Between the Leicester #MyCity Project sessions this week I managed a much needed escape to the galleries and museums of Barcelona where I was wowed by Picasso and gob-smacked by Gaudi…
Picasso’s naturalistic studies were incredible and totally unlike anything normally associated with this Great, even more incredible is the fact that some of these were painted when he was just 14!!!
Gaudi similarly demonstrates an intense knowledge of his craft he knew his materials, experimented with ways of colouring glass and mixed and matched different mediums to startling effect.
I found myself refuelled walking the Barcelonian streets and contemplative of my own art…how does a writer ape the dedication to craft demonstrated by Picasso and Gaudi? How does a writer mix and match media? As I walked I toyed with these notions and thought a lot about poetry as the units of language and pondered on ways of further pushing my craft in the months ahead. As a playwright/poet/writer I often write playtexts with a poetic/spoken word hue but in future would like to push that envelope further.
I’ve always been a bit of a hobbyist photographer so as I walked I snapped and posted some of my snappings with accompanying segments of stories or poems inspired by the photo(s) these are all up on Instagram @josephacoelho but you can also find them here…
“Shadow yearned to create,
to birth something solid
of metal, stone or flesh.
Whatever he built up
was blazed down by the sun.”
#Poetry #Picturepoems Shadow studies #Barcelona #PicassoMuseum #ParcGuell
“I first became aware of its existence on noticing the crazing in the glaze, a web of spider thin cracks that concentrated around the areas that we would later recognise as its joints. It is amazing that no one noticed its nightly excursions earlier. Apart from the occasional report of a falling tile or a missing local, there was never any indication that the village was living with a dragon.”
#Barcelona #poetryjoe #photostories #shortstories #JosephCoelho
“I leapt from the trash can basket of the balloon and landed on a familiar street with cars and people and nothing unusual, nothing out of place. I turned and where I expected to see the stolen pirate balloon I saw instead a rendition of it that had all of its colour but none of its movement- it was lost to me, trapped in the painted world that I knew would call me back should the pirates ever choose to re-chain the homes of the floating lands.”
#StoriesGlimpsedFromPhotos #Barcelona #poetryjoe #poetry #photostories
I quite enjoy the challenge of writing to a picture, of finding a hidden narrative to add to the visual impact. I think I may be doing a few more of these, well in fact I already have the creative refuellingof the last week has bled into my work back home. I have been back in Leicester these last two days and as I walked I snapped…
Here’s FB post from earlier today…
These last two days students have been performing their poems, there has been laughter and a little trepidation but they got through it.
Next week they will choose one poem each to be published in their school poetry anthology and I shall take home 120 exercise books chockabkock with poems to try and decide on ten poems from each school to include in the #MyCity anthology alongside my commissioned piece #APoemForLeicester it’s gonna be hard, it’s gonna be fun it’s gonna be a peak at the world within these kids minds through a small flower-etched-rose-glass window, a world of Joy and Respect.
The train from London is crowded I stand huddled by the door as I write this, a peppermint tea cradled in my arms, a heavy bag wedged behind me, the landscape whizzing by in a poi of green. Until next time…