Scale can relate to relative size or to music. Curiously the two meanings converge in a poem from 2016 in Reading Room called Small World Tales, the start of an imagined, or hoped for, series. The Hadza are a nomadic people for whom time is not of the essence. I wanted to compare their pace […]
a question of scale Read More »
In the oppressive drought of an extended heat wave, everything is parched. The leaves in the stale breeze are as percussive as they’d be in late August. The return of the crows add a bluesy accompaniment. I wonder about my well, and if I should peer into it and risk having my worries validated. I
writing on parchment Read More »
my pretties droop in the drought thick prickly things prevail – chilling dew into subtle jewels on their breasts mia burrus july 2020
looking for beauty in the dry season Read More »
Write about the cloud was the suggestion, and in any time but our own that could only have meant one thing. My offering, in Reading Room, comes with a twist. And after writing last month about clouds pink and blue, I find myself now searching the sky for any cloud at all, not least the
workshopping on a cloudless day Read More »
December 2019 it was. On what shore have those thirty years of white ribbons left us? At the bottom of which sea are all the surrendered arms? L. Cohen sang “in streams of light I clearly saw/the dust you seldom see,/out of which the Nameless makes/a Name for one like me.” In considering the Montreal
thoughts on the 30th anniversary of the Montreal massacre Read More »
…are needed to complete a piece, or at least to call it complete. The path I try to follow, gleaned from several sources is: be curious, question, explore, collect ideas, learn skills, file, filter, reflect, experiment, watch for creative collisions, prototype, work, deadline, deliver, repeat! My deadline in this case was to complete a poem
so many things, so much time… Read More »
Back in December I posted my sketchbook and notebook ideas for Stanchion. I knew at least one version of it would be a haptic poem and the result is in Gallery. A ‘verse’ in barnboard and barbed wire, saying something or nothing about fences, walls, barriers, all of our own making. Another version of Stanchion
you, stanchion, are standing – but for or against? bend and resonate – be guitar, lute, xylophone, flute; your song is free and will travel air upon air mia burrus feb/20
Stanchion – a fragment Read More »
…of colour among many other things. This week the cheap thrill of pink inspired my shutter finger and pen-in-hand. In mere days the view outside my window has filled with green, emptying my duff- and kapok- filled synapses of winter’s shades of grey. If only we could give a gift of pretty fresh picked flowers
we’ve been starved… Read More »
The seemingly endless unmonetized virtual concerts on YouTube only make me think of the concert Vicky and I were so fortunate to see in person on March 3 – The Indigo Project, by Tafelmusik and Suba and Trichy Sankaran and two student choirs. With no living, breathing encore performance on the horizon, this concert has