March - Water

This month we looked at a couple of prints by Charles Bartlett - Yellow Seascape and Dark Water. These provoked some lively debate - or should that be ripples? 

On the darker shores we looked at Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar, and on the sunnier side we read Mary Oliver's Morning Poem.  Here's a tiny snatch of the Oliver poem about the ways in which we can interpret our world:

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.


We also created rather a splendid mindmap on the theme of Water which has provided me with enough ideas for a lifetime of workshops...
  
Here are some of our watery words:
Sweet Water

Yvette

Rain falls soft & even

Green grass now perks & we preen

Water a must to fall on earth

Clear and smooth

The duck hurries her brood

No water, life concludes!

With a clink

Ice splashes into a drink

Sweet water

No hand held games

Just the gift of water

In this arid land

Water

Sonia

Physicist lying on a waterbed -

It must be said,

is wave motion captured!

Where there's muck ....

Yvette

It was the late 1950s and life was bleak in the Eastend of London.  The smell of rotting fish and overripe fruit and veg hit your nostrils.

Charlotte and Charlie loved to play hide’n’seek between the large packing cases on the dock.  Lotte, more adventurous than Charlie often got herself into scrapes and Charlie was always there for her.  They were inseparable having lost their mother to TB when they were tiny.

Winter had come early this year and the children were glad to sit by the fires lit by the men waiting for work in the dock.  It was very dark and shadows were long and sinister.  The ships in dock dwarfed the houses and the water lapped the muddy shore.

Lotte wore no shoes and she was the first to jump into the mud.  She yelped as her toe struck something cold and sharp.  She parted the filthy slime with her hands and uncovered a box.  Charlie was now by her side, fearing that Lotte had hurt herself.  To his surprise she stood triumphant – the little box revealing its secret.  Lotte, however, was covered in the stench of the river but her broad grin signalled something great!

Chris

The Full Cup

A cup half full never half empty

Looking at life as a gift to be treasured.

Imagine painted islands of lilies in dark water           

Lifting the spirits, keeping it measured.
Imagine a mood of being well and happy

Black thoughts kept at bay, hope as a key.

Imagine rivers of sunshine, pools of light

No darkness, no sorrow, no doubts within me.

Water

Water colours change with mood

Clear and uplifting or murky and dark

But any  water is vital for life

Next Month - April 16th - The Collapse of the West Tower!!! A huge event in the life of Hereford Cathedral in 1786............