write-now

February is here with its clusters of white snowdrops and intermittent white covering of snowfall from grey skies.

In our bookmaking class, we made monoprints and collagraphs in black and white, taking me out of my comfort zone as I have no experience of printmaking.  

It led me to reflect on the way that the endless (though necessary) pandemic restrictions have taken us from our comforts and left our lives, for now, without colour.  

But life in black and white can sharpen our focus in unexpected ways, bring new thoughts and ideas into relief and prompt us to appreciate colour when it returns.

Mono took shape as a three stanza poem in a three book pamphlet format.

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Mono

Colour collapses in

on itself folds

– quiescent – 

into obscurity

a concertina of antithesis

(white black)

in sharp definition

brings relief

yields to chiaroscuro,

sheds superfluous shades,

allowing light to fall

like water.

3.2.21