Piece of a Poem

Botticcelli Magazine (the literary magazine at CCAD, where I teach) offered us little rolled-up pieces of poems in the hallway this past week. We were invited to take one to carry around with us. Here's what I received.

It is indeed amazing how so few words can alter our experience of the day (I also loved seeing someone else's handwriting here...it implies a loving act of reading and generosity).

What poem have you carried in your pocket? What words would you offer up in a basket?

Watchable Delights

A few delightful and weird little videos for you today.


                 

Street Typography from Tom Williams on Vimeo, found via Creative Review


        

"Look Over the Watchmakers' Shoulders," found via The Kid Should See This

        

"Word Avoidance: Words We Love to Hate," by Joe Manning (From Pecha Kucha Louisville)

This Week, Feeling Inspired by...

The Matt & Kim concert in Columbus (on Wednesday night). Their energy and joyfulness is incredible and completely contagious. In the best way possible, there was a distinctly Sesame Street/singalong feel to their performance (see my blurry photo at the right--yup, those are balloons that they passed out to the audience!). I was reminded of singing songs in kindergarten, when my teacher would point at the students, encouraging us to sing along with her even more loudly, whether or not it sounded good. They also worked bits of hip hop songs into their show, dancing wildly. It amazed me how they managed to be both performers and fans onstage--maybe that’s why the audience responds so exuberantly to Matt and Kim. They honor the power and fun of being a devoted fan by blurring the line between performer and audience. (How would this work at a poetry reading? Could it? Not with the same volume, but somehow....)

This bumper sticker, spotted while driving to work one morning: “Trees are the answer.”  Sound familiar?

This article, “Diamonds Unearthed,” from Smithsonian.com.

This video by Paul Octavious (I love his photography, too). I’ve been thinking lately that one of the most essential qualities that artists can have is attentiveness. This video is a beautiful example of how being present can lead to inspiration.


Ghana In Fog from Paul Octavious on Vimeo.

Process Video: Flourless

Happy Multimedia Friday! Time for another process video. This video takes you behind the scenes (OOH! SCANDALOUS!) of my poem "Flourless."

As a new experiment, I've added some "asides" for you--I narrated my thinking process in additional text file for your "pleasure" (more like your added neuroses--my apologies for my scattered brain!).

Process Video (with Asides)--Flourless from Hannah Stephenson on Vimeo.

I've noticed a few changes in how I work, certainly....more certainty and trust that I can write SOMETHING, but less of a plan or strategy going into my writing sessions (for instance, I thought for sure I'd write something rhymed when I wrote this poem, and then I didn't--or recently, I've though, ok, today I want to write a LONG poem, and then I write a little 8-line ditty).

What's new in your process these days? Any changes you're noticing?

Text Art: One Day

I don't mean it in a depressing way....more like this. (Shooby dooby dooby dooby do wah wah.) And who wants a parking garage, anyway? Except to scribble words onto, of course!

Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for reading this week! 

Text Art: Those Places

You know, those places.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for reading this week!

Text Art: Tell Me

  

The floor provides helpful suggestions sometimes. From one room into another!

A happy weekend to you, and thank you for looking here.

 

 

Text Art: Stormless Life Insurance Building

May your weekend be lovely and stormless. As always, thank you for reading this week.

Text Art: It Happens Here

Thank you for reading this week! While making this, I kept envisioning a Christopher Pike book cover---I used to love his books when I was younger. Maybe the tilted writing? And color scheme? Not sure why I was thinking of it.

Have a magical weekend.

On Creativity (featuring Dick Jones)

I got to know poet and musician Dick Jones (who lives outside of London) through his blog, Patteran Pages, and admired his thoughtful, elegant poems. I’ve always enjoyed his readings of poems (and was honored when he read one of mine for Whale Sound).

I find his work to be extraordinarily sensitive and full of surprising details (because we carry who we are into our art!). He has a great voice, and I’m happy to share a couple of audio files of him reading his work with you here. I’m also very excited that Dick’s first collection of poems, Ancient Lights, is now available (from Phoenicia Publishing), and it is a beauty. Note: text of "In The Daubigny Chapel" appears after the interview.

Q: Many of your poems in Ancient Lights are concerned with time and memory. How do you use memory as a muse? When you revisit a memory in a poem, what does it feel like to you?

A: I never seek out memory consciously as some kind of goad to inspiration. I can only write in response to some jolt from without or within and long periods may pass between such events. Then a small linkage of words or a complete line will simply appear, often enough in the midst of a sequence of either focused or disconnected thinking. Many poems begin when I’m driving on my own. The pairing of concentrated attention behind the wheel and the freewheeling bundles of randomised thought-bursts stimulated by music that might be playing or by the passing scene seems to provide particularly fertile conditions for the start of a poem. It’s within this kind of creative context that memory might interpose itself at some point. So there’s no conscious attempt to site an emergent poem in some recollection of the past: if it’s going to happen it will simply happen. But when it does the greater likelihood is that a first draft of the poem will be completed swiftly and its emergence will carry with it an immediate and commanding emotional charge.