Category: poems

Barbican Project

I’m loving being on the Handweavers Diploma in London and recently completed my first project. The Barbican was our design inspiration.  Here is the poem that was at the heart of my mood board. Also one or two pictures of the swatches in the collection.

Now is then and then is now
now is then and then is now,
relentless soul-less grey,
tingled alive with flashes of joy and colour
memories of you here, mingle with finger tipped geraniums on the flats

now is then and then is now,
steady studying summer-school,
heart pricked, such laughter and tears
shapes oozing remembered days, swamped by solid blocks of stuck-ness

now is then and then is now,
solid blocks surrender
leaking light, space, ideas for colour and design
gathering slowly, I warm to my task, my weaver and your artist joined.

© Sue Orton 2013

(I last visited the Barbican in 1980 with my mother artist and sculptor who died 23 Oct 2013

A poem for all creative women

Deep conversation with my mumI dedicate this poem by Erika Harris to my mother. She was a gifted artist and sculptor and deeply encouraging of my work. She inspires my work daily. She died  on 23rd October 2012.

You are a supreme and generative creator.
You have spent years, and lifetimes, refining the treasures within you.
It is time, now, to cast those treasures outside of you.
What have you been waiting for?
More money, time, support, knowledge?

Activate and release Your Work first,
then, those things you were awaiting
will appear.  They will chase you down
and insist that you have and enjoy them.

You have died the death of linear logic.
Your feminine resurrection now summons
you to luscious life, born through your hips and lips.

Will you sway?  Will you say?  Will you allow
your season of free expression?  Will you
add your nectar-fragrance to the air we breathe?

Or will you tuck it away, in an attic, for another time?
Your words, your curves, your underwater nerves,
are begging to surface, to be see, known and heard
by the hard angles, and the soft angels, that indwell
this place we chose to call home.  Fluff the pillows,
set loose the power, that burns between your breasts.

That heat, that light, is not for your protective sleep.
It is for the risk of daily dawn.  Mother, daughter,
sister, lover, matriarch, queen, goddess, that You Are.
Wait?  I think not.  Those days have set.

Would you think the sun or moon “polite” if they withheld
their luminosity? You are no less, and no different,
from those icons in the sky.  And the world will remain in disarray
unless and until we stop this waiting.  And, instead, start beaming
the beauty and wisdom and comfort and harmony that is ours to beam.

Erika Harris