Last week my friend Sun Hesper Jansen posted a drawing and poem on their Instagram account to celebrate Imbolc, or Saint Brigid’s Day. I was writing a poem about a tree I always see outside the window of the place where I work, and was struggling to describe the particular light of the time of year that was colouring the tree. Thanks to Sun’s timely post I thought to use the word “Imbolc” as an adjective, and suddenly the poem came together.
I work in a social grocery, where I mostly do admin in the mornings when things are still quiet. But we do get a lot of families visiting our shop and social meeting area. We have a children’s play area with small tables and chairs, and part of my job is to make sure that there are plenty of colouring in pages available. It’s fun to look for them on the internet. There are sooo many free colouring plates available.
I see the oddest colour combinations after the children have left. Sometimes I stick the finished pages to the railing by the stairs, so people can see them as they come in or leave.
I also included another erasure collage in this week’s post. I have all but abandoned the Summer Book Project. I have been posting ones I made last year and the year before. But this one today is a new one. I don’t think I’ll continue though. I mean, I still want to make digital collages and erasure poetry, or blackout poetry as it’s also called, but I think I’m done with Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book as a source. I started with that book as way of expressing my struggle with chronic illness, but I’ve moved on now. I’ve made some progress and I don’t want to look back.
If—no make that when—I make more erasure collages like this, I’d like to use non-fiction sources or collated news articles to make things more interesting.
Now the poem:
St Brigid’s Day
Outside my office window the weeping willow is being coloured by the Imbolc sun in a shocking, wide-awake hue. When a child draws a tree and clutches in its small hand the most garish of all the colour pens available, don’t say that trees can’t be that colour because they can, and one day you will see it too.
A beautiful poem, Conny, and a striking message. Of course the trees can be any colour we wish. I am also laughing because this is the third time I have seen Christina's World appear in two days.
I do love The Summer Book.