Yesterday was Event 3 of 2016 Paint The Town/Write the Town! With this event being Paint/Write this year – rather than just Paint – I spent the day juggling role of artist & poet.

And it’s not really equal – Artist is a conscious choice, a mode I slide my mind into. Poet is very unconscious; it is in fact a basic operating system for me. As friends around me can attest, when a poem comes, it interrupts every other activity until I have written down what the poem is dictating to me.

I have never been to Gaiety Hill before; as is par of my process, I explored the property –
taking composition pictures until a specific spot calls to me. It is a very emotive selection. and as this was day 3, I am noticing what talks  to me as Ariel can be very different than what talks to me as CC Willow. While I am working on a watercolor of some Irises from Gaiety Hill – it is the small brick pond that stirred me as poet. I still have it’s atmosphere bubbling under the surface of my reptilian poet brain. I can feel the poem trying on metaphors and shifting words around under the covers, trying to learn the language of the honeysuckle blossom falling into the water. The photos of the irises I will refer to as I finish  my art; the pond I do not need to go back to as i am carrying it’s feel with me.

BTW: I have been asked by Salem Writes  to write an article about how i feel about poetry and my process for an upcoming Salem Weekly issue. If you write poetry – What is your process?

~ Ariel

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