Archive for June 2018
book festival and fair
This weekend, I will be part of the Metro Moncton Book Festival, a great event for all booklovers! Just have a look at all the authors who will be there with their books.
~
I will be there with all my books. All my books are illustrated so you can have a look at some of my artwork too.
~
Are you interested in edible wild plants? Do you love covered bridges?
Do you love science fiction or a good love story?
If you are the Moncton area, I hope to see you there!
All my best,
Jane
Butterfly Etude
I have not played the piano for years. Not a great tragedy as I was never very good and playing made me nervous, afraid to fail. But there are some bits of music I will know forever because I learned to play them. One is Chopin’s Butterfly Etude (Etude Opus 25, no. 9). A difficult piece, full of octave stretches and staccatos. And it perfectly captures the erratic whim-of-the-wind flight of most butterflies.
~
~
Etude Opus 25, No. 9
Chopin’s Butterfly Etude
~
cloud to clover
graceless flight path
earth to sky
~
wrist staccato
octave stretches
disarticulated flight
~
flirt and quiver
tip and stumble
clouded sulphur
butterfly
~
~
all my best,
Jane
what would a home look like on a fictional planet?
You may not be aware – I keep two blogs, one to consider subjects about real places and one to explore my ideas about science-fiction. If you are interested, click on over to www.offplanet.blog. This week’s post is about the homes the characters use in my planet Meniscus stories. You wouldn’t trade your home for any of these! Lots of illustrations too!
Best wishes!
Jane
rafting event – what to carry when you leave home
A few years ago, I was thinking of writing a series of poems about plant pollination and dispersal. It seemed a great idea. Poems about bumble bees and butterflies, ultra-violet landing strips and hummingbirds. Poems about burr baskets, rafting events, maple samara and dandelion parachutists. I wrote the poem below and found it so depressing, I abandoned the project. Now, as I sort through my library and wonder which books to keep, the poem seems appropriate.
~
rafting event – a type of biological dispersal that occurs when terrestrial organisms transfer from one land mass to another by way of a water crossing. Often this occurs via large rafts of floating vegetation, sometimes seen floating down major rivers in the tropics and washing out to sea, occasionally with animals trapped on them. (Source Wikipedia)
~
~
rafting event
~
Let the door handle slip
from your hand, leave
the home you’ve tried to know.
~
Behind a deadpan face, dry tears
and palpitations, carry knowledge
away on a frail raft.
~
Peterson Field Guides and Salinger,
a poem by Shelley,
three Shakespearean sonnets.
~
They cling to the raft, these bits
of memory, rely on slippery
fronds of rough-glued vegetation.
~
Recalled when someone asks
the writers you prefer or claim to have read.
You say, ‘the collected works of Heaney’.
~
And is there an island where
new roots can catch and old seeds germinate?
The choice – survival or well-read.
~
Hear the hinges do their work –
the dead bolt slips into the lock,
last home you will ever know.
~
~
~
Copyright 2018
Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 