Aegis-fang

When Bruenor Battlehammer created Aegis-fang for his adopted son Wulfgar
The incredible warhammer was said to have been the Dwarven King’s pinnacle of creation. If memory serves me correctly, he didn’t return to the anvil for a considerable time after the forging of the infamous hammer…

However, it has been a long time since I last read the books and it’s also a completely vague reference for anyone beyond an olde fashioned D&D gamer…

Although I had to split up my work into bite sized blog posts, I  have presented for you my Aegis-fang… I have never been able to surpass the quality of work that I put together for my Poetry assignment, this was the point where it all fell together, where I was able to encompass all my passion and inspiration into 30+ pages and it paid off… It earnt me a distinction at university!

It’s taken me a while to build up the confidence to share this work with you, I’m so proud, yet so shy, almost ashamed of my pride, for it is misplaced when compared to those who actually inspired me initially.  I have so much admiration for others, I feel insignificant, a candle flame against a spotlight.

This is my pride and joy, I love each word that embroidered together created something beautiful and now I feel as though I have laid my soul bare, naked in the face of criticism.

Yet it has given my blog a nice turn of events, I still have my lingering tale to work on, for my characters keep haunting by dreams… insistent that I do not forget them, that I continue to give them life, through words…

It’s been a pleasure to focus on something more than my own cathartic personal posts.
For I suspect these don’t really make for stimulating reading,  they are precious to me.

It’s also given me the chance to slip in a little bit of my photography… For how better to dress my own words than with my own pictures…

Sadly, I appear to have lost the feedback sheet with the tutors comments,  for i would have liked to have shared those words too… So instead, I shall sit back and allow you to enjoy my work in its fragmented presentation, invite you to form your own views and hopefully enjoy some my insane scribblings…

Anne Harrison 05.07.17

Influences and Inspiration

Influences and Inspiration

 

 Reference – 3

 Reference – 8

 Reference – 9

 Reference – 12

 Reference – 13

 Reference – 18

Reference – 19

The Lost Generation
Jonathan Reed

I am part of a lost generation.
And I refuse to believe that
I can change the world.
I realize this may be a shock, but
“Happiness comes from within”
Is a lie, and
“Money will make me happy”
So in thirty years, I will tell my children
They are not the most important thing in my life.
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
Work
Is more important than
Family
I tell you this:
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
But this will not be true in my era.
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
Thirty years from now, I will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of my divorce.
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making.
In the future,
Environmental destruction will be the norm.
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this Earth.
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic.
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we reverse it.

Reference – 21

Reference – 26

“

I don’t want you to be my well constructed paragraph
I rather you be my run on sentence

 

This love isn’t a synopsis
thesis 
or dissertation
it’s a creative writing project that comes together
flawed 
magical 
and full of errors
but we are still learning

 

I don’t need punctuation marks getting in between what we have

 

What we pour into one another should be fluid 
not frozen by societal expectations

 

Let’s avoid periods or colons
comas or ellipses
in OUR love work

 

I’m even OK with us being grammatically incorrect
unconventional 
and in love the way we want to be in love

I will never use my red pen on your heart or tongue to disregard or dismantle how you feel or speak
and I am perfectly OK with your mistakes

 

This love is not a college essay

”

No Edits, Alex Elle (via alexandraelle)

Reference – 27

Reference – 28

 

sample of ‘crossing paths’ matrix style

***

 

Anne Harrison 05.07.17

the journey continues

A Critical Reflective Essay on Poetic Expression

A Critical Reflective Essay on Poetic Expression

Introduction:

A personal exploration into the realms of poetry through the use of expressive imagery, dating back to the dawn of time and creeping up to date with modern computer graphics. Focusing on the appearance of each piece as well as the story told within and embracing a wide source of inspiration, discovering an ever increasing range of writers and artists who have produced some elaborate and stunning work.

Personal Statement:

Poetry is a theme which had been absolutely alien to me prior to enrolling upon the Creative Writing Course. My knowledge was limited to The Raven, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Vogon Poetry, and these examples I was only exposed to through other interests. (Namely movies, music and comedy) I was unsure what to expect as Lydia Towsey (Chair/Compere WORD! www.wordpoetry.eu)¹ took our class during the first year. During these evenings I was thrown into a confusing yet beautiful world of poetry. With its strict rules of rhymes and stances, counting consonants or lines, style structure, form and prose all of which can be thrown out of the window and disregarded. It would appear that in poetry rules are sometimes made to be broken.

Getting it wrong:

I embraced this new found path with enthusiasm, yet my subject matter was too metaphysical, I took inspiration from my Pagan background and my writing explored subjects relating to the supernatural, esoteric and theoretical. They did not tell a story they posed questions and were just not specific. A concept, at the time, I just failed to understand. My ideas were shelved, but not totally dismissed.

A journey of rediscovery:

Wednesday 1st October 2014, upon this evening I attended ‘A Different World – Poetry Workshop’ held at The Curve and hosted by Anita Sivakumaran.²

An insightful and inspirational event, which once again threw open the realm of poetry for me to gaze upon with delight and wonder. Introducing an unusual twist, these came in the form of ‘Technicians of the Sacred: A range of poetries from Africa, America, Europe & Asia, an anthology by Jerome Rothenberg³ and Octavio Paz.⁴ Both of which have remained strong influences throughout the creation of my portfolio and changed the direction of my poetry. I was inspired by the use of illustrations and design to create a story, with images and words, words forming images and pictorial portrayal of poetic works.

Introducing ‘Concrete & Abstract (or Abstract & Concrete)’

‘Open to Interpretation’ was written / drawn during the ‘A Different World – Poetry Workshop’ held at The Curve and hosted by Anita Sivakumaran. Exploring poetry from around the world and throughout time as portrayed by various cultures, introducing me to ‘Technicians of the Sacred’ for the second time in as many weeks.

Firstly in Nick Cave’s ‘20,000 Days on Earth’ in an interview, Nick Cave remarks on Technicians of the Sacred: “I read an enormous amount of poetry, and “Technicians of the Sacred” has been hugely influential. The primitive poetry in general and the way it’s presented in that book is pretty extraordinary. After I’ve gotten sick of reading modern poetry, I just open that up, and there’s just something immediate about it and visceral and shockingly erotic that gives a license and a context to go to other places. I think that songwriting is much more conservative than poetry. Themes dealt with in poetry seem to be much more audacious, so I get a lot of inspiration from that.” ⁵

I found this synchronicity hard to ignore and when this book entered my life I was intrigued to learn more discovering a whole new style of poetry and a major source of inspiration. ‘Open to Interpretation’ was hand drawn remains unchanged, scanned directly from the notebook, it is a very significant poem for two reasons, firstly it marks my re-introduction into the realm of poetry and secondly the message itself relates to my own personal spiritual journey. Therefore I have deliberately not included the translation in this essay, leaving the poem quite literally open to interpretation for the reader to explore the symbols and translate these as they desire.

These symbols illustrate the rebus principle⁶, where words and syllables are represented by pictures of objects and by images whose names are similar to the word or syllable to be expressed. A simple explanation of this rebus principle can be forming words from pictures:

BEE + LEAF = BELIEF

SEA + SUN = SEASON

This is un-doubtfully one of the oldest forms of communication used to tell a story and can be seen in ‘Song of the dead, relating the origin of bitterness’ (from Asia) explored in ‘Technicians of the Sacred’.

‘The Dream’ and ‘The Secret’ are two poems I have chosen to include from the classes in the first year ran by Lydia Towsey, the latter with some recent modifications. ‘The Dream’ was created through a series of exercises given in class, from first making a list of ten abstract concepts, choosing one to focus on then applying the five physical senses to the chosen conception, therefore applying a concrete notion to an abstract concept, which also gave me the working title for my portfolio.

‘The Secret’ was recently altered, after the discovery of an interesting online article on ‘Rewriting Books Through Redacted Text’ (By Kathleen Massara)⁷ This article looked at the work of the artist known as ‘someguy’⁸ and Jonathan Safran Foer’s cut-out, remixed novel, ‘Tree of Codes’⁹. Both of which took existing work and heavily edited it to create new pieces work from the remaining words.  Considering the theme of ‘The Secret’ I choose to blank out words to invite the reader to participate in my work by interjecting their own words into the space provided. There is no right or wrong way to read this, the idea is to develop a relationship with my reader by allowing them their own creative input into this piece.

As Stephen King once said: “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft ¹⁰

‘Crow Haiku’ A Haiku¹¹ is a Japanese poem, which dates from around the 9^th century. They consist of three lines, the first and last line contains 5 moras and the middle line has 7 moras (In English syllables are used as moras). From the development of my earlier piece ‘The Dream’ I felt inspired to look into various forms of communication which related to the physical senses and for the ‘Crow Haiku’ I reinterpreted it into sight sound and touch, recreating the Haiku from Words (sight) to Morse code¹² (sound) and Braille (touch)¹³. The visual effect of just casually glancing at a series of dots or dashes and trusting that these patterns also say what is written, almost leads the reader to overlook these translations. We skim over the dots, because we cannot visually translate them into words, as I developed this concept, I became aware just how much we take words for granted and how beautiful they may appear in a different form of communication.

‘SSDD’ another form of communication, the modern abbreviation and most commonly used in text / email / social networks, such as LOL, LMAO, BRB, GTG, IMO and so forth.¹⁴ Phrases have become reduced to a series of letters and SSDD simply stands for ‘Same Shit Different Day’. This abbreviation also features in the Stephen King novel / film ‘Dream-catcher’¹⁵. My poem takes the reader on a bus journey with me, just a mundane daily routine, with a sparkle of adventure added to it. The nonsense of the surreal day dream realm plunges the reader into my vivid imagination. Inspired by the works of Dr Seuss¹⁶ and the tremendous Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll¹⁷ for the use of invented words to create bizarre illusions of a make believe world. All presented in the appearance of a newspaper clipping to keep with the theme of the poem, adopting modern use of graphic design to illustrate my work in such a way that it’s presentation becomes part of the written work. SSDD also drew inspiration from a stunning painting by the artist Chiara Bautista¹⁸

As I became more fascinated with the works of Octavio Paz I developed an interest in the astounding ‘House of Leaves’ By Mark Z. Danielewski.¹⁹ Both Octavio Paz and Mark Z. Danielewski have used layout of text in various different ways to express their work.

With this in mind, I developed a series of different styles to present my poems ‘Mirrored Verse’, ‘Crossing Paths’ and ‘Music & Dance’ to merge poems and create a visual design with the words.

 

‘Mirrored Verse’ itself is a Handfasting²⁰ (Pagan Wedding) blessing I wrote, inverted, reversed, flipped and mirrored. Words change when you look at them differently, live becomes evil when backwards. The appearance looks alien as we are so used to reading letters in a certain format, though other cultures may read back to front or up and down the page. However English letters appear to loose meaning when presented in another direction, In a Handfasting, the four elements/directions are traditionally honoured, which inspired me to present the blessing in the same way, in four different directions and although they may look bizarre the words and therefore the meaning still remain the same. I was personally impressed by a poem entitled ‘Lost Generation’ by Jonathan Reed²¹, a palindrome, read normally this poem gave a very bleak view of the world, yet when read in reverse, it gives the reader hope and changes the whole meaning of the work.

‘Crossing Paths’ Consists of two poems (Feathered Family and Seasonal Connection) written and inspired by my home, reflecting my thoughts and feelings surrounding where I live and the community around me. I have taken the poems apart, twisted them around and rearranged their format, which echoes how I felt by changing my life in such a way. The merged poems influence the reader to participate in the work, they need to physically turn the page, to mentally piece together the puzzle and see the story hidden within. By turning the text to the side, I saw a pattern forming and the idea to change the background black, the text green transformed the work into an image which resembled the falling, or raining text code used in the film ‘The Matrix’²² (sample on Page 29) an ironic twist considering the theme of the work is connected to living with nature, yet the layout and style embraces technology.

‘Music & Dance’ Two poems, based on two very different styles of genre, exploring ballet and jazz, presented in such a way that each poem may be read individually, flowing down the page, or across, connecting the two pieces of work into one and creating a whole new tale from both themes. The layout on the page creates a beautiful twisting path between the poems, inviting the reader to cross over this path. Using a performance of Swan Lake²³ and the recent 2014 film Whiplash²⁴ as inspiration, this piece crosses time as well as genre.

Whilst researching performance poetry and listening to John Hegley, John Cooper Clarke, Rob Gee, Ministry of the Mundane by Project Adorno on YouTube, I came to the conclusion that my work cannot be performed, that it is more visual, creating art from words. I also stumbled across performance artist Marina Abramović, my latest piece of work ‘6 Hours’ is based on her 1974 performance piece entitled ‘Rhythm 0’²⁵ Art may be performed and poetry may be artistic, inspiration comes in various disguises, from bus routes to ducks, they have all found a place in my work. I realise that my first attempts at poetry were wrong and I began this essay by admitting this error, shared with you my change of direction and progression, how I developed each piece and where I found my muse. Yet this couldn’t have happened without first making mistakes, this brings me to the final piece. ‘Content’ (the accidental poem) put simply this is the Content page from my first failed attempt, however it tells a story in itself, so remains here to remind me, and the reader, that there really are no mistakes, just a journey of transformation.

In some way the content remind me of the artist Richard Serra²⁶, who created a list of verbs to explore in his artwork, for it resembled a list and when read down the page suggests a list of events.   

What about the Caps?

            You may have noticed a distinct lack of capital letters, punctuation, question marks, full stops etc… this is a deliberate theme in my work and a trait prompted by  – No Edits by Alex Elle²⁷ (via alexandraelle) a beautiful yet simple poem which adheres to no rules.

Social media has transformed the way we communicate in recent years, creating a new platform for anyone to share and display their work with ease. Because of Tumblr, I discovered ‘Wreck this Journal’²⁸ and on Twitter, poems or even whole stories maybe told within 140 characters, developing a new style of work contained in Tweets.The Journey Continues:

Using my poems, my ‘Wreck this Journal’ and my love for both photography and graphic design, I can see this collection I have presented morphing further into an artistic display. (Sample of this progression on Page 30) However, this is still work in progress and a separate project continuing from this portfolio, so my journey continues by putting the ‘Creative’ into Creative Writing.

A.M. Harrison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

1. Lydia Towsey

Poetry. Art. Performance. Change.

www.secretagentartist.wordpress.com

www.3thehardwaypoets.wordpress.com

Chair/Compere WORD! www.wordpoetry.eu

 

2. Anita Sivakumaran http://www.transculturalwriting.com/Grassroutes/content/Anita_Sivakumaran.htm

 

3.     Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania by Jerome Rothenberg (editor) since its first publication in 1968, Jerome Rothenberg’s Technicians of the Sacred has educated a generation of poets, artists, and readers to the multiple faces and possibilities of poetry throughout the world. Hailed by Robert Creeley as “both a deeply useful work book and an unequivocal delight,” and by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years, it appears here in a revised and expanded version several years in the making. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/405082.Technicians_of_the_Sacred

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 3

 

Paperback: 672 pages

Publisher: University of California Press; 2nd Revised edition (1 July 1992)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0520049128

ISBN-13: 978-0520049123

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Technicians-Sacred-Poetries-America-Oceania/dp/0520049128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424851962&sr=1-1&keywords=technicians+of+the+sacred

 

4. Octavio Paz Lozano March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavio_Paz

 

Conjunctions & Disjunctions Paperback – 25 Apr 1991

by Octavio Paz  (Author), Helen Lane (Translator)

Product details

Paperback: 160 pages

Publisher: Import; New edition edition (25 April 1991)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1559701374

ISBN-13: 978-1559701372

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conjunctions-Disjunctions-Octavio-Paz/dp/1559701374

 

Collected Poems, 1957-87 Hardcover – 22 Sep 1988

by Octavio Paz  (Author), Eliot Weinberger (Editor)

Product details

Hardcover: 686 pages

Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd (22 Sept. 1988)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0856357871

ISBN-13: 978-0856357879

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collected-Poems-1957-87-Octavio-Paz/dp/0856357871/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 

 

5. Wall Street Journal article ‘Nick Cave, Star of ‘20,000 Days on Earth,’ on Poets, Bandmates and Loneliness’ by By Barbara Chai http://www.wsj.com/articles/nick-cave-star-of-20-000-days-on-earth-on-poets-bandmates-and-loneliness-1410828058

 

20,000 Days on Earth http://www.20000daysonearth.com/

 

20,000 Days on Earth (2014)

97 min  –  Documentary | Drama | Music  –  18 November 2014 (USA)

Writer and musician Nick Cave marks his 20,000th day on the planet Earth.

Directors: Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard

Writers: Nick Cave, Iain Forsyth

Stars: Nick Cave, Susie Bick, Warren Ellis

 

 

6. Rebus principle representation of a word or syllable by a picture of an object the name of which resembles in sound the represented word or syllable. Several rebuses may be combined-in a single device or successively-to make a phrase or sentence. Literary rebuses use letters, numbers, musical notes, or specially placed words to make sentences. Complex rebuses combine pictures and letters. Rebuses may convey direct meanings, especially to inform or instruct illiterate people; or they may deliberately conceal meanings, to inform only the initiated or to puzzle and amuse. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rebus+principle

 

7. http://flavorwire.com/178487/rewriting-books-through-redacted-text/view-all

 

8. http://www.iamsomeguy.com/The-Meaning-of-Words

 

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference-8

 

9. Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes is a haunting new story by best-selling American writer, Jonathan Safran Foer. With a different die-cut on every page, Tree of Codes explores previously unchartered literary territory. Initially deemed impossible to make, the book is a first — as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling. Tree of Codes is the story of an enormous last day of life — as one character’s life is chased to extinction, Foer multi-layers the story with immense, anxious, at times disorientating imagery, crossing both a sense of time and place, making the story of one person’s last day everyone’s story. Inspired to exhume a new story from an existing text, Jonathan Safran Foer has taken his “favorite” book, The Street of Crocodiles by Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, and used it as a canvas, cutting into and out of the pages, to arrive at an original new story told in Jonathan Safran Foer’s own acclaimed voice. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9583799-tree-of-codes

 

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 9

Paperback: 140 pages

Publisher: Visual Editions Ltd; First Edition (13 Nov. 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0956569218

ISBN-13: 978-0956569219

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0956569218/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb_uk-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738

 

10. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 — and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery.

Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, “On Writing” will empower and entertain everyone who reads it — fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10569.On_Writing

 

Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages

Publisher: Pocket Books (June 25, 2002)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0743455967

ISBN-13: 978-0743455961

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743455967/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwgoodco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0743455967&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2

 

11. http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/

 

12. Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

 

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 12

 

13. The raised dot system now known as ‘braille’ was pioneered by a young Frenchman called Louis Braille. http://www.rnib.org.uk/braille-and-other-tactile-codes-portal-braille-past-present-and-future/invention-braille

 

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 13

 

14. http://www.abbreviations.com/

 

15. Dreamcatcher (2001) is a science fiction novel written by Stephen King. It was adapted into a 2003 movie of the same name. The book, written in cursive, helped the author recuperate from a 1999 car accident, and was completed in half a year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcatcher_%28novel%29

 

Mass Market Paperback: 896 pages

Publisher: Pocket Books (December 1, 2001)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 074343627X

ISBN-13: 978-0743436274

http://www.amazon.com/Dreamcatcher-Stephen-King/dp/074343627X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425630200&sr=1-1&keywords=dreamcatcher

 

Dreamcatcher (2003)

134 min  –  Drama | Horror | Sci-Fi  –  21 March 2003 (USA)

Friends on a camping trip discover that the town they’re vacationing in is being plagued in an unusual fashion by parasitic aliens from outer space.

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Writers: Stephen King (novel), William Goldman (screenplay)

Stars: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285531/?ref_=nv_sr_1

 

16. http://www.seussville.com/

 

17. JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html

 

 

Hardcover: 112 pages

Publisher: Merrell Publishers Ltd; 1st Thus edition (20 Mar. 2006)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1858943299

ISBN-13: 978-1858943299

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alice-Through-Looking-Glass-Found-There/dp/1858943299

 

 

18. https://www.facebook.com/chiarabautistaartwork

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 18

 

19. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24800.House_of_Leaves

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 19

 

House Of Leaves Paperback – 6 Jul 2000

by Mark Z Danielewski  (Author)

Product details

Paperback: 736 pages

Publisher: Doubleday (6 July 2000)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 038560310X

ISBN-13: 978-0385603102

http://www.amazon.co.uk/House-Leaves-Mark-Z-Danielewski/dp/038560310X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424851360&sr=1-1&keywords=house+of+leaves+by+mark+z+danielewski

 

 

20. http://handfasting.org/

 

21. http://thisismy-generation.tumblr.com/post/2682565691/a-poem-lost-generation-by-jonathon-reed

 

Full Poem included in Influences and Inspiration – Reference – 21

 

 

22. The Matrix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZdpA3p9ZMY

 

The Matrix (1999)

136 min  –  Action | Sci-Fi  –  31 March 1999 (USA)

A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.

 

Directors: Andy Wachowski (as The Wachowski Brothers) ,

Lana Wachowski (as The Wachowski Brothers)

Writers: Andy Wachowski (as The Wachowski Brothers) ,

Lana Wachowski (as The Wachowski Brothers)

Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

 

23. Swan Lake is a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake

 

 

24. Whiplash (2014) A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential.

Whiplash (2014)

107 min  –  Drama | Music  –  16 January 2015 (UK)

Director: Damien Chazelle

Writer: Damien Chazelle

Stars: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582802/

 

25. Marina Abramovic on Rhythm 0 (1974) https://vimeo.com/71952791

 

26. Serra wrote his now famous “Verb List,” which comprises more than one hundred different processes that could be done to or with a given material. “Verb List” was published in 1972 in the book The New Avant-Garde: Issues for the Art of the Seventies. https://seaberg.wikispaces.com/Richard+Serra+Verb+List

 

27. http://alexelle.com/

 

Full Poem included in Influences and Inspiration – Reference – 27

 

28. http://wreckthisjournal-ideas.tumblr.com/

 

Image included in Influences and Inspiration, Reference – 28

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Collection

 

FE in Creative Writing, Poetry Assignment at Leicester University

I’m going to share this with you, it’s going to take a while to put together, but I want to display this carefully. One page at a time, apart from the essay, which I shall include last. This is so you can form your own opinion about my work before I explain the background to each piece and inspiration behind the Word Art.

I’m not neglecting my ‘evenlongernotsoshortshortstory’ my characters wouldn’t let me anyway! I just want to focus on a different form of creative writing for a short while, while I plot and plan various fantastic adventures in my mind.

 

Anne Harrison 28.06.17

 

 

Full image of Cover Photo

Falling in Love with the Imaginary…

Friday Lunchtime Ponderings…

…I think I have covered, or at least started to cover, this topic before… But I possibly got distracted and danced off on another train of thought before I could put finger tips to keys and pull the words out my brain…

Disclaimer: I’m not clever, I don’t understand  psychology, nor pretend to, I can not include any intelligent quotes (because I’m not sure what they mean) nor do I have any answers… Sorry my friends, all you get here will be some mad ramblings…

Rambling Commencing: Isn’t it just delicious how we, as normal every day mortal folk, can find ourselves in love with the imaginary. The characters that grace books, screen, cartoons, comics, games, movies and so on… The lovable rogue, the bumbling fool, the anti-hero, the stone cold killer, the gunslinger or the sheriff… No matter what genre of fiction we embrace, we will find these archetypes and we embrace them, we follow them through their ‘lives’ we may visualize them differently from authors descriptions, artists representations or actors, er… acting…

Fandoms are born from people sharing the same passion for certain characters or series of adventures, it expands, morphs into Comic-Cons, beyond that to entire theme parks, events, studio tours… Where we the mundane can step into the world of Fantasy, Fiction or Sci-Fi etc… We dress as our favorite characters, we have lightsaber  battles with Jedi when we’re dressed as Sith… Wand duel with a Slytherin while taking a selfie and sharing it on social media… These things bring total strangers together, we can talk about the ridiculous without actually sounding ridiculous, because the stranger we’re chatting too understands perfectly the made up jargon you’re talking about…

It makes me (personally) feel like I am part of a huge family, I am a cosplayer, I admire the creativity the dedication and perfection of come costumes. I’ve never tried LARPing, but this could prove to be the ultimate step (for me) as a (non)writer, to become your own character, to act as they would act and put yourself in their shoes…

This whole concept is so expansive and so inclusive, I don’t think I’ve really scratched the surface here and could express myself further, include more examples, genres or characters… Good or Bad, Love them or Hate them… None of this ‘world within a world’ would even begin to exist if people hadn’t sat down, picked up a pen and wrote about the imaginary people inside their heads, by doing so, they crafted life, love and a whole realm where nothing is impossible in a world where we are restricted to reality, sometimes the incredible can be tangible.

Yet none of it would be so if there was never a ‘Once Upon a Time’ …

I’m going to get back to my own writings shortly and I’m going to leave you with a passage from Michael Moorcock, introducing one of his most chaotic anti-heroes… This is where I fell in love with the imaginary…

“It is the color of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the color of bone. “

 

Anne Harrison 17.02.17

Putting Faces to Names

pages-from-brown-book

You’ll need to click the link to see the pictures (ignore the mad scribblings please) but I can not find the images anywhere else currently, though I’m quite sure they’re kicking around somewhere, today they are being illusive…

My sudden burst of writing has left me with a whole host of posts that I need to return to and edit, I’ve been writing quicker than by brain can get all the words from the scene it sees to my fingers on the keys. This has also left me with constant dreams (and daydreams) of following events… Now I can see my characters very clearly in my head, yet I have added no descriptions in my writings – I could – but I always like to imagine what characters look like when I’m reading a book, so it kinda also work the other way around too. Everyone visualizes what they read differently…

… So, why am I sharing a collection of images of models, vampires and goths?

To create a little game… If you were to relate any of my characters to the random images (attached in the above link) … Which character would you connect to which picture?

You don’t need to reply, it’s just for fun… Besides, it gives you all something to read while I’m busy editing silly mistakes and dreadful spelling…

 

Anne Harrison 16.02.17

In Prose:

Anne’s Final Essay … First Draft … 

A personal reflection on Creative Writing

Once upon a time (for that really is the best way to start such tales) there was this crazy lady, who, following a life threatening illness, decided in her ultimate wisdom to do something she had never done before in her life. Enrolled at University.

Little did she know that this impulsive decision would throw her headlong into an academic adventure that would last two years and result in gaining some very good friends. Along the way her little brain was subjected to rather some baffling use of language and a vast array of information, which she wasn’t sure would fit inside her head. At first it felt like she had found a platform where she could unleash all the lovely twisted little characters which lived in her imagination upon the world, but soon came to learn that there was a lot more involved than simply scribbling on paper.

For a while she felt totally out of her depths, struggling to tread water and keep her head above the surface, each word, each sentence was finely constructed in order to keep with the daunting rules and regulations which were slowly smothering artistic desire. But she was determined to soldier forth, sometimes burying the need to scream (for that would have been most noisy) but mostly because of stubbornness, no one expected her to succeed and she had to subdue her own self-doubts.

However, there was an amazing abundance of inspiration. Little characters in different genres came out to play and she ventured forth into different styles and all new exciting writing experiences. As well as reading a vast quantity of literature that was totally out of her comfort zone.

Yet this inspiration blasted her world wide open, beyond the classroom, beyond books. These lessons inspired our shy heroine to explore the theatre, dance, poetry, art, screenplay and local events. How exciting it was to find a trail of breadcrumbs that lead from one subject to another and how these all in turn slowly began to influence her own writing, going full circle.

Though this point of the adventure may have drawn to a sad closure, this has been a starting place for a wider range of experiences and the journey continues.

 

A.M. Harrison.

Kill Your Darlings

I’m not going to lie to you… I absolutely *hate* the post I wrote yesterday. It’s a jumbled mess of scattered thoughts without any real structure or argument. I failed at trying to write a comprehensive essay about the rules of writing and my frustration at these limitations (as I see them). Though as usual I could not get my words across, my views were scatty and I skipped from subject to subject without any clear conclusion.

In brief… I suck!

…and you wonder why I will never be published? It’s simple really, as much as I love words and I am forever writing, I simply suck!

I break all the rules, I string together great lengths of words, which really aren’t all that necessary to try and say something, which makes sense inside my head, but somewhere between my mind and my fingers, everything is lost in translation and what I wanted to say becomes garbled in the process.

However, I’m not going to remove my post, I’m going to keep it there, like some morbid trophy, a testament to my frustration. Hopefully one day a lecturer somewhere might come across my work and use this in class as a perfect example of ‘how not to write’ that I expect shall be my ultimate writing claim to shame.

 

 

Anne Harrison 25.05.16

 

Making Sense from Senselessness

It has crossed my thoughts currently that the work I have presented here for anyone to ponder over does not exactly fit into any set genre.

This is amusing as prior to the Creative Writing Course, I only ever wrote Fantasy tales. The characters had become close companions of mine, some had existed since around 1988 and throughout that time I’ve seen my fair share of Births, Marriages, Deaths, Conspiracies, Wars, Reincarnation, Time travel, Dimension hopping, Tattoos, Cigars, Affairs, Tragedy’s, Betrayals, Work, Addictions, Murder and Love. The lives of my characters have ever been far from dull but I have always used the same names, their faces are firmly imprinted within my mind, their voices, body language, gestures and such, all as individual as my neighbors in reality.

So why did I break away from these guys? Why are they left in writing limbo land? Why has my writing ventured off into different styles, genres and voice?

Genre can define who we are, our choice of music, the films or shows we watch, books we read and even clothes we wear can all be categorized and we find ourselves connected to like minded individuals. Yet this can also leave us very narrow minded in our tastes, a few years ago I (personally) would never have listened to Jazz, total metal head through and through, metal til I die… Roahhhhhhhh!! Yes, indeed *ahem*…

It would appear that the course, not only drew me away from my beloved characters, but blew my mind wide open in various more ways. I’ve been to the ballet, seen Shakespearean plays, been to gigs without knowing the bands material in advance. Now, I can listen to other genres of music freely without contempt and broaden my horizons within the arts quite drastically. This is but a stepping stone upon my journey, for I know there is far more out there to explore and I’m just scratching the surface of rediscovery.

My characters are still within my mind, occasionally they like to come out to play, to cause chaos and mayhem. Their adventures locked up inside my brain, like some door of illusion I can step through this door and fully submerse myself in their realm. Just not as often as I used too…

I am no longer defined by old self imposed limitations, I enjoy exploring new paths to follow, of cause, this generally means I end up quite lost. As my dip into poetry proved to be quite a labyrinth of creative exploration, but that adventure can wait until another day.

For now I shall leave you with the rough draft of my course overview. Anne I never got to finish this piece, but that doesn’t matter because it has found a place a purpose here, to accompany this afternoons musings.

Exploring Character through Costume

Anne Harrison 26.11.15