I am preoccupied, in a good way, with the notion of place – all places, the ones that we physically inhabit, the places that find us while we are asleep, or that we travel to when we are awake sitting in a park. The places that most leave me in awe are the intangible ones. The places that I encounter unexpectedly that make an imprint on me in some profound way that is not necessarily clear to me immediately.
Throughout the process of writing my first collection of poetry it has been clear that writing about the influence of place, and how it manifest itself, would have to be the name of my first collection of poetry. “The Influence of Place” is about me exploring, not just language, but how my poetry and its home – the page, interact to tell a story that has been revealed to me through processing the influence of place when I sit down to write.
The ideas of place as a tangible and intangible influence on my work emerged while I was doing an artist residency at Can Serrat Artists Residency in El Bruc, Spain in 2017. It was a combination of the magic of the mountain, Mont Serrat, the talented writers and visual artist who I shared time and space with. But in particular it was a conversations that I had with an abstract Norwegian artist, Helle Kaarem, a founder of Can Serrat, and an amazing artist, about her process in creating her abstract paintings.
This conversation made me think differently about what is abstract art, as I understand it, but more importantly it made me think about how I approach my writing. Although I never thought about abstract artistic principles as applicable techniques to use in my own writing, however, I found that I was already thinking/writing using, albeit naively, in an abstract way.
Exploring the ideas in “The Influence of Place” has been important in exploring and developing my techniques and writing approach. One important thing that I learned from Helle and others is that there are rules, they maybe only my rules, but rules must exist, I am still exploring what they are. As I continue to work on the final poems for the collection my preoccupation is pleasantly in full gear.
The poem below is an exploration of experience and place on the page and I encourage you to read it in different ways. I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Let me know how you read this poem,
