story

A repurposed work-in-progress painting of my garden where I used to live by the sea provides the background to my new self-published book. Far left, three little boxes of light can just be seen where I painted my shed windows

Journaled poems

I first wrote a poem when I started writing Morning Pages (Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way). It somehow just flowed onto the page as I wrote my three pages of free writing. It was a poem to me, but not in the sense of a proper poem written by a poet. However, it was very personal and special to me. Since that time I have written quite a number of such poems, especially when I was going through a period of depression. I’ve always referred to them as my doomy gloomy poems. I kept these for a long while as although they were a bit gloomy, by the end of the poem I was turning things around so they had a positive slant. This all happened at the time I decided to write. I would start writing something, often deciding to have a set number of syllables and rhyming line endings but no set pattern, just spontaneous decisions which carried through until the poem was finished. I would say that during that time, at least part of it, I was in flow, I became immersed in what I was doing and lost all track of time.

I haven’t written many in recent years and they tend not to be so gloomy. From time to time I have gone through them and wanted to do something with them. I compiled a draft book with them all in, in alphabetical order, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. There was nothing special about it, no special meaning for me. So I put it aside.

Photo memories

I thought about having the poems illustrated. I’m no artist but I do love taking photos, they are like my diary of life. So one day I just came up with the idea of choosing one of my photos to go with each poem, with their own linked memory. Alongside this, I had decided to select my favourites and ten seemed to be the perfect number. One poem is a haiku written during a creative workshop, the rest are journaled poems written quietly, either at home or in a local cafe … or in one case, on a train when it was delayed and stuck in the middle of the countryside.

Some months after, I have given the book a name and am self-publishing under my Waves and Pebbles imprint. It is a tiny book with few pages but it has ended up meaning so much to me. I decided to write just a couple of pages of endnotes that say a little about the memories.

Repurposed painting

I recently started doing a mixed media mantra art course with artist Kelly Rae Roberts and that has got me back into playing around with paint. One day I decided to paint over a large canvas of a painting I did en plein air in the garden where I used to live and have ended up with the work-in-progress painting shown in the picture. I decided this was perfect for my book cover and just added a blob for the back cover to represent the sun and remind me of the beautiful sunrises and sunsets that I experienced when I lived on the beautiful Isle of Thanet coast in the south east of England.

The blob makes all the difference to the back cover!

I’m excited to say that the book dropped through my door a couple of days ago. It will be online, official publication date was yesterday – a year on from my last book “Writing Back to Happiness” written in collaboration with four wonderful ladies in Thanet. I notice that some countries already have it available but it has not yet worked through the system to be everywhere and will appear in time. I’m not sure how other people may experience “Ripples” A journey through belonging 10 poems with personal photos and endnotes (by Kay Underdown) but for me it helps show a different way of representing personal memories and preserving them for the future.

Self-publishing – pricing dilemma

I have found it very difficult to put a price on this book as it is very slim. Often we are guided by the size of something in putting a monetary value on things yet if I think of what else you could buy for so little, it is not very much. For me, I will treasure my little book with the memories it holds safe for me and provides the starting point for more little stories in life, whether written or visual. More recently, I have explored sound and music in telling a digital story in relation to my personal experience of cancer … but that is definitely for another post.

Copyright 2013 Miguel Virkkuhen Carvalho, Flickr, CC-BY, via Wylio

This 10 minute writing exercise was written four days after the last one posted yesterday, back in January of this year when I was in hospital. It was a very emotional time yet at the same time my emotions were somewhat on hold, still struggling somewhere with my new situation in life, having just been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia – a fast-acting life threatening form of cancer. Fortunately the final report revealed that I had the type APL (Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia) which has the best prognosis.

‘Let anything come to light. Light, sun, shade, depths. My favourite colours. Pink and turquoise. Where are they now? The luminescence of my favourite pink is in my hand leading this waltz of writing. Waltz – music is within me yet it has evaded me. The song of life, the thrill of it all. The lilting sound of creativity. Creativity is to be found all around – or is it? I need to search it out, to wallow in it and bring it back to life. Life, it keeps coming up. This new, unexpected venture. How does it feel to be here? But I am not ‘here’. I am soothing my soul to do something special with creativity. There is so much around, but where is it hiding. I am on a journey and that journey is just finding me. I must avoid the logic. That is not what this is for. Storytelling was my aim and that can stay with me. I will write a short story, one that wings in from the sky above. One that I don’t think hard about, it just comes to me. Will it be real? There will be more than one – but fantasy is what breathes through my veins. A new light. Get caught up in the colour that comes to me. Take inspiration from all that has come to be in this vessel of a room. The cards and gifts. Where am I? I am with heart. I am loving life. All is not lost it is within me. To find the light and the story. To have music in my mind. To love and to laugh. To write music is a gift that I can bring to this time. I am soaring through the sky in Florida. Such a wonderful and special time. The cool air brushing through my hair as I swirl through the clouds like a swan sweeping across the ocean.’