Category: 25 Pins in a packet women creators

The Night Garden I. Meditations by Éilis ní Dhuibhne, images by Alice Maher.

July 24th, 2008

Alice Maher, artist extraordinaire exhibited at the RHA last year in Dublin, the show was entitled, ‘The Night Garden‘ and it was an interesting evolution and development of her themes. I reviewed it elsewhere. A small book of meditations by Éilis Ní Dhuibhne and drawings by Maher were a part of that show.

Eternal Lines to Time

Mairfidh mo ainm go brách

.
Agus mo anam.
Ná bí ag ceapadh
Agus mo chloigeann ar phláta agat
Nach mbeidh mé ann de shíor
Chun tú a chrá, a ghrá.
Mairfidh mo línte
Ar feadh na síoraíochta.

Cén fáth eile
A bheinn ag scríobh?
Ach sin Rud nach nadmhaíonn éinne
Riamh.’

The images are beautiful, but I cannot find them on google. This is another short poem from the Night Garden book:

Leda Asks Zeus

‘What on earth made you think
I’d fancy a swan?
I just don’t get it.
You could turn yourself into anyone.
Brad Pitt, or Mr Darcy.
Heathcliffe.
Even…only slagging…
Maud Gonne.
But ohmygod
A big lump of a swan?

Like, why?
There’s something else I don’t get
or else
You are a goose, Zeus.

But never mind.
It may be afterall
That we are made for each other.’

The Night Garden, Drawings by Alice Maher, Meditations by Eilis Ní Dhuibhne.
Viva La Vida! by Frida Kahlo.

July 21st, 2008

Vive La Vida!

There are many images by the artist Frida Kahlo.They are full of light. She is all over the net, and on you-tube, there is a small film called The Real Frida – and I suppose her work is known to many people.

Poethead is about women’s art , poetry and image; and I found I had never used any of her images, though I have in other places with regard to Oaxaca and CAFTA, even with regard to our Halloween. The above image is ‘Vive La Vida’, it was painted just before her death, which occurred 11 days after the CIA take over of Guatemala. The last images of her show her clasping a peace dove banner at a blockade

She fully embraced her life in all her methods and modes of expression, song, photography, politics and little books, not least the paintings.

The best bio I have read is by Hayden Herrera and is (if I remember) simply entitled ‘Frida’, it is worth the read , though nothing would compare with the paintings.

There is a blog link to a good Frida Kahlo site in the blogroll on the left-hand column. There is also wiki on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera which can be accessed by just googling ‘Wiki’ : Frida Kahlo !!

Hayden Herrera, ‘Frida Kahlo, the Paintings’
‘Sheep In Fog’ by Sylvia Plath.

June 22nd, 2008

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of Breath,
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells-
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

by Sylvia Plath

First Published in ‘Ariel‘, ed T Hughes. (1965) ‘The Evolution of Sheep in Fog’, by Ted Hughes, from ‘Winter Pollen‘. F+F.

( for discussions on editing Plath, cf ‘Winter Pollen’, ‘The Restored edition of Ariel’ and ‘The Collected Plath’.) I am linking here to my recent post Restored Music, Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’
“I Am in Need of Music” by Elizabeth Bishop

June 14th, 2008
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear , and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colours deep
To the subaqeous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in the moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

by Elizabeth Bishop (1928)
- From, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-am-in-need-of-music/

‘Form’ by Eva Gore-Booth

May 24th, 2008

The buried statue through the marble gleams,
Praying for freedom an unwilling guest,
Yet flooding with the light of her strange dreams
The hard stone folded round her uncarved breast.

Founded in granite, wrapped in serpentine,
Light of all life and heart of every storm,
Doth the uncarven image, the Divine
Deep in the heart of each man, wait for form.

Reprinted from The Oxford Book of Mystical Verse The Clarendon Press 1917. Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926)

Category: 25 Pins in a packet women creators

The Night Garden I. Meditations by Éilis ní Dhuibhne, images by Alice Maher.

Mairfidh mo ainm go brách

Leda Asks Zeus

Viva La Vida! by Frida Kahlo.

‘Sheep In Fog’ by Sylvia Plath.

“I Am in Need of Music” by Elizabeth Bishop

by Elizabeth Bishop (1928)

‘Form’ by Eva Gore-Booth