nichepoetryandprose

Recently I was awarded an artsnb (New Brunswick Arts Board) Creations grant.  My six month project will be to write a book-length poetry manuscript about the experience of using plant dyes for colouring textiles.

The poems will find their inspiration in the activities of collecting plants, extracting their dyes and using them to colour woven fabric.

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one of the plants I will be using is Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) – it grows throughout New Brunswick and can be used to make yellow and olive dyes

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Writing these poems, in many ways, should echo my previous project ‘growing and gathering’.  I will do some research about a particular plant, then go forth and find it.  For the ‘growing and gathering’ project I had a lot of fun exploring various areas of the province for the plants I needed, so I know I will love this part of the experience.  It will be when I get the plant material home that the differences between the two projects will become clear.  With ‘growing and gathering’,  writing poems about picking berries seemed second nature to me since I’ve spent a lot of my life in berry fields.

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some of the ingredients for a ‘growing and gathering’ salad

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With ‘harvesting colour’, I will be learning a craft new to me.  I’ll be trying to manage the complex alchemy of “pot type plus source water plus plant material plus mordent plus receiving material”.  Lots of chemistry and a few colour tragedies, I’m certain.  And discovery, as purple plants become yellow dye.  I hope to combine making plant dyes with my weaving, an activity I find totally relaxing and steadying.

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some of my weaving results over the years … it will be fun to see what colours my project will bring to my weaving

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So where will the poems come from and what will they say?  I’ll be looking for metaphors for human experience and emotion.  I’ll try to embed ideas about reconnection with nature and about cultural expression through decorating fabric. I’ll use words from botany and chemistry, and a rich colour dictionary.  I can hardly wait to explore all the words for yellow, and green, and red.

I want to write poems about ‘saddening’ the colour by adding a pinch of salt, and ruining a dye lot by forgetting to tend it well.   I’ll write about oak leaf imprints on cloth, and the different yellows created with apple bark and poplar leaf. I’d also like to write poems about the ordinary life experience of plant dyes – grass stains on knees, the grey Choke-cherry jelly bag, the Cranberry stain on the tablecloth.

I’ll be presenting at least some of my poems here and I’ll certainly be sharing my experiences.  I’ll continue to present my virtual travel, novel writing and watercolour posts, but I plan to devote Friday’s post each week to ‘harvesting colour’.  Hope you visit regularly to follow me in my project!

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Copyright  2014  Jane Tims