Feral Mom, Feral Writer: The Sands of Time, A Poetry Workshop, and A Permission Slip Movie for Mother

Sands of Time photo Robyn Beattie

Oh the sands of time!

Just when I feel squeezed of breath and hours, here comes an external image to capture how I’m feeling internally… this week Urgent Care for a child pulling a muscle using resistance bands during his early morning workout. The resultant right-side excruciating 24-hour pain mimicked appendicitis…so off we went to sit behind our thin blue shroud pulled shut on its curved ceiling track where the predicaments of the more seriously injured float through to us even as we cringe and try not to hear.

While we wait for his chest x-ray, my son takes selfies in his Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum hospital smock. And there go the hours slated for writing and teaching. What can we do, my son and I—he, but to make art of his “self” and me to peruse email, finding inspiration in the images my poetry movie collaborator Robyn continually sends to my inbox, reminder of the precious and timeless field of collaborative delight we share.

I have a backlog of images from Robyn for our latest movie for The Three Oranges (from the poem in November Butterfly). All the images have been plunked along a timeline to music and voice recordings; I just have to figure out how to get each image to stop zooming in and zooming out in the new software I’m learning how to use. I’ll post a link when the movie goes live.

Poetry Tour of the Forms

Here’s a Haiku Mobile I made last Father’s Day (for my father). I think of it as a physical premonition to the beautiful Feral Haiku Chandelier we assembled at Ghost Ranch on retreat at A Room of Her Own Foundation. Come out and write your own Haiku with me this month at San Diego Writers, Ink! Pass it on to all of your San Diego friends with day hours to spare!

Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms, In Person at San Diego Writers, Ink

Four-hour workshop: a poetry fest!

10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Tuesday October 20, 2015

$60 members, $72 non-members

Do you haiku? Ever written a haibun, aubade, or villanelle? Want to try your hand at a sestina or a sonnet? During this one-day workshop we will fearlessly and playfully write our way towards working drafts of as many of the forms as we can.

We’ll start with the deceptively simple but evocative gem of haiku. Then we’ll breathe into the slightly pithier prose lead required of the haibun with its haiku chaser. Next up: dawn songs (otherwise known as aubades) for a love lost or left at sunrise. And then, hearts astir, we turn to the gift of intricate form and the unusual word choices form often invites. We will draft sestinas, sonnets and villanelles.

To sign up and read rest of course description visit Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Motherhood and Art: Uneasy Bedfellows: A Guest Post by Tina Pocha

Also up this month at Mother Writer Mentor, a beautiful post by Tina Pocha (I met her at Ghost Ranch this summer) about the and/or dilemmas of motherhood when mothers are also artists and/or writers. Can we do both? All three? How? Pocha muses:

I had hit the limits of my imagination, the boundaries of my fear. I didn’t know how to raise children and still grow me. I didn’t know how to serve their needs and mine. I didn’t know how to be everything I wanted to be.

As part of considering her dilemma, Pocha introduces us to an Italian poet/sculptor Mirella Bentivoglio. In an interview at Literary Mama Pocha selected for us to reference, I see mirrored back a part of my own journey as co-founding blogger at Mother Writer Mentor. Interviewer Toti O'Brien writes, “Since she [Bentivoglio] continually promoted other artists, mainly women, she didn’t feel confined in a lonely, private struggle.” That sums up how it feels to be part of Mother Writer Mentor. I love engaging and learning from the mothers writing and sharing there. Thank you Tina! Read the rest of Pocha's post here: Motherhood and Art: Uneasy Bedfellows

Photo by Robyn Beattie

My Geppetto: Fairytale Review Finalist

One of this year’s new poems, “My Gepetto” was a finalist for the Fairytale Review’s 2015 Awards in Poetry and Prose; I’m honored, and motivated by the gesture--I’ll be writing a new crop of poems, and of course, submitting again. I hope you’ll send The Fairytale Review your best fairytale work next year as well. Good luck!

The Permission Slip Movie: Curator’s Choice Finalist at Doublebunny Press

Last spring I took part in supplying footage for a movie one of my favorite artist/writer mother colleagues, Suzi Banks Baum (of Laundry Line Divine), put together with Lynette Lucy Najimy about what it takes for mothers to get to their creative work. When asking us to take part in this project, Baum wrote:

I hear from so many women that they feel “their feet are nailed to the floor.” They cannot picture what it would look like for them to step away from the dishes, the television, and the two and a half jobs and find fifteen minutes behind a closed door to write or think or sit in the dark, alone.

Out of hours of footage, Baum and Najimy created this six-minute video you may enjoy if you too are a feral mom trying to get her to work as I have been for years. Baum prefaces the video on Vimeo with these questions:

Do you find yourself composing poetry while folding laundry? Have you been putting off writing until your kids are off to college?Out of the Mouths of Babes is a circle of creative women who express from inside motherhood. This small movie may be the permission slip that gets you started.

Here’s a link to the video, which was a Curator’s Choice Finalist at the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival hosted by Doublebunny Press, on Vimeo: The Permission Slip

Screening of November Butterfly Poetry Movies

My poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie will be presenting a film screening of five of our poetry movies as part of the Guerneville Library Fall Art Show that opens Friday, October 2 at 3 p.m. Robyn will be screening our poetry movies from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14. Robyn will read the poems, show the movies, and discuss her images.