Book review – Dip Flash by Jonathan Pinnock

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Dip Flash by Jonathan PinnockThe tales in Jonathan Pinnock’s collection quiver on the page, ready to leap in unexpected directions. Hold on tight and they’ll carry you with them, into worlds where the peculiar is commonplace and some things, including houses, refuse to stay where you left them. Pinnock manages to compress entire worlds into a paragraph or two, where the laws of physics are subtly unaligned with our own.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of Pinnock’s unique viewpoint previously, I can assure you you’re in for a heady ride. As the curator of comic poetry site Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, it’s clear that irreverence is a vital ingredient of this author’s often thought-provoking works.

Meet a man whose date decides to up and leave (sounds normal? Wait till you read the tale Dinner With Sylvia), spend time with a women who carries a curiously voyeuristic creature in a octagonal cage, encounter three hundred and sixty thousand bees, and have a chat with a saint called Geoff. See through the eyes of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Discover how your Granny could become a financial asset. Learn to expect the real and unreal to knit around one another in an unfathomable intricacy. Sleep deprivation, unrequited love and astral hi-jinks all have their vital roles under Pinnock’s narrowed gaze.

Continue reading →

Writing prompt – pineapple

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Pineapple cr Judy DarleyThere’s a man in Bristol who spends his days dreaming up new creations, and his nights building extraordinary sculptures. Each one is formed from those rubbery yellow cladding that swathes scaffolding poles in situ.

Some say he’s a vandal and a thief, costing construction firms time and money, but in a city where street art is a tourist attraction, these bright yellow explosions seem like a means to stay sane in treacherous circumstances while spreading a little joy.

What do you think? Use this as the starting point of some creativity of your own.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Writing prompt – fable

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Ugly Duck cr Judy DarleyHere’s a challenge. The Ugly Duckling is a story we’ve been told all our lives. It seems that magazines, movies and all the other elements of popular culture agree that the ending’s only happy if the ducking emerges as a radiant swan.

I suspect this genre of fairytale is part of the reason why our society puts such value on our outward appearance.

So how do you take such a well-known tale of redemption through beauty and give it a fresh, more positive, less shallow twist?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Writing prompt – tenant

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Reggie cr Judy DarleyOur new home came with an unexpected lodger, who seemed rather surprised to discover us peering into his pond after months, or even years, alone.

Imagine a couple moving into a house only to discover someone or something is already resident. What could ensue?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Write for a Flash Walk

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Totterdown coloured houses cr Judy DarleyI’m happy to say that after a year’s hiatus, the #FlashWalk is set to return as part of the National Flash-Fiction Day celebrations on 16th June 2018. Far less seedy than it sounds (depending on the tales submitted), the Flash Walk will take place in Bristol, celebrating fiction in its shortest and most intense form.

The Flash Walk will take place in central Bristol, and your words can be part of it.

To be in with a chance of being included, all you need to do is send us a piece of flash fiction, prompted by some aspect of the theme Urban Landscape. You can take this idea in any direction you choose, using any theme and any genre, providing your tale is between 40 and 400 words in length.

Bristol can be but doesn’t have to be a source of inspiration for your submission.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 21st May 2018.

The selected stories will be shared by  actors during the walk, so if yours is chosen, all you need to do is come along and enjoy the performance!

The walk begins at 10.30am on 16th June, just outside the main entrance to Bristol’s M-Shed on the harbour side. It will finish at the GreenHouse, Hereford Street, BS3 4NA (just under a mile’s stroll away), between an hour and an hour and a half later.

The GreenHouse will also be the venue for the afternoon’s free writing workshops

To be part of National Flash-Fiction Day‘s #FlashWalk2018, submit your entries to bristolflash@gmail.com before midnight on Monday 21st May 2018. There’s no charge to enter, so why not give it a go?

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud(dot)com.

Wading in

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Big Blue No. 1 by Emma JacksonI’ve been entranced by the art of Emma Jackson ever since encountering the contemplative peace of her canvasses at Bristol Affordable Art Fair and discovering that she is prone to wading right into the watery scenes she recreates. It’s an immersive technique that helps her to fully experience her surroundings, and thereby convey them more compellingly to us, the viewers.

“The more directly I come into contact with nature, the more I am able to make an emotional connection with and make sense of a place,” she explains.

For her recent BIG Blue series, she’s delved into recreations of an underwater world glimpsed off-shore from Australia and Hawaii “where I was lucky enough to go diving and experience at first hand the ethereal quality of nature and life beneath the ocean.”

Back on dry land in her studio, Emma uses a range of photographs for an initial set of drawings, “then I create a music playlist to set the scene before I can start painting. I played Modern Kosmology by Jane Weaver over and over again during my Blue painting sessions.”

Each of Emma’s paintings begins as a search for “the ‘Genius Loci’ the spirit of a place. I’m quite often drawn in be a certain light at a certain time of day. I’m currently experimenting with some nighttime photography to capture that very special light between day and night.”

Forests, oceans, quarries and streams all play their part in feeding both Emma’s urge to be outside. As she mentions in her artist statement, “I start the creative process by getting outside, walking and exploring, sometimes trespassing searching for unusual and remote areas within the landscape. This could be a deserted slate quarry in the Lake District, an ancient woodland in Scotland or island-hopping in Finland. It’s important to make an emotional connection with the place before I can start to make art. I will spend a lot of time in one place, taking photographs and making quick sketches. It is essential to capture the ‘sense of place’ before I head back to the studio and start making art.”

Her pieces offer slices of shadow and light, and a hint of the movement of a breeze over water and through leaves. There’s a suggestion that if you concentrate and inhale with care you may just catch a whiff of damp earth and the heat of living things. “I’m aiming to recreate the emotional experience I had at the time of being there,” she comments. “This is sometimes representational or it can be quite abstract. I think my work is most successful when they reflect both styles – semi abstract.”

Life as an artist suits Emma through and through, as she relishes “thefreedom and diversity, and the opportunity to travel and see the world.”

From 21st-25th March Emma was lucky enough to head to the New York Spring Affordable Art Fair where she exhibited with London-based gallery Wills Art Warehouse.

For details of all Emma’s latest work and exhibitions, visit emmajackson.org.uk

Are you an artist or do you know an artist who would like to be showcased on SkyLightRain.com? Get in touch at judydarley(at)iCloud.com.

Writing prompt – brink

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Stepping stones cr Judy DarleyThis image captures a moment of carefree fun, just before one small child (not pictured) fell in with a squawk and a splash, and another (also not pictured), lost his rag and threw his welly into the mire.

I love the concentration on the kids’ faces as they traverse this perilous series of stepping stones. Could the older boy in the background actually walking on water? So many fantastic story possibilities!

Um, and yes, that is the bobble of a bobble hat in the foreground, but make of it what you will 🙂

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Writing prompt – visitors

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Little House by Gilly Mound

This gorgeous picture is Little House by Gilly Mound, who was my featured artist last week. I love the house tilted beneath the moon and the sea rushing up to the garden wall as though considering dropping by. There’s something magical about the scene. I can almost hear the waves murmuring against the stones and the rustle of wind whispering through the trees!

Write a few lines to describe who lives here. They’re clearly so fascinating that the sea and moon both want to visit.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Underwire – a short story

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TearsInTheFence67This beauty arrive last week, brimming with noisy poems and tales all fit to stop you in your tracks for a moment (or far longer, if you’re not careful). I’m thrilled to have my surreal flash fiction Underwire included in issue 67 (Winter/Spring 2018) of Tears In The Fence.

The issue boasts a spine and 184 pages, making it a journal, if not a full-blown anthology, rather than a magazine.

You can buy back issues of Tears In The Fence or subscribe here.

 

Here’s a sneak preview of my tale:

Underwire by Judy Darley

The pebbles of the beach are cold lumps beneath my soles. A January wind whistles in from the sea, but I ignore the goosebumps sprigging my flesh and with effort I think the core of me into heat. That’s a trick, imagining a small inferno lit at the centre of my gut, flames licking the ropes of intestines and keeping me warm.

That’s how it begins, and the image below is where it ends, but you’ll have to get your hands on a copy of the issue to find out what happens in between.

Underwire by Judy Darley

A moment’s respite

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Old Harry Rocks by Gilly Mound

Old Harry Rocks by Gilly Mound

There’s an enticing hint of reminiscence about Gilly Mound’s mixed media artworks – looking at them I find myself recalling childhood holidays to picturesque villages, often within sight of the sea and almost always within earshot of sheep. The vivid colours and bold shapes are deliciously inviting, with an impression of sunshine throughout.

“I have always loved colour,” Gilly comments. “Initially my art was based around mixed media and stitch and was quite colourful, but not as bold. Then a few years ago I decided to pare down the media and processes I was using and began to experiment with acrylics. I was instantly hooked.”

Gilly describes her style as “quite ‘blocky’ and naïve. Acrylic is a perfect media for this style.”

Her surroundings are frequently the impetus of a new work of art. “For me it’s down to environment,” Gilly explains. “I live in the countryside where the changing seasons are very defined and inspirational. I love to walk in a rural landscape of fields, trees, leaves and sheep! And the British coastline, particularly Cornwall and Wales is very influential in providing imagery of little boats and harbours.”

Gilly is also a fan of ceramic pots and jugs, and these, too, appear in many of her works as still life elements, often providing a foreground focus to an idyllic view. I love the details she chooses to include, such as the pebbles in the scene above.

Three Sheep crop by Gilly Mound

Three Sheep, crop, by Gilly Mound

Gilly’s aim is to share her affection for the places she lives close to in Worcestershire’s Teme Valley, and the locations she visits.

“I try to portray the way I feel about places and everyday objects rather than capture their exact visual reality,” she says. “For instance, my painting of Bayards Cove, Dartmouth, is pared down and stylised but still recognisable as the subject.”

Prior to immersing herself in fine art, Gilly worked as a fabric retailer and knitwear designer, before studying and then teaching fashion and textiles. I couldn’t resist asking how she feels her background in this area impacts on her work.

“A really interesting question!” she exclaims. “I believe it has given a commercial leaning to my work. Colour, shape, pattern and form are important features of fashion and textile design and yes, I believe these ‘organising’ factors do influence me when I am making art.”

Where I Want To Be by Gilly Mound

Where I Want To Be by Gilly Mound

The pleasure of creating is evident in her work. “That moment of making art and ‘being in the zone or flow’ is a priceless experience,” she says. “Unfortunately it doesn’t happen every day, but when I’m fully connecting with my work there’s a sense of immense satisfaction in simply being involved in the creative process. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

Find more of Gilly’s work at www.gillymound.co.uk, The Art Agency, 118 – 120 High St, Esher KT10 9QJ and Whalley Fine Art & Framing, Holywood, Belfast, Co. Down.

Are you an artist or do you know an artist who would like to be showcased on SkyLightRain.com? Get in touch at judydarley(at)iCloud.com.