2022 Poetry Friday Archive

January 13, 2023 ~ jama

*A permalink to this archive can be found in the sidebar of this blog.

Brita Granström: a small fleeting moment, the wide blue sea

September 27, 2022September 25, 2022 ~ jama ~ 11 Comments

I had to catch my breath the first time I saw Brita Granström’s, “Tea for Two”: the soft light at the window framed by gauzy blue curtains, the expectant posture of the woman looking outside, the gorgeous blue tea set. Love how she captured the ethereal beauty of a fleeting moment in time.

Living and working between the UK and her native Sweden, Brita is a fine arts painter as well as an award winning children’s book illustrator (most notably in collaboration with her husband Mick Manning).

No surprise – I’m totally enamored of her interiors, which depict people engaged in domestic tasks – arranging flowers, cutting rhubarb, rolling out pastry dough, cutting apples, relaxing with a crossword puzzle. Her “soft focus” approach gives her pictures a dreamy, haunting quality that pulls us into her visual narratives. We are witnessing ‘life as it happens.’

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nine cool things on a tuesday

June 7, 2022June 8, 2022 ~ jama ~ 23 Comments

1. Happy June! Welcoming a new month with the sheer loveliness of Matt Underwood’s woodblock prints.

Matt’s a painter, printmaker, and beekeeper based in Lincoln, England. He studied art and art history at the Salisbury College of Art and wildlife illustration at Carmarthenshire College of Art. He’s primarily inspired by the natural world and began drawing and keeping sketchbooks at an early age.

Because he doesn’t have a printing press, he practices the Japanese woodblock printing technique of using a bamboo baren (round flat disc covered with a dried leaf).

He shows his work regularly in London and throughout the UK, including at the Medici Gallery, the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery, and the Royal West of England Academy of Art.

His work has also appeared in several books: Wildlife in Printmaking (Langford Press), Art for the Love of Sark (Gateway Publishing, Ltd.), and The Great Fen (Langford Press).

For more, visit Matt’s Official Website. You can purchase prints at his Etsy Shop.

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poetry friday roundup is here!

May 5, 2022 ~ jama ~ 73 Comments

*Please help yourself to a floral cupcake, macarons, chocolates and green tea.*

Happy May and Welcome to Poetry Friday at Alphabet Soup.

Mother’s Day is a holiday of mixed emotions. It’s true what they say: you never stop missing your mother. Mine has been gone eight years.

I’m thankful for those little reminders of her abiding presence; especially poignant are snippets of her handwriting in old cookbooks or on recipe cards.

MOTHER'S DAY MEMO

                     Remembering Ida

by Anita Pulier

Breathe in her scent,
thumb through food stained pages,
touch her buttery finger prints.

Remove her little notes
on more garlic or less wine,
place them in your jewelry box

in case they contain
secrets, it's time
to find Mom's clues.

Bow your head to
this unique holiday offer
of sensory overload.

Recall family dinners crowded
around an orange banquette
curving around a Formica table,

kitchen walls
strewn with flowered wallpaper
insisting on cheer.

Allow a moment to grieve
the loss of unconditional love.

Pour a nice cup of tea,
open the Times online,
place the cursor
on the world you live in now.

~ from The Butcher's Diamond (Finishing Line Press, 2018), posted by permission of the author.

*“Lina’s Kitchen” by Yelena Mirchevskaya*

ANITA:

My mother Ida was born in the back room of her immigrant parents’ Brooklyn grocery store. The family would gather for meals in that same back room, sitting around a barrel that served as a table.

In her own home Mom insisted on family dinners in the dining room and took pride in her cooking. She was a fabulous self taught cook. She collected recipes in a small filing box. On those cards and in her cookbooks (all of which I inherited) are little notes and observations that fill me with memories and longing when I pull one out.

My mother Margaret was also a self taught cook who kept recipes in a small filing box. The poem’s title, “Mother’s Day Memo,” is especially apt, since Margaret worked in an office and often typed memos (and recipe cards) on her slick IBM Selectric. When she sent me some of those recipes after I moved to Virginia, she’d often scribble helpful tips in the margins. She’s still teaching me. 🙂

I have many fond memories of sitting at my grandmother’s red Formica kitchen table (where I helped my aunts wrap hundreds of dumplings). Whether you grew up in New York or Hawaii, food memories, with their “sensory overload,” may just be the most nourishing of all, since they speak of family and friends together, our unique cultural and social histories, happy chatter, spoons and glasses clinking.

What we wouldn’t give for just one more sip of our mothers’ unconditional love. ♥️

Now, please leave your links with the dashing Mr. Linky (he’s feeling especially peckish today). Enjoy your travels through blogland as you sample the delectable smorgasbord of original poems, reviews, poetry challenges, and commentary being shared by our friends this week.