Where I Find Creative Inspiration

The question artists and writers seem to get most often is, "where do you get your ideas? For me I think the issue is an overabundance of ideas. I shift from genre to genre, medium to medium, never sure which direction I will journey. Here are just a few of the places I find inspiration.

1. NATURE
Just walking in nature, around a calm lake or into the dark wood, can jostle poetry and painting ideas from the crevices of my brain. My senses come alive and life seems exciting. Ideas and poems reside among tissue paper thin flower petals, between the ripples on the lake, the tides of the ocean, and interspersed in grains of sand or beneath seashells. The song of a lark, the bark of a dog, the amorous play of the ducks in spring time, offer up all kinds of poems that I must record in any way I can before they dance away on the wind.

2. PHOTOGRAPHS
An offshoot of nature's inspiration are the photographs I take back to the studio with me. The birth of the iphone affords me an easy way to take photos of inspiration as it comes to me on a walk in a botanical garden, rose garden, or oceanfront. I get them printed from a free print app and keep them tucked into my artist inspiration journal.They become prompts for poems, or studies for water color art. 

3. MY OWN ART AND POETRY
Sometimes one of my own poems might trigger ideas for watercolor art. Or a painting, its composition, color palette, or subject, might bring to mind a verse and then I can blend the two on the page as the photo above of a page in my Watercolor Poetry Journal.

4. BOOKS
This book "Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding your voice through the craft of poetry" by Sandford Lyne has been a wonderful resource. I have two copies of the book and have read it several times. Many books can motivate the writing of new poems and help the poet craft there gems. This book has as its focus a system called word groups for prompts. At the back of the book are pages and pages of groups of 4 words each to use as a launch pad for poems. I have gone through them many times, writing longer poems as well as tanka and haiku and have even used them as prompts for flash fiction.

These are just a few places where inspiration sleeps, just waiting for you to awaken them. Although sometimes its the inspiration itself that awakens the poet or artist to new destinations, new paintings or poems and perhaps enlightenment to what is out there is the world for those who choose to wander.

Watercolor Poetry

I consider writing and reading poetry as my form of prayer and worship. I lean toward nature as inspiration for my short poems and enjoy most the kind of poems that describe or respond to nature as Mary Oliver's poetry does. I consider natural settings, like the woods, an open filled profuse with wildflowers, or the ocean, my church. Anyplace where the sky arcs above me and the breeze dances on my skin are where I need to be to connect with myself, my poet, and Mother Nature who I consider to be my higher power.

A lit candle, the music of silence, a pen and a notebook are how I write poetry and connect with my SELF.

Recently I've begun to incorporate watercolor floral painting with my poetry and here I share two pages from watercolor poetry journal. It's a work in progress but it comes from my heart and soul.  

I've been away from blogging for a long time but now I want to connect with other poets and artists through various social media forums and it's time to get this blog underway.

I hope you will join me. Share your own art and poetry and leave some comments. Though I cherish solitude, and each of us works mostly in silence and solitude, communication can ironically bring us closer to our selves and to our individual creative expressions.

Devoted to Mary Oliver

I have been a fan of Mary Oliver's poetry for years. Her poems are detailed and heartfelt images of nature, the humbleness of being human, and a clear indication that writing poems is a form of prayer. Her newest collection, "Devotions," is a compilation of poems from nearly all of her other collections and I keep it on my reading table and dip into it each morning. The title also gave me the idea for the art journal I've been toying with creating for a while now.

I have wanted to create a journal that honors Mary Oliver and includes some of my favorite lines from her poems. I've been lately intrigued by these 6 x 6 inch disc bound journals and I think it's the perfect style for this new journal.

I will create mixed media, art journal style, layouts and incorporate lines from the poems. It is my way to highlight the lines I love and to pay tribute to the poet who inspires me to write poetry and to experience and witness nature in all its beauty and tragedy with not only open eyes, but with open heart and spirit.

Tribute to a Poet

Several years ago we took a trip to Amherst, Massachusetts and visited the home of poet Emily Dickinson. It was a wonderful experience to see where she lived and wrote her hundreds of poems cloistered in her room all alone. Artifacts of handwritten poems, notes and letters, her iconic white dress with lace collar, the garden outside the door. As a poet and lover of poetry I was touched and inspired by merely being in the same house she had once been in.

I do enjoy incorporating my own poems into my art but many times I like to make an art journal layout that honors a favorite poet. Here is one I did in honor of Mary Oliver and my favorite poem of hers.

Today I made my Emily Dickinson page because the need for hope is strong and crucial right now. Here is her poem about hope.

And here is my art journal in tribute to the solitary poet, the Belle of Amherst.

Learning to write poetry from the masters

Early morning. The sun gives the horizon a tentative kiss. I shuffle in pink moccasins to the kitchen to prepare 8 ounces of honey and lemon water to hydrate and soothe my parched soul. After a few minutes of meditation in the silver gray solitude of this new day I turn on the light to read.

I am often in the process of reading several books at once but divine dawn is reserved for poetry, or poetry related books, or inspirational reading that centers me and reminds me to be mindful of each glorious moment of my life.

This precious morning I cozied up to the following books.

The first book was Mary Oliver's new collection of essays. "Upstream." Oliver is my poetic idol. Her knowledge and experience with nature in all its beauty and destruction is unparalleled. She describes flora, fauna and experience in intimate details, images that shock and surprise the reader. And she takes those details and connects them to a larger universal connection that exists among all life whether we acknowledge it or not. She makes me gasp. She makes me pick up my pen and journal to write my own thoughts or to copy down lines from her poems or essays I don't ever want to forget. Reading Oliver is a gift I give myself, ever grateful for the magic of her thoughts and words.

The second book I read this morning is one of a pair I just discovered while perusing amazon.com. "How to Read a Poem" and "How to Write a Poem" by Tania Runyon. I was attracted to these books because they are based on Billy Collins' poem "Introduction to Poetry." Collins is one of my other favorite poets and I love the poem so I ordered the books straight away and was not disappointed. Runyon offers several facets of a poem to explore, each based on a verse from the Collins poem. She then sets the reader a series of questions to ask about a poem based on that verse and gives you several poems to practice the process. The poems are wonderful and turn the book into an annotated anthology that enlightens the reader of poetry. So far I am enjoying the first book and look forward to seeing what she has to say about writing poems. 

I love finding new books of poetry or books about poetry that inspire me and help me learn. Perhaps one day some reader or poet will open one of my books and become inspired too.

MARY OLIVER

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets

And this is one of my favorite poems:

The Summer Day

By Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

The grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell, me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 **************************

            Each of her poems is a perfect prayer. Her powers of observation are remarkable and I've often said if I could write poems half as strong as hers I would be a happy poet. Only a poet who spends hours and hours of contemplative time in nature can produce such beautiful imagery and relate it to the universal in a way that touches the hearts of all her readers. I offer you a photo I took recently that reminds me of the detail in Oliver's poems and then an essay I wrote about my favorite poet.

            Though I spend my days in a windowless office inhaling recycled air, Nature’s sounds, scents and sights sing to my soul. On weekends and days off I can sit on my front stoop and watch the row of Bradford pear trees change clothes with the seasons, watch the scarlet plumage of the cardinal and hear his screech. I can count the cadre of mourning doves roosted in the bare branched maple tree. And in between those moments of wonder I turn to the poems of Mary Oliver to perk up my senses and give me a dose of fresh air.

            My favorite Oliver poem is “The Summer Day.” Oliver’s detailed description of the parts and practices of a single grasshopper, and her unique attention to the instinct, are compared to a moment of prayer. All of Oliver’s poems come from the pen of a woman who clearly has spent hours at a time, still and silent, observing the flora and fauna that live in the natural world of her home. Her attention to detail, and the poems themselves, are prayers she offers me to help me through stale days at work.

            It’s the last sentence of “The Summer Day” that thrums in my skin and in my heart. The lines are posted on the wall of my office and at home on my writing desk. I ask myself the question several times a day as I plot and plan a route out of my stagnant office and into Mary Oliver’s world of poetry and the enervating life forces of Mother Nature . . .

                        “Tell me, what is it you plan to do

                        With your one wild and precious life?”