Calton Hill

the well known folly on Edinburgh's Calton Hill

Lights and Shadows

outside the Filmhouse Cinema, Edinburgh

for Shadow Shot Sunday

The Filmhouse is the host and main venue of
Edinburgh International Film Festival
18 - 29 June, 2014 

senryu

texting her friend
about her swimming lesson -
she strokes her guide dog.

for NaPoWriMo.

***

And a reminder that the pdf of an updated version of my chapbook Bougainvillea Dancing is now available to buy in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop. 10% of proceeds from the sale of this book go to VSO for their work in Malawi and other parts of southern Africa.

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.  

Bougainvillea Dancing now available to download

I taught sciences in Malawi between 1990 - 1992 as a VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) volunteer. My first poetry pamphlet Bougainvillea Dancing, published 2002, raised money for charities working in Malawi. The original pamphlet is sold out now, but I was delighted that Chris Crittenden  reviewed it recently on Owl Who Laughs.

Most of the poems in Bougainvillea Dancing focussed on Africa, but many of them were unrelated to that continent. I've just put together an updated version of the pamphlet, removing all the poems unrelated to Africa and adding in more poems on African topics, plus a couple of prose pieces and some photos. This is now available as a pdf to download from the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop.

(If you don't want to shop via Etsy there are two alternative ways to pay for a copy of this book:

a) via Paypal

b) by cheque if you're in the UK.

Please email me on juliet.m.wilsonATgmailDOTcom for details.

10% of proceeds from this publication will go to VSO for their work in Africa. 

VSO’s programme in Malawi concentrates on HIV and AIDS, health and social wellbeing, secure livelihoods (food security) and education in seven rural and remote districts. The districts were chosen due to their excessive poverty levels, high prevalence of HIV and AIDS, and low involvement of other international charities.

senryu from a nightclub

hurting my feet
as soon as I sit down -
new dancing shoes

***

on the dancefloor -
a couple make not speaking
into an art form

***


for NaPoWriMo
 

Edinburgh Castle in the Mist

Women's Work

after Jomwa Phiri

This woman will always be stirring nsima*
over a fire beneath a baobab tree
dark against a sunset sky.

Knees slightly bent, these women will forever
carry pots to and from the water well
and keep the well wheel turning.

But except the woman drinking with the men

these women move through these crowds
alone.

I remember such scenes being loud with laughter
but the artist reveals the loneliness
beneath the bright colours.



* nsima = maize porridge

For NaPoWriMo - early bird prompt - ekphrastic poetry

Jomwa Phiri is a well known Malawian painter, who I met when I lived in Malawi. We have several of his paintings round our flat and recently I discovered several more, hidden away in a drawer, one of which is now in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop, the others I'm going to frame and find wall space for.

Shadows on the Art Gallery

It was a lovely sunny day yesterday and I was delighted to see these shadows of the lamps on the columns at the entrance to the Art Gallery on the Mound in Edinburgh.

more shadows over on Crafty Green Poet

For Shadow Shot Sunday

Bolts of Silk

Bolts of Silk, the poetry journal I've edited for the past eight years, will close to submissions on 17 April 2014. The last poem will be posted the day swifts return to Edinburgh for the summer.

Thanks to all the poets and readers who've helped to make Bolts of Silk a lovely poetry journal to edit over the past eight years. I've enjoyed editing it, but it's just time to call it a day, now.

The site will stay up as an archive and there's a lot of wonderful poetry there, so I hope some of you will continue to stop by and browse in the future.

The Missing Picture - film review

Director Rithy Panh was 13 when the Khmer Rouge deported his family from Phnom Penh. Now in his fifties, and having made a series of documentaries about his homeland, he turned to a more personal project with The Missing Picture.

Finding that hardly any documentary evidence remained from the times of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, he decided to make a film using clay figurines to tell his story and that of his family. The figurines re-enact the hardships Panh and his family endured in the fields where they were forced to work with very little food or medical attention in a collective farm where no-one had any personal belongings other than a spoon and clothes that were compulsorily dyed black. The Khmer Rouge punished (and often executed) people for crimes as simple as picking mangoes to counteract the ever pervasive hunger. Many people starved to death, or died of preventible diseases.

The result is a film that is striking in its imagination and devastating in its emotional impact, though it can be acknowledged that it is unremittingly grim. Even the scenes showing happier times in Phnom Penh, before the Khmer Rouge, only underline the horror of the Killing Fields rather than adding any lightness. Which is less an actual criticism than an acknowledgement that this is not an easy film to watch.

Some commentators have said that the figurines, although very effective in conveying the powerlessness and silence of the Cambodian people during this time period, also dilute the emotional impact of the story. I didn't find this, I found that somehow they increased the feeling of shocked horror at everything that was happening.

The Missing Picture is showing at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Thursday 20 February.