Tag: poetry

  • National Poetry Month

    I don’t know enough about the cosmic formulation of serendipity to prove it or disprove it as a ‘thing’, but it happens enough in my world to get my attention. Here is a solid example. I decided to make an art book that combined my paintings and prose and have been deep in the process for more than a year.

    My collection of  art and words in this volume speaks to a mindful connection between ourselves and our landscape, I hope to invite you in to resonate with nature and evoke your own sacred stories. This is an important way of being for me and one I wanted to share in a book format. So I made the work, found a book printer and landed on an April publication date that fit into their production schedule. 

    Just a few weeks ago in doing some leg work around the ins and outs of making and publishing and marketing books in Canada, I tuned into the League of Canadian Poets. On their website, I found this blurb: 

    “National Poetry Month

    National Poetry Month began in the US in 1996, spearheaded by the Academy of American Poets on the steps of a post office in New York City. There, the story goes, Academy staff members handed out copies of T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land,” which begins, “April is the cruellest month…” to individuals waiting in line to mail their tax returns. Established in Canada in 1998, NPM now brings together schools, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and poets from across the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in Canada’s culture.

    Celebrate nature with poetry this April!

    The League of Canadian Poets invites you to celebrate the 21st annual National Poetry Month in April with nature – whether it’s mountain ranges, deserts, forests, oceans, or plains; whether it’s a cityscape or a landscape. Read, write, and share poetry that translates the emotional, practical, and reciprocal relationships we build – as individuals and communities – to the natural world onto the page”

    National Poetry month poster designed by Megan Fildes!

    “Well, now – how cosmic is that”, I thought. 
    I invite you to watch for daily shares and treats, here and elsewhere on social media throughout April as we celebrate National Poetry Month and gear up for the Paint & Prose’s birthdate! 

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  • Lake Henry’s Glow

     

    A Chromatic Life continues at Westland Gallery until October 13. During the span of the show, I’m sharing images and prose around some of my works.

    You can view the full collection of A Chromatic Life online here.

    Lake Henry’s Glow
    Lake Henry’s Glow, Acrylic on canvas, 60×60”

    A late summer sun is pressing down on the day

    the same one that beckoned us from our first waking breaths
    to leap fully into its light; brightly painting
    madcap shadows of us run-dancing along the lane,

    Now pulls on our tails sweetly
    Signals us to temper our pace

    We drop our voices
    and take our bench seats,
    agog at the set
    all has been edged with gilt

    a burnished copper water surface billows and
    bows back to the marsh grasses’
    pink feathery flouncing

    Next a gracious choir of blackbirds enters,
    staging the evening
    jostling gently
    demure about their red epaulettes

    evening velvet drops
    on a rope
    imperceptibly
    at first
    its music all around us

    A Chromatic Life
    Anna Clarey & Erica Dornbusch

    September 18th – October 13th
    Artist Talk: Wednesday, Oct. 3rd at 7 pm

    Westland Gallery
    156 Wortley Road
    London, ON

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  • Golden Hour

    A Chromatic Life continues at Westland Gallery until October 13. During the span of the show, I’m sharing images and prose around some of my works.

    You can view the full collection of A Chromatic Life online here.

    Golden Hour
    Golden Hour, Acrylic, 59×69”

    Unnumbered mornings have I arrived by measured meditation to the centre of a labyrinth or the turnaround point of some other foot journey; to lift my face just as the holy signal of a rising sun spills over the horizon. I have leaned ardently into that 8° wedge of Golden Hour, peering mightily, straining to seize the exact augenblick when the veil breathes out and the invisible becomes tangible.

    Rarely, I have caught it and oh, briefly belonged, not to myself but to the space between the second and third note of a songbird’s lyrical strand. And then tumbled out, bathed in a particular elixir of heirloom light. Dew on my worshipping knees

    A Chromatic Life
    Anna Clarey & Erica Dornbusch

    September 18th – October 13th
    Artist Talk: Wednesday, Oct. 3rd at 7 pm

    Westland Gallery
    156 Wortley Road
    London, ON

    Related Images: