So, teaching my first poetry combined with photography class at the local State Fair Community College has been the impetus for additional ideas in furthering my literary prowess. Not only am I teaching and hoping I'm encouraging creativity in the students, but as usual the students always encourage me to reach higher and dream bigger and create more. With this class, I am combining my love for reading and writing poetry with my first love of photography and art.
For one assignment, I had each student select a 4-x-6-inch photo. The photos were turned upside down so they couldn't see their selection until everyone had one. The stories behind the photos weren't revealed to the students, but they were asked to write a poem using their photo for inspiration. Not an easy task, since the photos were not generic but each unique in their own way, as you can see below.
For one student the photo above, an abstracted hosta flower I created for an art show in Los Angeles, became a very humorous poem for children about a monster cabbage who came, along with its veggy cohorts, to terrorize a fictitious town. What a wonderful imagination booster!!
The photo to the right, was created with two red dog food bowls at each side, a green baby bib in the center and a dryer sheet box on top. I shot it using a slow shutter speed while moving the camera. It was then further manipulated in Photoshop to create the feathering that you see now. The student who received this photo was a surgeon, who saw it as possibly an explosion but also connections in the brain. To me, I see feathery flowers, probably because a major part of my photography has been garden photos for magazines. That makes sense. We each see differently based on our life's experience.
This photo of a homeless man holding a soda can (face not shown here) because of his weary eyes, red bearded face and hard working hands, became to one student, the inspiration for a poem about an archaeologist at a prehistoric dig site!
And the photo below of a dying geranium laying in the snow, prompted one student to originally ponder writing a poem about death and shadows. Instead, she did a full circle and wrote a lovely soulful piece about a dancer.
"She dances...The Spirit flows through her like a a vessel of love."
One of the assignments, writing without the sense of sight, left us all pondering the idea of which sense we would be most willing to give up. This assignment inspired me to write a poem also, "Oboe Sonata." The poem began as an exercise and became so much more. As I wrote it, I began to hear an oboe playing in the wind. That's when the poem "turned" and morphed into an audio rendition based on a musical piece I love called "Gabriel's Oboe," from "The Mission " by Ennio Morricone and played by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
"...music floats on the wind, the rise and fall like a living creature
breathing, wind chime-like soft sadness,
singing of lives not lived, a melancholy enchanter
with butter smooth measures,
oboe sonata,
Gabriel's Oboe,
like angel voices,
ascending heavenward
on the breezes of my youth."
Our human imaginations are ever fluid and evolving so no matter where inspiration comes from it's essential to a creative person's being. I hope to continue to inspire and be inspired over and over again. Not only during the cold winter months surrounded by books and words and art, but surrounded by people, year around, who love to create, who are filled with the energy of learning!
