VIVID- Poems & Notes About Colour

Today I have an intriguing new book to share. ‘Vivid’ by Julie Paschkis -a hybrid text incorporating poetry and informational notes about colour. The author and illustrator reminds us how colour is woven into our language, connected to our moods and colour has different connotations among different societal groups.

The poems are mostly quite short, free verse poems at times employing repetition and elements of rhyme. The poems easily complement the fascinating facts that accompany each of the poetic offerings. The partnership between information and poetry created in this text adds a deeper dimension to the reading experience.

'Even though blue is often associated with sadness, it is the most popular colour according to polls taken in ten countries around the world.'

On a personal note, and as a reader, this book meets two strong interests of mine- factual information and verse. The book demonstrates the various ways to think about colour and delivers a playful way to explore the colours of our world.

I love books that present possibilities. This book shows how poetry connects effortlessly to the wider world.

INDIGO

Diving
Into
Long Lake
headfirst
In I go
plummeting
through
light
blue
deep
down
low
into
indigo

Julie Pashkis

I
I have been inspired to experiment with this approach in my writer's notebook. I will be sharing this approach with the young poets with whom I write, hoping they may be inspired to try such an approach, in their own writing.

Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York. I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co...

Peter Dixon -Teabag Poem

Today I'm highlighting the poetry of Peter Dixon. Peter Dixon was not just a poet. He was a performer, educationalist and artist. He grew up in London during WW2, and as a boy his schooling was far from successful. He struggled with spelling and the understanding of word, form and grammar, so he tended to write secretly at home, drawing and writing of things largely ignored by schools. Despite this difficult phase of his life, Peter eventually became a school teacher and then a senior lecturer in education. It often mystified him as to how all of this came to pass. As a teacher, he strived to be unbiased and did not neglect the children who experienced learning challenges. Peter Dixon became a full time children’s writer and educational consultant. His first book was published in 1978. Whilst living in Winchester, Hampshire, with his family, he contributed to over 100 poetry anthologies and had seven collections of his own work published including Grow Your O...

Poetry Friday 'Storm On The Island' Seamus Heaney

Given the fact that we recently celebrated St Patrick's Day, it seems appropriate that I take this opportunity to continue the Irish focus and recognize one of Ireland's leading literary figures... Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland in 1939 and died in 2013. He became a multi award winning poet. His first collection of poems, 'Death of a Naturalist' appeared in 1966 and helped to establish Heaney as one of the major poets of the 20th century. From that first anthology, I have chosen 'Storm On The Island.' This poem tells us about the stoic resistance of people and structures to an incoming storm. The island is not named. Poetic scholars believe this is a poem that can be taken literally, as a monologue on the life and attitude of island people facing a storm, or it can be understood as a metaphor of political struggle on the island of Ireland. Heaney knew both worlds. The poems of this first collection are grounded in the soil...

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