Crafty with a K

Here's my latest crafty piece: turning the wooden 'k' from my childhood (the front surface of which had been defaced with stickers - yes I loved sticking stuff to other stuff even then:) into an item of interest once again that I'm happy to display on my writing desk.

It's a project I'd had in mind for some time but wasn't sure what to cover it with. Then I remembered a page I'd marked in one of the old children's books I keep for collage and knew it would be perfect! You'll see I've kept that sense of childhood about it - I think we all need things around us to remind us to play.

A Vision of Birds

New ideas for creative projects seem to come to me no matter what mood I'm in nor where my energy levels are sitting. Some ideas can simply never be realised and have to be let go. Others just keep bubbling back up into my conscious awareness and need to be fulfilled.

          escaping

          from a 2nd-hand

          book

          two tickets for

          the bird gardens

The feeling of wanting to create something out of all the cards I was sent while in hospital last year can no longer be ignored. I have a vision of birds: of cutting each card into a bird silhouette and setting them on a background to be hung on the wall.

All the cards I was given during my time in hospital having IV
chemotherapy for leukaemia last year, from March to July, 2010.

I don't know how it's all going to work out but I'm willing to follow this vision and see where it leads! Will keep you updated :)

Riding My Creativity Waves

The poetry is slow in coming at the moment, which seems to happen after I do any month-long poetry challenge. But I've found what I do write during these times of recuperation is quality. I'm learning to ride my own creativity waves and no longer get concerned during these down times. Instead I focus my creative energy on other more hands-on crafts.

Monday night saw me finally finish the collage haiga that had been sadly sitting on my art table for over two months. It's a great feeling to have this one complete and looking so good now standing proudly on my easel (where all new artworks stand for a spell). Then last night, I made a card for my Mum's upcoming birthday, which features the colours she likes and an origami crane.

The card I made for my Mum's birthday 2011

I've done some more work on my haiga calendar as I decided I wasn't happy with two of the photographs and two of the haiku in my first printing. Now it is closer to fabulous. And I also did some baking over the weekend, which counts as creativity in my book! Black Doris Plum Crumble and a Date and Walnut Loaf - both wheat and dairy free, and super yummy! :)

Enjoy riding your creativity wave today, wherever it may take you.

July Round-Up - A Month Of Gratitude

July: the second River of Stones month for 2011, where people all over the world took time out each day to pay attention to something fully and write it down. My practise of this observational exercise was enhanced by adding gratitude to the process: it made me more grateful of the things in my life as I looked around, listened, touched, tasted, photographed, read and rested. Why small stones of gratitude? See here.

As part of my practise of gratitude and abundance, and as July was my birthday month and the 2nd anniversary of my engagement, I decided to have a draw to give away two haiku books. The post about that here and the winners here. It's cool to have so many new people join me on Swimming in Lines of Haiku and great to be sending out two New Zealand haiku books to readers and writers in America. I think I'll run a haiku competition for my 2012 birthday so stay tuned!

Here's how I'm doing on my 2011 goal of submitting poetry to a publication or competition every week:

• week twenty-seven - submitted one haiku to Wednesday Haiku @ Issa's Untidy Hut - accepted!
• week twenty-eight - submitted seven tanka and seven haiku to paper wasp, awaiting outcome
• AND submitted a tanka to Red Dragonfly (Melissa Allen's blog) mushroom feature post - accepted!
• week twenty-nine - submitted ten senryu to Prune Juice, three accepted!
• week thirty - submitted one previously published haiku to Pin-ku, awaiting outcome
• AND resubmitted three haiga to Notes from the Gean (due to change in editor)

Me with my haiku on the Papamoa Poetry Walk
for New Zealand's National Poetry Day 22/7/2011

July was a fruitful month as I reaped the rewards of my past poetry and prose labours -

• Four of my haiku appeared in 'poetry walks' around parts of Tauranga as part of National Poetry Day on Friday 22nd July
• Prune Juice (Issue 6, Summer 2011) came out with two of my senryu
• a fine line, The Magazine of the New Zealand Poetry Society, came out with my feature article A Haiku Journey
• Melissa Allen's Mushroom Harvest post came out with my tanka
• Excellent Writing (July Issue) came out with two of my senryu and the final of three Quick Tips For Freelance Writers
• Three of my haiku appeared in the May/June Sketchbook “vegetable(s)” haiku thread (#07, #40, #48). “sunday brunch” was named "Editor's Choice" by John Daleiden, and “sunday brunch” and “pulling up” were named "Guest Editor's Choice" by Bernard Gieske, and "returning home" and "sunday brunch" were named "Editor's Choice" by Karina Klesko. This means all three of my entries were highlighted in the judging process; not bad for my first time participating.

An update on the state of affairs re my various artistic projects -

• I finished my haiga calendar and had one printed so I could see how it looked in the flesh. I'm really happy and excited about it so will now get several more printed out for family Christmas gifts. Sorted!
• I haven't made any new collage haiga this month and I still have an unfinished one on my art table from May! Hopefully I can get that completed in August and then I will have two full albums of collage haiga that have haiku and tanka from my collection exploring my leukaemia journey.
• I did manage to finish my vision board around finding a new home, and what a mammoth task that was! Now it's time to make the magic happen :)

My completed vision board!

June Round-Up - Visual Arts In Abundance

June has been a big and busy month. At week 26 of 2011, I'm half-way through my goal of submitting poetry to a publication or competition every week. You can read my post about that here. And thanks to fellow Facebookers, I got to see my haiku on the HSA Haiku Wall in Bend, Oregon. You can see some pics of mine and New Zealander's Pat Prime and Svetlana Marisova here.

Here's how I'm doing on my 2011 goal of submitting poetry to a publication or competition every week:

• week twenty-two - submitted two senryu to Excellent Writing, both accepted for July issue (with accompanying image)
• AND submitted two haiku to the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival 2011 Haiku Invitational (first time submitting here)
• week twenty-three - submitted two haiga to Notes from the Gean (first time submitting here & first time submitting haiga!), one accepted for September issue
• AND submitted seven haiku to The Heron's Nest (first time submitting here), awaiting outcome
• week twenty-four - submitted three haiku to The 6th Kokako Haiku and Senryu Competition, closes October 31st 
• AND submitted a further two haiga to Notes from the Gean, awaiting outcome
• week twenty-five - submitted one haiku to Wednesday Haiku @ Issa's Untidy Hut
• week twenty-six - submitted six tanka to Eucalypt, awaiting outcome

June was absolutely a month of visual art making and creating. I began putting together a vision board early in the month, which you can read about and see photos of here, with an update here. I did no other collage making this month; one collage haiga is still on hold waiting for some IV tubing that I hope to get next week.

Photography - I went autumn leaf spotting with a side of graveyard visiting several times in June and got some wonderful shots. One quickly became the image to sit alongside my two senryu accepted for the June issue Excellent Writing: my first time putting a border around an image and changing it to sepia. Love the look! Will put it up on my Photography page once it's published.

I created some more photo haiga this month and submitted them to a publication for the first time (and had one accepted! Notes from the Gean). Then I embarked on a haiga calendar for my family for Christmas. This was great fun to do and a lot easier than I expected (using Vistaprint). It was fun choosing images from my own well-stocked (though terribly catalogued) photo library and thinking about what my family would enjoying seeing, and how that could fit with my haiku, instead of having literary merit in mind. A very freeing experience.

And addictive for some time as well! I would get up each day and work on it a little more; even found myself thinking about it at night before sleep: composing new haiku to fit seasonal images or fiddling with placement of words. I soon realised that I had little in the way of spring images so will have to wait until I can get a few early spring shots before I can finish this project off. I know my family will love it, and I look forward to holding a copy in my hands very soon :)

July sees me once again taking part in the River of Stones challenge, plus completing my vision board and that poor little collage haiga that's been waiting all month to be finished. Otherwise, I'm concentrating on my treatment: many blood tests, a haematology appointment and a bone marrow biopsy to get through in July. I'll see you in the river! (And don't forget that I'm giving away a book here during July: details here.)

Vision Boards And Sticking Stuff To Other Stuff

I'm in the process of making my biggest ever vision board. Hubby-to-be and I are looking at buying our first home together later this year and this vision board is my contribution to the magic of making it happen.

Vision boards have worked for me in the past (it's how I found my wonderful man, after all!) and plus, I just love sticking stuff to other stuff! Most of my vision boards end up becoming a work of art, and although I use words, it's a good exercise is working/playing with images to a greater extend.

Vision board in progress - approx. 1m x 1.2m

I made my first vision board in 2008 with friend and fellow writer and artist Janet Keen. Janet has vision boards all around her home and studio, and has had great success from them. Check out her recent post on How to make a vision board. You can also read an article I wrote about Janet and her art, which she has archived on her blog here.

Check out an earlier post of mine, including two poems, about why we want to move from Wordsmith House - Location, Location, Location.

May Round-Up - Dreamy, Crafty, But Always Poetry

It's hard to believe I'm writing a round-up for May already: the month has seemed to fly by! (Time to find some savings, like Orbitz and plan a winter holiday!) I should have received two journals during the month with my work in them, Haiku Presence and Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal, but they are still yet to arrive.

I did, however, receive the copy of Stepping Stones: a way into haiku by Martin Lucas, which I ordered from Snapshot Press. I look forward to digging into that in a week or two, once I finish Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan, which I've been reading a haiku and commentary a day from since February.

Here's how I'm doing on my 2011 goal of submitting poetry to a publication or competition every week:

• week eighteen - submitted eight senryu and five kyoku to Prune Juice (first time submitting here) two senryu accepted for Issue 6 (July, 2011)
• week nineteen - submitted two haiku, seven tanka and a haibun to Kokako 15, awaiting outcome
• week twenty - submitted ten haiku to haijinx (first time submitting here), awaiting outcome
• AND submitted three haiku to the Sketchbook May/June Haiku Thread (first time submitting here)
• week twenty-one - submitted two haiku to the International "Kusamakura" Haiku Competition

May saw me return to my dream work after the busyness of NaPoWriMo in April, and saw my poem "A Journey in Three Masks" (written during NaPoWriMo using the personal mythology prompts on InkSeeds) published in the May issue of Excellent Writing.

During the month I posted quite a few haiku on the NaiHaiWriMo Facebook page in response to prompts by Cara Holman. It was great to connect up with so many people writing haiku. I'll definitely be dropping in there most days to read and enjoy all the poems people are sharing.

I created two collage haiga for my collection exploring my leukaemia journey, for a new total of 28 pieces. I have another one half completed but am lacking the ingredients to finish it just now: some IV tubing. Hopefully I can ask the nurses at the Cancer Centre for some when I'm there later this month.

To catch the last of the autumn foliage, hubby-to-be took me to Mclaren Falls Park for the first time, and what a gem I'd been missing out on! Beautiful trees, lakes, gardens, grounds, walking tracks, sitting spots and look outs. Will definitely go back there again.

So now it's June and the beginning of winter in New Zealand. I look forward to the June issue of Excellent Writing where I have a quick tip for freelance writers appearing, and the June issue of Four and Twenty, which will be sporting one of my images on the cover. I wonder what else the month will bring...

Mclaren Falls Park, Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, NZ
by Kirsten Cliff 23/5/2011

STOP! Haiga In Progress. DO NOT DISTURB!

Finally! I have found a decent time/energy envelope to focus back on my collage haiga. I haven't made one in well over a month: exhausting myself with poetry prompts throughout April and having nothing left to give to my hands-on artwork/play. I've been itching to get stuck into it again! And I'm very excited about my first piece back.

About a week after NaPoWriMo ended for me (which was four days later than everyone else:) an idea flooded my vision for a haiga, as I knew it would: Create the space and the creation will come. (Note: Always have pencil and Post-It notes handy!)

So I started work/play on the idea last week and have had to leave it sitting for a few days at a time as health (or rather illness) demands. But I'm in the final stage now of sticking stuff to other stuff (one of my most favourite things to do!) and then I shall place my collage haiga on my easel and stand back to delight in the full 3D effect of my original vision.

My currently empty easel

I've found haiga are the artwork/play that most often turns out better than my original idea or vision in my mind's eye. And this is the magic for me.

My writing of prose pieces never turns out the same as first thought, which doesn't usually mean that it's better or worse than the first concept, just different. But I am sometimes left with a feeling that I haven't quite created what I set out to achieve. Granted this hasn't happened for some time as I haven't done much prose work; not as in previous years. I've been concentrating more on poetry and this has been wonderful: my diary has never been so empty of appointments and so full of haiku, senryu, tanka, small stones, one-liners, inspirations, poetry, Poetry, POERTY!

With my visual art I've learned (after much struggle!) to just go with my gut and NOT my head. I may think that a poem involving blood tests or transfusions should sit on red card, and so instinctively allow my mind to override my unconscious flow and grab for the red straight away. But when I just sit for a moment I find I want to choose blue card for this one. I can't explain why, and my mind tries to fight this, puts up an argument that there is no good reason to choose blue over red, red is of course the obvious choice for this haiga!

However, my mind does NOT know best: definitely not when it comes to art anyway! So I've learnt to slow down, enjoy the process, quiet my mind, and go with what comes up without questioning.


"My Art is my Heart" February 2011
Paint, origami, transfers, stickers on stretched canvas.



Too often in the past I would complete an artwork, say a painting, and just not be satisfied by what I'd created because I could see where I had fought against a natural colour choice or natural stopping/finishing point. I had listened to my head instead of my heart/soul/spirit/unconscious.

Now I gain so much enjoyment from my art work/play and I know it's because this process of creation is one of the few times in a day that I really let my spirit have a voice, and this is vital to my well being.

The haiga I'm creating is for a senryu that's part of my collection exploring my leukaemia journey, and has been accepted for the next issue of Prune Juice. I hope to have it finished this week. Then I can sit back and wait for a new idea to pass through me and onto the page. Happy creating to you! 

"Peace is the Way of my Heart" February 2011
Paint, origami, transfers, stickers, brads on stretched canvas.