seasons | nichepoetryandprose

Posts Tagged ‘seasons’

working on a poetry manuscript

This week, I am assembling a new poetry book in the ‘a glimpse of…’ series. The first two books, a glimpse of water fall and a glimpse of dragon gave readers a peek at some of the beautiful waterfalls in New Brunswick and the bits of magic in all our lives. A glimpse of sickle moon will explore the seasons in New Brunswick. The manuscript won Third Place in the 2020 New Brunswick Writers’ Federation Competition for the Alfred G. Bailey Prize.

The poetry book presents fifteen years of seasons, each presented as four poems about spring, summer, winter and fall. The poems about spring talk about floodwaters, under-story flowers and waking from hibernation. Summer poems tell about hurricanes, picking raspberries and sheep in the morning meadows. Fall poems explore first frost, wasp nests, fading flowers and ripening blackberries. And in winter–ice caves, snow drifts, walks in the falling snow and feeding birds.

I have struggled with how to present these poems. I thought of making each suite of four represent a year in my own life and entitling the section 1978, 1980, 1996, 2012 and so on. I thought about titling each section as a special year–‘The Year of the Path,’ ‘The Year of the Groundhog,’ and so on. I have finally settled on a title drawn from a common theme in the four poems presented–‘paths through tangled woods,’ ‘where shadows meet,’ and ‘a sliver from full.’

For the cover, I will create a painting of the crescent moon, seen through the branches of birch trees. The image below is a facsimile.

All my best as you work on your own project.

Jane

Written by jane tims

January 14, 2022 at 7:00 am

Posted in books with a strong sense of 'place', poetry, signs of spring, strategies for winter, writing

Tagged with a glimpse of, art, nature, poems, poetry book, seasons

a glimpse of sickle moon

with 5 comments

I am so happy to announce my poetry manuscript, ‘a glimpse of sickle moon,’ has won Third Place in the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick (WFNB) Competition for the Alfred G. Bailey Prize for a poetry manuscript.

I’d like to extend huge congratulations to First Place winner of the Bailey Prize, Kathy Mac, and Second Place winner, Roger Moore. I cannot be jealous of these winners because they are, respectively, members of my two writing groups: Wolf Tree Writers and Fictional Friends.

Roger Moore has also won Third Place in the WFNB Narrative Non-fiction Prize and First Place in the WFNB Competition for the David Adams Richards Prize for a fiction manuscript. I am also proud of another of my Fictional Friends, Neil Sampson, who won Third Place in the David Adams Richards Prize for a fiction manuscript.

And to all the other winners, some of whom are good friends, congratulations!

My manuscript, ‘a glimpse of sickle moon,’ includes 56 poems about nature, arranged according to the seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall. For every four poems, a year rolls by, so the manuscript covers 14 years of seasons!

Here is the title poem, about the andirons in front of our fireplace.

andiron cropped

~

andiron

~

wrought owl with amber eyes

perches on the hearth

hears a call in the forest

three hoots and silence

~

great-horned owl, light gathered

at the back of its eyes

the oscillating branch

after wings expand and beat

~

iron owl longs for a glimpse

of sickle moon

shadow of a mouse

sorting through dry leaves

~

in this cramped space

night woods decanted

fibre and bark, fire and sparks

luminous eyes

~

The next step will be to complete some drawings for the poems and add the manuscript to the poetry manuscripts I intend to publish.

All my best, especially to the winners of the WFNB Competition.

I am staying at home,

and in my two family bubble.

Jane

Written by jane tims

May 1, 2020 at 7:00 am

Posted in awards

Tagged with art, awards, owl, pencil drawing, poetry, seasons, WFNB, writing, writing competition

A place to be still

a muse takes over – telling a story through the seasons

with 2 comments

In New Brunswick, the passage of time is measured in part by the seasons. Right now we are in winter, in the midst of another snow storm and taking a lot of care when walking on all the ice. Soon it will be spring with crocuses blooming on the lawn and water in every hollow. Then summer, days on the deck and keeping cool. Finally, my favourite season, autumn, colourful leaves and starry nights.

Since I am a writer embedded in the winter-spring-summer-fall cycle, it’s natural that changing seasons are an important part of my sci-fi novel. Although weather is often a factor in story telling, I find many books ignore the changing of the seasons.

Seasons on planet Meniscus occur in a cycle of four, as in the northern and southern latitudes of Earth. On Meniscus the seasons are the result of a changing heat regime as once per ‘year’ one of the twinned suns slips behind the other. Whether the physics of this makes much sense, I can’t say. “I’m a biologist, Jim, not a physicist!”

Book One, Crossing the Churn, begins in summer. Foraging for food is easy. As the days pass, leaves begin to fall and soon the characters wade rather than walk through the forest.

Book Two, South from Sintha, finishes in autumn, as the days grow colder. New characters in Book Two are looking for a home before winter sets in.
~

Book Three, Winter at the Water-climb, takes place in a world of ice. The plot focuses on the coming of cold weather and shorter days. Foraging for food is difficult since everything is hidden under snow drifts. Survival depends on what has been put into storage.

Book Four, The Town in the Themble Wood, celebrates the coming of spring and the vibrancy of summer. The Slain and Odymn scout the Themble Wood for a town-site and help the other Humans establish a new community.

Book Five, so new it has no name, will take the characters back into autumn. In many ways this book will be a race against time as winter approaches and the Slain must find Odymn and other characters who have been lost after a crisis.

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Including seasons in my story adds to the possibilities for describing setting. The cinnamon scent of trees in the autumn Themble Wood, tracks in the snow of the new town, and melting water-springs add to the sights, sounds, smells and tastes my writing can explore.

The progress of getting my first book into CreateSpace has been hampered this week by the appearance of ‘The Blue Screen of Death’ on my computer. It is fixed now, but I am sure the folks on Meniscus have never faced such a challenge!!!

Written by jane tims

February 8, 2017 at 7:04 am

Posted in off-planet, writing a novel

Tagged with alien adventures, fall, food, poetry, seasons, space, spring, summer, winter, writing a novel

growing and gathering – years and seasons

with 14 comments

As I work on my collection of poems about growing and gathering, I am aware of the passage of time. I am in the revision stage. This means my manuscript will soon be ‘complete’. I will worry over it and list the last things to be done. I will prepare my final report to artsnb (the New Brunswick Arts Board), the source of my Creations Grant, and send it away to them for approval.

The project will be over, but there will still be work to do. I will have to decide what poems should go in the final manuscript, re-order them a few times, do some more revisions and them send them away, to a publisher, hoping I will be able to get a book from all this work.

Then I will be at the end and facing a new beginning, a new project. I have a few to choose from, so I won’t be relaxing for long.

In all this is the dimension of time, with its deadlines and unforgiving rush forward. Even in a project about growing and gathering local foods, there are poems about time.

A number of my poems are about the ephemeral nature of local foods. Another way to think of this is ‘eating local foods in season’. In spring, everything is plentiful – new plants arrive in a rush, so fast, you can hardly keep up. Then there is the patient waiting for berries to ripen and, again, a rush… blueberries are quickly followed by blackberries and raspberries and so on. But everything has its season, so leaves become too old to harvest, and berries shrivel and fall to the ground.

This seasonal aspect of local foods can be thought of as as a metaphor for aging, and some of my poems work with this comparison. I have poems about resisting aging, and about the ailments of age including arthritis, lethargy, forgetfulness, and aging memory.

Many of my poems on the theme of ‘time’ overlap with other themes, about ‘companionship’, or changes to ‘place’. For this reason, I find myself shifting poems around in my manuscript. I ask myself if the poems flow well, one to another.

I also find I don’t seem to have many poems about the differences between our historical use of local foods and our present day use. I have lots of source material, particularly among my great-aunt’s diaries… she loved to pick berries. So away I go, to write a few more poems about time!