Posts Tagged ‘harvesting colour’
harvesting colour – the poems
After six months of work, I am nearing the ‘end’ of my project ‘harvesting colour’. Although the main product of all my work sometimes seems to be my basket of hand-dyed and hand-spun wool, the actual goal of my plant dyeing adventures is a manuscript of poems.
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in background, alum-treated wool dyed with rose hips; in the foreground, spun wool dyed with lichen, beet leaves and alder bark
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I have not shared many of these poems here, since I want to publish as many as possible in literary magazines. This will increase my chances of publishing a book of poems. Most publishers consider poems presented on-line to be already published and will not consider them for their magazines.
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At this point I have completed enough poems to be considered a ‘manuscript’. Although I may write more in the coming month, the core of my manuscript will be these 58 poems (60 pages). The poems are included in four sections:
- the imprint of toadflax – 11 poems about the stains left in our lives: the red of cranberries on the tablecloth, grass stains on children’s knees
- take comfort in brown – 12 poems about specific plants and their use as dyestuff
- simmer, never boil – 10 poems about the home-dyeing process: mordanting, dyestuff simmering in the pot, the chemistry of dyeing.
- all the colours of columbines – 10 poems about how the colour of plants intersects with our daily lives – the colour of petals in a bouquet, the relationship between mothers and daughters, unexpected outcomes. In this set are two poems dedicated to my Great-aunt who made her living as a seamstress and my Great-grandmother who used home-dyed fabrics in her hooked rugs.
- the twist travels the line – 15 poems about dyers, spinners and weavers who use natural plant dyes. Some of the poems are about dyers I have met through their blogs.
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pink wool dyed with blackberries is front and center … other wools are dyed with (clockwise) oak, meadowsweet, bugleweed, tansy, lily-of-the-valley, beet root, and in the center, carrot tops
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One of the purposes of making this manuscript is certainly to improve my writing and my poems. I have deliberately tried to do two things with these poems:
1. pay attention to line lengths. In most of the poems, I have counted the syllables, using this as a method of improving the rhythm and suggesting new ways of ordering words. I have also considered various ways of ending lines, looking for ways to emphasise the multiple meanings of some words.
2. make the ideas understandable. I have a background in science and I love to use the words of chemistry and biology in poems. Sometimes this makes the poems hard to understand. I am trying to reconcile the two poets within me – one who wants to explore the technical and the other who wants to understand the everyday.
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I hope I have been able to accomplish these objectives in my poems. The poems are full of gathering and boiling and simmering and I hope these poems feel familiar to dyers and craftspeople, and honor their work. I also want the poems to to be relevant and healing for those who have never stirred a pot of dyestuff.
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olfactory memory
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wool from the drying rack pale, new
lifted from the vat, well water
and blackberries, dim burgundy
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the draft of the fibre, the twist
of the spindle, release scent
from the berry patch, the curved space
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beneath the bend of primocane
floricane drowsy with berries
black and thorn, crisp calyx and leaves
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drenched bramble, sweet notes and a lilt
dark against palate, the scramble
for a berry, dropped between stems
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barbed, at the rim
of purple
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – memorable colour
I am starting to think about some of the colours I hope to capture in my dyeing projects. In my reading I have discovered that plant colours come from three groups of plant pigments:
- the porphyrins – includes chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that enables photosynthesis to occur
- the carotenoids – includes the yellows of carrots and the red lycopene of tomatoes
- the flavonoids – the yellows of flower petals and the red, blue and purple anthocyanins of strawberries and blueberries
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In my poems, I want to portray these colours with words. A quick look in the thesaurus shows how many words we have for the various colours:
- green: emerald, sage, verdigris, malachite, beryl, aquamarine, chartreuse, lime, olive …
- yellow: ivory, lemon, saffron, gold, sallow, buff …
- red: scarlet, carmine, vermillion, crimson, ruby, garnet, maroon, brick, rust …
- blue: azure, phthalo, cerulean, indigo, sapphire, turquoise, watchet, navy, teal …
- purple: lilac, violet, mauve, magenta, heliotrope, plum, lavender …
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – mordants and modifiers
Dyeing textiles involves more than just the dyestuff. Simmering cloth in a dye bath may initially produce a beautiful colour, but without help, the colour may fade in sunlight, or over time.
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Mordants: Mordants are substances that assist the dyeing process by improving the colour-fastness of dyes (to washing and light), and by modifying the strength and quality of colour. Mordants bond with both dyestuff and fibre so the resulting colour is more permanent. Mordants include metals such as aluminum, copper and iron. I have a quantity of a safe mordant, alum (aluminum sulphate) and I may try other mordants as I become more experienced.
Colour modifiers: After a fibre is dyed, colour modifiers can be used to increase the range of colour possibilities. In some cases this means changing the pH with modifiers such as vinegar. Modifiers also include after-mordants (additions of copper or iron). Adding iron as a modifier results in ‘saddening’ of the colour … for example, a brown obtained from a tannin-rich dye can become almost black.
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My reading about mordents and modifiers made me think about keeping colours vivid in memory. Perhaps, when we remember a particular scene in full vibrant colour, there is some ‘memory-mordent’ involved !!! In the poem, the mordants aluminum, copper and iron are there in the coastal environment, strengthening memory …
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colourfast
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how do I explain
the being present
the exquisite memory
the precise phthalo
of ocean, the cobalt
of sky, salt breeze,
viridian horizon
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perhaps some mordant made
this memory strong – aluminum
from my morning tea, copper sulphate
patina from the weathervane
pointed landward
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and the boathouse
mooring, rusted
saddened the colour
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims