Friday, October 21, 2005
Thursday 20th Oct
8.30 Limerick College of Art
10.00 Library
Guy stopped to chat, has moved to Limerick from London isn’t involved in any groups but is interesting in joining some told him too come back and check out the archive when I have more information on groups.
12.00 Attended a poetry workshop in the Limerick City Library And 4 other participants - all professional or budding poets! Haven’t written any since I was an angsty teenager. Jane chatted about the methodology of poetry writing using some great quotes – my favourite being “there is no such thing as writers block you only need to lower your standards” (William Stafford) Much of what I learnt could be transferred completely over to visual art. Other good ‘tips’ were:
One days truly embarrassing experiment opens the door to the next days good work.
Ask questions of your work, “what would happen if”.
What matters is not what you’ve just done but the next one.
She gave us an exercise to do where we had to make lists or colors, animals, sounds, landmarks etc and then (I didn’t know what we were doing) write a poem including from each list – the poem was to be about or include a loss.
Here is my poem I wrote in on walking up on a bus to find the ring my brother had given me for a birthday was missing.
Jolted upright
I stare at my naked digits.
The discolored corn fed ochre stained by a smudged and forgotten reminder.
I slither down between the seats,
Coke bottles, gum
An urban grass snake I scan my environment
Tasting distant disco, marmite recently on toast
Was in even here?
Maybe I woke remembering
Remembering the cool comfort on my finger
A cheap mental connection to another.
Well its not great, not even good. But it is a poem. I wrote a poem.
2.00. Dropped in on shedman. He had relocated his shed to outside Limerick Castle. He had bunches of kids drawing with chalk on the pavement. We discussed our 'techniques' of communication. He feels he goes for a salesman approach - grabbing people off the street. He recorded me (video camera) talking about Archiving Limerick and asked me to recide my new poem. MAybe i dont like recording people because i find it so uncomfortable!
3.00 Went around electrical shops looking for mini disc recorders and mics. Rang Steve again for his advice. Ummm documentation. Need to think more about it.
Dropped into the Catacombs resource center, they are linked to Doras Lumin and house art classes and exhibitions.
# posted by Neva Elliott @ 10:41 PM 
