A new week …

… happens regularly, I hear you say, but without a working week structure to life it can be easy to forget that the weekend has gone and another Monday is here.  This week my Monday is a day after a late night so I’m being gentle with myself as evening spins in.

Arrived back home way after my bedtime last night after a wonderful evening at the O2 enjoying the music of Leonard Cohen and his musicians. For a very big tent that place has great acoustics, every word and note was clear –and LC certainly gives out lots of both, and has such incredible energy.

It also feels like the beginning of a new term of poetry as the new Poetry School on-line learning site is now live. I managed to register and access the work for my Monday evening course ‘Walking the Line’, so now its time to start thinking about a poem for assignment one. Presently a narrative poem  with urban roots and at least 20 lines and 3 stanzas seems a tall order. But then I remember this can be a draft!   It is surprisingly easy to forget that writing poetry takes time and from odd beginnings often some worthwhile work proceeds.

Perhaps I’ll find inspiration as I cut the fabric for my new quilting project … I need lots of very small pieces so a mind occupying task will be useful to stem the boredom that repetition can induce.  Or maybe I’ll think of something at yoga. New classes began last week and the stretches and back bends are already having a positive impact on my back … and my first shoulder stand for a while was OK.

Now to an evening with my book … and some sleep.

The Hare with Amber Eyes

I’ve finished reading the biography of the netsuke that were bought by and passed down through Edmund de Waal’s family. A story of obsession, how it feels to have and not have money, how families spread, sometimes with a purpose, sometimes to  escape and how the same objects can be signifiers of status to one generation and toys to another. Lots to digest about the politics of Europe leading up to WW’s 1&2, and insights into the post war occupation of Japan. Having spent a few days in Vienna last year the descriptions of that city meant a little more to me but I’d like to go again with the book in hand.

By a strange coincidence just after I turned the last page of THWAE I heard an interview with de Waal on the BBC world service programme The Strand. With Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the background he talked about making pots in his studio, about paying attention to his hands working the clay with his mind on many other things and about his new book, The Pot Book.  I especially liked his explanation of why the particular shade of yellow on a certain Chinese pot is impossible for him to repeat. The full interview should be on the BBC iplayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsn3 

New reading is Islands of Privacy by Christena Nippert-Eng …