Something new is in the works! Following the September release of Good Words and Sunbursts, I spent the next two months expanding and polishing Friends, Snowmen, Countrymen, Be of Good Cheer for publication in late November. There followed a period of relative inactivity, during which my brain was catching it’s breath, so to speak, but I am happy to say that the creative juices started flowing again sometime in January, really started picking up steam in February, and are still humming along on all cylinders; and several short works are the result so far.
I have a tentative title for the new volume, which I won’t share yet, but I will share the names of some of the individual works. They are, in no particular order:
1. Potter’s Hands
2. Nap Time
3. Siblings on the Savannah
4. Gilded
5. The Performer
6. Our Belligerent Personas
7. The Tension Between Just Being and Being Empty (tentative title)
Sometimes things happen very quickly. Our Belligerent Personas came to me compete last evening, without warning or even effort, it just sort of materialized in my mind, and it was all I could do to run for my folio and pen and get the lines down.
Gilded was much the same way, although that did not just come to me. Instead, I had the benefit of some inspiration provided by a special event here in my hometown of Milford, Michigan. Along with Nap Time, Siblings on the Savannah, and The Performer, Gilded is a work I have entered in the Village Fine Arts Association Poetry Art Night http://milfordvfaa.org/ exhibit and competition. Each of these poems is matched with an excellent painting by local Milford/Highland area artists.
Nap Time and Siblings on the Savannah are paintings by Paul Tibedeau. (Paul Tibedeau Fine Art on Facebook) Paul and I worked together for the first time at last year’s Poetry Art Night, for which I crafted a poem to accompany Paul’s lovely plein air painting Tracks in the Snow, and I have been looking forward to this collaboration for months. I had the benefit of seeing Nap Time many weeks in advance, so I was able to develop a nice, calm work to accompany this evocative painting by Paul . Siblings on the Savannah came later as a pleasant surprise to me, and I was further delighted that Paul suggest that I choose the title for his painting and my poem .
Gilded and The Performer are portraits by Sara Hadley, http://www.greenhandleart.com . Thanks to an e-mail from VFAA executive director Sue Gollon, this is my first collaboration with Sara. As I said above, Gilded really flowed once I saw the painting. The way I described it to the artist was “I think your painting made an instant connection with my mind and emotions…” The Performer also had a strong sense of story and drama to convey, but the painting had to work a little harder to drag it out of me!
I am pleased and excited to have contributed four works for the 2020 Poetry Art Night, and I hope that my poems complement and contribute to the high degree of quality seen in the visual art and poetry submitted by all of the artists.
All four of these works will be exhibited with the original paintings Gilded and The Performer by Sara Hadley, and Nap Time and Siblings on the Savannah by Paul Tibedeau, starting Thursday, March 19 through April 24 at The Suzanne Haskew Arts Center (SHAC) located at 125 S. Main Street, Milford, MI https://www.milfordshac.org/.
To learn more about the artists and view their wonderful works, visit http://www.greenhandleart.com for more by Sara Hadley,and on Facebook visit Pau Tibedeau Fine Art.
Click here to read the other published books by the author, Rick Morris: http://amazon.com/author/morrisrk including the collection Good Words and Sunbursts, which features Tracks in the Snow, the award-winning poem that accompanied Paul Tibedeau’s original painting at the 2019 Poetry Art Night, and the novel Friends, Snowmen, Countrymen, Be of Good Cheer, a delightful romantic comedy with the Greatest Generation.
Thanks for reading!