Writing prompt – influence

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Judy

It’s my littlest nephew’s 3rd birthday this week, which means that any one of the many adventures he embarks on could well become his earliest memory.

On this day, he met a busker, stood transfixed, and then took the coins his mum gave him to drop into the busker’s guitar case.

The scene makes me think about the friendships that can form between the very young and very old – the positive influences each can have on the other.

Imagine your protagonist’s childhood. Who did they meet who helped shape the person they grew into? Alternatively, imagine your character very old – what small person might help them see the world with fresh eyes?

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

Writing prompt – superstition

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Judy

I visited this impressive Gothic cathedral in Wells a while ago and was struck by a curious piece of information in the museum. Apparently back in the days when the cathedral was built (between the 12th and 15th century), it was traditional for a worn left shoe to be buried in the foundations of a new building to bring luck.

What a brilliant, random idea! Who might this shoe have belonged to? Why was it significant to the residents of that home?

I love the concept of weaving a piece of superstition like this into a story, making it the motivator for your protagonist’s deed – the more unsettling the better.

Find more superstitions-from-around-the-world here.

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

Industrial splendour with Lisa Malyon

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Judy

Clevedon Pier by Lisa Malyon

Artist Lisa Malyon has an eye for the most intricate arcs and lines that form the structures that surround us. Her work mainly focuses on built things – bridges, piers and cranes are among her muses, captured in ink and on paper, with a touch of collage adding texture and a pleasingly abstract element.

“I have always loved the element of control in using a fine art pen and as a lover of detail it suits my style well,” she says of her technique. “I introduced a collage element onto the page, initially, to avoid the dread of an empty white page. The placement of collage paper, as well as giving my drawings a focal point adds texture referencing back to my textile degree.”

Textiles were an early passion for Lisa, leading her to gain a degree in Textile Design before “going slightly adrift with my career as a retail buyer.” She began drawing seriously after moving to Bristol in 2000.

Clifton Suspension Bridge by Lisa Malyon

Fittingly, given her new home amidst many of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s finest works, she soon “discovered a love of industrial architecture in particular. Drawing initially in a sketchbook, I progressed to larger paper.”

She adds: “I enjoy drawing the struts and supports in a pier or bridge as it helps me to make sense of them. Sometimes I wonder why I set myself such difficult challenges, but it helps concentrates the mind. Industrial architecture does it for me every time!”

Exhibiting at Bocabar Bristol in 2009 encouraged Lisa to find new possibilities for her line drawings.

“I attended a lampshade-making workshop at Bristol Folk House using printed fabric,” she says. “I replaced an old white drum lampshade with new handmade one. The white cotton lampshade sat on my dining table for weeks until one day I decided to draw on it.”

Lisa gave that first hand-drawn lampshade to a relative, and was pleased by how positively it was received. “This encouraged me to draw more. The fact that they are artworks with a purpose appeals to my pragmatic nature. A common misconception is that I print the lampshades but they are all hand drawn, and I want to keep it that way.”

Today, Lisa’s artwork, as well as her inspirations, are scattered throughout Bristol and beyond, including a selection of framed prints are exhibited at Hidden Art Gallery in Clifton Arcade, Clifton, Bristol, and original drawings at Café Grounded, Fishponds, Bristol.

Lisa will be exhibiting her hand drawn lampshades in the The Southville Centre at Bristol’s Southbank Arts Trail on 14th and 15th May 2016.

Find Lisa at www.lisamalyondraws.co.uk, www.facebook.com/LMDraws and on Twitter at @lmalyondraws.

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. I’m also happy to receive reviews of books, exhibitions, theatre and film. To submit or suggest a review, please send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com.

Novel Nights this Thursday

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Judy

On Thursday 21st April I’m co-hosting Novel Nights, a monthly literary event in Bristol, along with founder Grace Palmer. Taking place at Strawberry Thief, it should be a really lovely evening.

Five local writers, Mel Ciavucco, Kevlin Henney, Angela Brooks, Paul Deaton and Mark Rutterford, will be sharing short stories and novel extracts inspired by the theme of romance – taking some unexpected, moving, humorous and thought-provoking tangents through the genre.

In the second half (after a break for mingling and buying drinks), bestselling author Lucy Robinson will share her experiences of getting published, staying motivated and the submission process. Think of it as a mini-literary masterclass!

The evening begins at 8pm. Find full details at www.novelnights.co.uk.

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

Writing prompt – mountain

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Judy

I love the fact that by cropping an image you can create a completely false scale of perspective. This photo, and the one below, show boulders photographed to resemble immense peaks.

Sketch on a few ants masquerading as mountain goats and you create an impression of almost insurmountable difficulty when the truth is no more than a scramble.

To make that the theme of your tale, simply set your protagonist a seemingly impossible task that viewed from a different angle will be revealed as the easiest thing in the world. Their true challenge is to discover the point of view that will make this clear.

Hang on, isn’t that a guideline for surviving life?

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

A different kind of art fair

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Judy

Hide and Seek by artist Yurim Gough

A while ago I wrote about the talents of life artist and ceramicist Yurim Gough. Her work still astounds me.

If you haven’t yet laid eyes on it yourself, you might want to hot foot it to Victoria House, London WC1A 2QP. Yurim is showcasing the quiet resonance of her pieces at The Other Art Fair there until 10th April 2016.

Recent works include this trio of hand shaped, stone-fired bowls, titled Hide and Seek.

Each one shows a life model in the same pose, shown from a different perspective. I think they would make a wonderful #writingprompt too!

Find details of The Other Art Fair here.

Writing prompt – afloat

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Judy

Whatever Floats Your Boat by Jimmy Lawlor

This beautiful painting is by Jimmy Lawlor and captures a moment of magic. So many questions are raised by this scene.

What here is real, and what imagined? If dreamt, what does it represent? Has this boy been abandoned, or is he on his way somewhere? Why are all the other boats empty?

To me there is a reminder here of the refugees currently spilling from Syria across Europe, but that’s just my interpretation.

Weave together your own invented answers into a work of fiction, and see if you can create a reflection in words.

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

Poetry review – Black Knight by Paul Deaton

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Judy

Drawing on the darkness glimpsed down alleyways, between streetlamps and on the edge of urban parks, Paul Deaton’s poetry pamphlet Black Knight is an impressively self-assured debut.

From the break up of a love affair to the unspoken grief within a family, Deaton explores the strength of human emotions set against forces both immovable and elemental. There are also moments of humour, and of satisfaction, as a late walk home from the pub becomes a passage of quiet contentment.

Deaton has a talent of bringing together the personal, and the universal, so that in the opening poem the sale of a bike becomes a eulogy to love lost and lessons learnt. Seasons and their offerings develop human characteristics, particularly vividly in August, when a crotchety old pear tree flings its fruit about in attention-seeking petulance, and somewhat more majestically in October: “Some burly blacksmith/ has quenched the sun/ in the cold sea of the sky, the cherry flames, distant, intensify.” Just beautiful.

In the poem Stalker, even the moon reveals its all-too human flaws, “He’ll watch all night like this, through/ his scarf of cloud, the broke drape; while we count faceless sheep/ he waits. He holds the hours we conflate.”

The visual qualities of these lines paint images inside my head, create characters, texture, and the delicious possibility of jeopardy. Continue reading →

Writing prompt – reflections

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Judy

This photo shows the Catalan town of Gerona on a beautiful sunny March day. The coloured houses make the reflection particularly striking, don’t you think?

Imagine a river or a lake so still that the surrounding buildings are reflected almost perfectly. Imagine this upside down town is as populated as the one you live in, by people who live in a topsy turvy world where everything is back to front and they breathe water instead of air. Imagine they see your world as the reflections, and think you’re the one upside down.

This could be a children’s story, or a thought-provoking dystopian tale. You decide.

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

Poetry review – Spilt Ends by Claire Williamson

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Judy

Questions about family run like a vein, or a seam of quartz, through Claire Williamson’s pamphlet Split Ends. She guides through the catacombs of her search for her biological parents and what this means in terms of identity, at times head on as in She Thought Her Father was a Butcher and Red Herrings, at others at a slant that seems full of glinting motes.

Of the latter, Minotaur sent shivers through me. Elegantly told, this is both a lament and expression of hope. In the poem’s most chilling moments, the bull-headed creature of the title speaks of the “seven petrified children” brought as food, then being devoured only by each other in the desperate hunger of the dark. Including a glimpse of young Icarus adds a wonderful spark to the poem’s ending.

In other poems we’re offered a portrait of grandparents – the grandfather “who taught us kids to read a clock”, and the grandmother, described through the poignant details of the house she made “a home.” In After the Hanging, we meet Williamson’s brother, and feel her pain as she writes of his suicide with an extraordinarily raw beauty.

Others glow with Williamson’s love for her daughters, and touch on the pain of separation by “cross winds, no rest-stops,/ hard shoulder, the motorways.” Continue reading →