me and who felt the same self-hate I was experiencing around growing up in a predominately white society being within a Black body. It was revolutionary for me and my personal development to find this book when I did.

I suppose using a copy of the book now to cut up and repurpose is saying something about how I’m feeling at the moment and how I want to see myself on the page. How I want to take back the space, take up space and be validated. But on my own terms.

I love how powerful visual journaling is to my psyche and how I move my body through this world but does so through such a simple process. It never ceases to amaze me what comes to light and fruition through this practice.

La Jablesse

| Sheree
La Jablesse, Zak Ove

After Zak Ove

Come, follow me, young man, into the forest. Come. You like the sway of my hips, and my secret smile?

Then come, follow me, if you want to see more, to touch more. I’ll be all yours in the hidden forest away from the waging tongues.

Pay no mind to my necklace of antique nails or the weathered ropes I wear like a scarf or shawl. It’s just my unique style.

Come. Not yet. Don’t peak under my wide brimmed hat or under my long skirts. Patience, you naughty boy.

Come follow me and I’ll be all yours in time. Brass horns and trumpets I adorn because I love to make merry and dance.

African mask I wear because I know where my people come from. Smelling of jasmine and rose with a hint of decay. Come.

Pay no mind to the way I walk, one foot on the road and one beached tree trunk for a cow’s hoof in the grass. Come.

Come into the forest, deep into the forest where the trees are tall and thick and no one will hear you scream as you are lost and fall down a ravine.

Listen, I need you, handsome young soul, to keep my own beautiful. I feed off your fear and lostness and fall.

Listen I’m happy to own my own narrative again. They call me La Jablesse- she-devil.

Listen, I say, I’m a woman in control of who she be and who she chooses to take to forest, to bed, and to death.

National Poetry Month 2022

| Sheree

It’s April!

Happy Poetry Month.

I know March was all about me diving deep into The Healing Properties of the Seas, 2022 Project.

But now it’s April, I’m going to focus on my poetry writing.

April has traditionally seen me taking up the the NaPoWriMo – 30-poems-in-30-days challenge. So why change something if it isn’t broken.

Of course you’ll still be able to get your seas fix on the blog for the rest of 2022. But now I must turn my hand to poetry.

These last few days of March saw me take a much anticipated trip to London. It’s been a time filled with walking and creativity, taking in exhibitions and musicals and nature.

I plan to start off the poem a day practice with a review of the images I’ve taken of the artworks I’ve visited since down in London. So ekphrasis poetry is the order of the month.

Ekphrasis is a device used in poetry or even a type of poetry which takes a piece of artwork as it’s starting point. It involves a detailed description of the work of visual art as inspiration and then who knows where the inspiration will take the writer. But the piece of art was the seed and that recognition is credited usually with the phrase ‘ After such and such.’

I start today and I hope you will join the journey.

Pulling the cards for 2021

| Sheree

Seeing in the end of the old year and into the new is a time I always take for reflection. Visioning and re-visioning my dreams and plans for the year to come is something I do to focus my energies for moving forward with purpose and grace.

As I mentioned in my last post, my guiding word for 2021 is SLOW. To support this process of living into my word with intention, I spend time working through Susannah Conway’s workbook Unravelling Your Year. This year, the pulling of a tarot card for each month of the year is missing from the workbook for some reason, but I’ve followed this ritual for so many years now, that I didn’t need anyone else’s guidance to do so except my own intuition.

So using Kim Krans’ The Wild Unknown Archetypes deck, I proceeded to pull a card for each month of 2021, and one final card as a guiding theme for the year. When I pulled the final card, there were two stuck together so I went with the two as my guiding principles. The Crone and The Hunter were the two cards that will become my over arching cards of 2021.

I intend to go into detail about what each of these cards signify and could mean for the year ahead in the following posts. I will also share about each card pulled for each month in a post within each month moving forward too. This is a good way to keep focused and coming back to the magic and potential that each card can offer as I journey through this coming year.

December Reading

| Sheree

I was hoping to finish for a Christmas break sooner in December than I actually did. I wanted to ease into the holidays, getting snug and cosy and reading to my heart’s content. Of course even the best laid plans go awry. But I still managed to clock up some reads, as I got ready for 2021. What is going to be my focus the new year? I think there’s some clues within my December reading list.

Here are the books I read this month:

  1. Black Bodies, White Gaze – George Yancy
  2. Keep Going – Austin Kleon
  3. Creatrix – she who makes – Lucy H. Pearce
  4. Slow: Finding Peace and Purpose in a Hectic World – Jo Peters
  5. The Year of Less – Cait Flanders
  6. The Outsiders – S. E. Hinton

November Reading

| Sheree

This month was a bit sparse on the reading front but there were still books that got finished.

  1. The Festive House – Alison May
  2. Autumn Skies Over Ruby Falls – Holly Martin
  3. The Taxidermist – Shazea Quraishi

October Readings

| Sheree

October turned out to be a great month of reading after I set myself the Sealy challenge; of reading one book of poetry a day for a month.
Here’a the books I got through:

  1. Other Poetry, no.23 – anthology of poetry
  2. Writing for my life – Nancy Levin
  3. The World Don’t End – Charles Simic
  4. Our Dead Behind Us – Audre Lorde
  5. Butcher’s Dog 12 – anthology of poetry
  6. Butcher’s Dog 13 – anthology of poetry
  7. What to look for in Autumn – Ladybird Book
  8. Facts about the moon – Dori Anne Laux
  9. Undersong – Audre Lorde
  10. Postcolonial Love Poem – Natalie Diaz
  11. What the Water Gave Me – Pascal Petit
  12. It Ends With Her – Brianna Labuskes
  13. I am an Island – Tasmin Galidas
  14. The Crossroads of Should and Must – Elle Lune
  15. Danger on Peaks – Gary Synder
  16. The Goddess Oracle – Amy Sophia and Mara Rashinsky
  17. Blue Front – Martha Collins
  18. The Autumn House – Alison May
  19. The Winter House – Alison May