Category: creative projects

Córdoba. History, Change, and Duende

…it was one of the most advanced cities in the world –– a renowned centre for culture, politics, and finances…

I had no idea I would love Córdoba so much.

We stayed in the old city, in an apartment overlooking La Plaza del Potro (the Plaza of the Colt) with its wonderful Renaissance statue of a rearing young horse.

Looking down on a Renaissance Place with a horse sculpture and fountain.
The view of La Plaza del Potro from our window. The Inn mentioned in Don Quixote is in the large doorway on the right.
The Renaissance horse sculpture in La Plaza del Potro.
The horse sculpture

The Plaza was originally a centre for horse trading and all of the sketchy characters that go along with that. It has a literary history that includes a reference in Don Quixote to the Inn that operated in the plaza in the 15th century. It was here that poor Sancho Panza was hurled up and down on a blanket –– tormented because they couldn’t pay their bill.

Courtyard with hanging pots of geraniums, tiled roof and wooden ballustrades.
The courtyard of the Inn, now the Centro Flamenco Fosforito

The Inn is now Centro Flamenco Fosforito, a flamenco museum, considered the best flamenco museum in Andalucia. We listened to recordings by Paco de Lucia, Vicente Amigo, and Antonio Fernandez Diaz –– all master guitarists known for advancing the form. We tried out quizzes about the rhythms and failed miserably. It is foreign to our ears, but so deliciously inviting.

“The Arabs call the experience of aesthetic perfection capable of dragging paroxysm ‘tárab’. It occurs when the artist’s mind strips away from his/her ties and reaches a state of grace; the audience cries, literally tear their clothes and throw chairs; the duende, an emotional load experienced especially by the gypsies (sic), takes hold of the environment. It is the quintessence of flamenco.” (From the Centro Flamenco Fosforito)

Duende is a term that I came across again and again in Spain. It means a heightened state of emotion, expression, and authenticity. It originally connects to a folklore figure, sort of like a gnome or, in J.K. Rowlings’ world, a house elf. But its larger meaning has to do with a tragedy-inspired ecstasy that is usually connected to flamenco. It describes what I was starting to feel in the presence of flamenco, and in Andalucia.

Although our apartment overlooked the plaza, this was off season and it was quiet and private. There were neighbourhood Tabernas that offered simple fare that suited us just fine. The river Guadalquivir runs at the bottom of the street and is a thoroughfare for joggers, bikers, and walkers with and without dogs and children. A Roman bridge spans the river and a huge Roman arch welcomes you into the city.

A Roman bridge across a river
The Roman bridge across the River Guadalquivir, looking north toward the old city and the Roman arch.

Córdoba’s history runs deep. Neanderthal remains from 42,000 – 35,000 B.C. have been found here. The Guadalquivir encouraged settlement and the Phoenicians moved in around the 8th Century B.C., soon to be followed by the Romans, Visigoths, and Muslim empires. It is the latter that built up the city as a major centre of power, learning, and influence. In the 9th century C.E., the population was somewhere between 75,000 – 160,000, and by the 10th century it was one of the most advanced cities in the world –– a renowned centre for culture, politics, and finances. There were over 80 libraries and schools.

It was during this period that the huge mosque, La Mezquita, was built by Abd al-Rahman I in 785. The mosque reused some of the Roman and Visigothic materials from previous centuries, which you can see in variety of the capitals of the columns. But while they made use of materials at hand, they did not stint in the use of lapis, gold, and granite.

La Mezquita originally held 1500 worshippers and over the years it was expanded several times by al-Rahman’s sons to the point where, by the thirteenth century, it held 40,000 worshippers. It is open, spacious and incredibly beautiful with its soaring striped arches.

Inside La Mezquita, the mosque, with large red and white stone arches,
La Mezquita
The Mihrab, indicating the direction of prayer.

But when Córdoba was “reconquered” (La Reconquista) by King Ferdinand III of Castile in 1236, he put a Catholic cathedral right in the middle of the Mosque.

La Catedral de Córdoba. You can see the red and white stripes of the arches of the Mosque through the arch on the left.

It feels bizarre — like a life-size playhouse plunked in without any regard for the Islamic architecture. The Cathedral is still a consecrated Catholic Church. As a pilgrim from either religion, you can flow seamlessly from one to the other. La Mezquita and La Catedral were declared a World Heritage site in 1984.

Córdoba was also known as a place of incredible tolerance, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted for centuries as neighbours and friends. We navigated the narrow winding streets to find the Sinogoga de Córdoba, one of the best preserved of the three surviving Medieval Synagogues in Spain.

Sinogoga de Córdoba

It was built between 1314- 1315 and was in use until the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. It’s small and was perhaps initially a private synagogue for a wealthy resident. It was obviously influenced by the Arab art and architecture, with intricate and lacing geometric carvings and arches. After we had been there for a few minutes, a group of visiting teenagers coalesced into a circle to dance and sing the Hora. They were giggling, slightly embarrassed, but absolutely charming and full of life.

The Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos de Córdoba was built in the same period as the synagogue by Alfonso XI. He put it on top of an Islamic-era palace and it, too, maintains the Mujédar influence. It became a fortress by the river that served as a residence for Isabella and Ferdinand. Christopher Columbus had his first audience here with the monarchs. Infamously, it was used as one of the main headquarters for the Inquisition, and the Arab baths were converted into torture chambers.

The tower of the Alcazar became known as the “Tower of the Inquisition.”

But today it is calm, gracious and restful. Even in the relative cool of February, with more weeds than flowers, we could appreciate the grandeur of the gardens and how they had been designed to ease the heat of the summer months.

Gardens of the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos

With all of this wealth of history and culture, you can understand why we spent hours exploring local artifacts in the Archeological Museum of Córdoba (built on top of a Roman Amphitheatre) before sitting outside to feast on lemon boqueróns — the delicately flavored white anchovies that are marinated in lemon before being fried. And olives, of course. The best way to understand a place is always through the food.

While we were in Córdoba, we also went to the famous Córdoba Equestre, the international riding school and stables about which Fredrico Garcia Lorca said, “In Córdoba, even the horses have their Cathedral.” The public performances combine the essence of flamenco with dressage. The horses are guided by their riders to execute delicate dance moves that exemplify the artistic height of the relationship between rider and horse. Andalusian horses are a special breed, and the stables in Córdoba have been breeding them since before Columbus set off for America. In fact, Andalusian horses were the breed that Columbus brought with him to the New World.

In those days, the River Guadalquivir was wide and energetic as it flowed into Córdoba. In the centuries since, the river has become silted up and Córdoba eventually lost its supremacy as a city of power and influence. Perhaps that is why I love it so much. There is grandeur without arrogance, and people are amazingly friendly and kind. It’s a city that doesn’t have to prove anything, one that I already long to go back to.

Table outside with green olives, pits, a glass of beer, and dried flowers.

Taking a Breath

… a very personal record of our travels as we set out to discover Madrid and Andalusia, and to rediscover ourselves …

To be a creative artist of any kind means that you are almost always on output. You are digging deeply and finding ways to create art from what you are seeing and thinking. But frankly, it can be exhausting. Every well runs dry.

What bewilders me is that with social media, people seem to be on output all of the time. How do they do it? Where are the moments of reflection and contemplation that are the necessary base for creativity? How can you find strength and wisdom if you never take the opportunity to listen and watch the world?

The last few years have been artistically intense for me. I’ve had three published books in three years. There are two more on the way, and another in process. Frankly, I needed to take a step back. To breathe deeply and slowly, with no agenda to produce or create anything. And what better way to do that than on the road, where the preoccupations are train schedules and finding a good roadside café?

This blog began in 2011 as a record of our year on the road. That year, and the writing I did then, changed my life. But I don’t write regular blogs –– not every day is a day of adventure or reflection! And of course since 2011, there have been a lot of other ways to record things and tell people in fast and furious posts all about your exciting life. I’ve done my fair share of that. But with this trip, I deliberately held the journey close. I needed to take the time to be “in” the experience, rather than to write or post about it.

However, as the trip wound down and the glamour of sunny days in Spain became crystalline memories, I found that I want to wrap some words around the adventure. I wanted to put some thoughts out there for other travellers who might want to explore these roads. Or for any armchair travellers, who might be interested in the reflections of two aging writers navigating new pathways.

What follows over the next few blog entries is a very personal record of our travels, Tim’s and mine, as we set out to discover Madrid and Andalusia, and to rediscover ourselves. Tim and I off the treadmill and on the road.

Amanda and Tim on a sunny patio with the Alhambra in the distance.
Tim Wynne-Jones and Amanda Lewis in Granada

A Book Birthday!

I didn’t set out to become a poet.

In fact, I actively avoided writing poetry. There are SO MANY bad poems in the world. And I had to say, so many people who write bad poetry. And yet, even after writing a novel in verse and a book of poetry about the planets, I would be very hesitant to call myself a poet.

But poetry has always been a huge part of my life. I studied calligraphy when I was young, eventually becoming a full-time calligraphic artist. I spent countless hours lettering beautiful poems. As an actor, my voice training included work with vibrant poems of all genres, spoken, memorized and incorporated into performances.

But compose a poem? Never.

When I did my first residency for my MFA in writing for children and youth (VCFA), we were assigned Steven Fry’s book The Ode Less Travelled. This deliciously funny, wicked, irreverent book on writing and reading poetry forced me to realize that my years of reading, lettering and speaking poetry had left a mark. Words were deep in my cells –– the look of them, the sound of them, the rhythm, skip and beath of them, the feel of them in my mouth, lips and chest.

Words are the building blocks for any writer. But as a writer for young people, I needed to embrace my role as a writer who constructed meaning from little bits of sound. Children learn language through playing with words, and I needed to rediscover a sense of play. I needed to get over myself.

Still, I am more comfortable with boundaries. I need discipline around the edges, not a free for all wallowing in self-centred bliss. As I read more picture books, I discovered the American poet Joyce Sidman. Sidman writes nature books, combining information with the language of poetry. Her book Caldicott winning book Dark Emperor and other Poems of the Night is a masterful combination of sound that explores the world of night creatures. This is fabulous, I thought. I can do that!

I’m a regular listener to the CBC show Quirks and Quarks. Every week, there is something new –– some beetle, some volcano, some newly discovered moon of Jupiter, some surprising discovery that connects us to the universe around us. I began trolling through Quirks and Quarks for interesting subjects, doing further research. I wrote poems about the Wandering Glider, lowly Mites, and the newly discovered Dracoraptor and Therapoda dinosaurs. But it was when I discovered new findings from Pluto that I went crazy.

Poor little Pluto, bouncing between classifications as a Planet and a Dwarf Planet, little Pluto has a red, heart-shaped plateau on it that ebbs and flows as though it was a beating heart! It has skies that are bright blue! Who couldn’t fall in love with that?

But how to actually structure a poem? At that point, I was studying different poetry forms and had just discovered the Pantoum and voila! Alliteration! A Pantoum for Pluto! It was a marriage made in poetry heaven.

But one poem does not a collection make. And one poem does not make a poet.

I started discussing the idea of a book of poems about new discoveries in our solar system with Katie Scott at Kids Can Press. Because of my background in poetry, we came up with the idea of choosing a different poetic form for each planet. The characteristics of each planet would influence the choice of poetic form. Young people would learn about the planets AND learn about poetry. Brilliant, I thought. I get to learn more about poetry while I am learning about the planets! Bring it on!

Had I had ANY idea of how hard this was, I would have run away screaming. I am not a scientist nor am I a poet. What on earth was I thinking?

Eight years later, A Planet is a Poem is coming out from Kids Can Press. I am thrilled, and of course terrified. I’m confident in my facts (if you can’t trust NASA, who can you trust?), but aware that to aspire to good poetry is to aspire to divinity. You can see it, you can love it, but you can never achieve it. Still, it is a book I am proud of because if combines the logic of poetic forms with the wonders of the solar system. The discipline of art is married to the mystery of science.

I would still be hesitant to call myself a poet. I love the process, the puzzle, and the agony of working with words. But poetry is sacred. It is the purest form in which we can convey ideas, and I haven’t yet achieved that effervescence, that translucence that I aspire to. But I am no longer afraid to try. Because I will always love the bounce, thrum, wobble, and slither of language. It’s what we have that connects us to our world.

A Planet is a Poem, Kids Can Press, is available NOW.

Reflections on Writing

I’m posting an interview that I recently did for The Canadian Childrens Book Centre.

It’s a busy time! I am thrilled to be launching a new book for young people A Planet is a Poem, which you’ll hear more about in the coming days. In the meantime, happy reading…

You are a writer, calligrapher, and theatre artist, three creative pursuits which are built on the foundation of words. What attracts you to words? How do words inspire, motivate, challenge and/or change you as a writer?

I come from a word-obsessed family. My grandmother was a writer, editor, and bookstore owner. My mother was a book designer. My uncle was a journalist. I married a writer. Perhaps it is not a big surprise that words are the foundational tool in my life!

My mother enrolled me in a calligraphy course when I was a teenager. I went on to do extensive studies of the development of letterforms. For me, calligraphy was a gateway into cultural history and the whole concept of written language. It was also fundamental in giving me a tactile relationship to words. When you calligraph, you work very slowly. You focus on creating shapes and manipulating space on the page. On a good day, it is very meditative. You involve your breath and connect to the movement of your hand on the page. You go down into the bones of a word, and how one letter connects to another. It’s an intimate relationship between gesture and meaning.

This may be why I write first drafts by hand. I love feeling the graphic line and how it dances across a piece of paper. It stimulates a particular part of my brain and opens me up to things that are not available to me through typing on a keyboard. My manuscripts would be illegible to anyone else –– they are filled with the movement of my hand and brain, working together.

However, the challenge for me is not to overwork words in the editing process. How do I keep the sense of freedom and lightness of the word dance on a page, when I want to work on word choice? How do you make something look effortless when it takes a huge amount of effort and skill? But that, I think, is the plight of anyone working in the arts. You must make it feel fresh and new, yet it must be crafted to the best of your ability. That’s where practice and rehearsal become essential. It’s not something you can achieve in a first draft.

expressive gesture teaching a drama class to children

Photo courtesy of The Ottawa Children’s Theatre

The theatre world is a place you know well. You served as executive director of Ottawa School of Speech & Drama as well as founded Ottawa Children’s Theatre and served as its artistic director. Your writing and theatre worlds united when you and your husband co-wrote Rosie Backstage. How else has your work as a theatre artist influenced or informed your writing for young people?

I can’t imagine being a writer without being a theatre artist. Words are a metaphor for communication, but not the sine qua non of communication. Movement, gesture, tone, inflection, silence –– we use all of these to communicate thoughts and feelings. In theatre. all of these tools are at your disposal. Theatre gives you the ability to create nuances that are harder to communicate with words alone. It uses movement and sound. It uses timing. It is so much more than a series of dialogue lines. So much more than a set. When you are creating for the stage, you need to think about what happens between the words and to the people as they move in space.

As a writer, I try to explore how to create this complexity on the page. I read everything out loud, many times. I listen for the beats, the pauses. I listen for the movements and gestures. I listen for what the character isn’t saying. I place each character in the scene, being aware of where they are and what they are doing when someone else has the focus of the scene.

I also use a lot of theatre exercises in my writing. For example, there’s a theatre game called “What’s Beyond,” where you work on coming into a space focused on what you have just left. You don’t try to tell a story, you don’t try to do anything. You just cross the space with a history. When I am writing, I think a lot about where my character has been before they come into the space, into the scene. It’s different from a backstory. It’s more immediate. A character must come on with their scene already in motion. They aren’t coming on from a vacuum. What they bring with them is going to affect their behaviour in a myriad of small ways that are never discussed.

Perhaps even more fundamentally, however, is how my vocal training has affected the way I work with words and my word choices. Writing is a stand-in for spoken words, so I need to always go back to the vocal source. Learning about breath, resonance, and articulation has given me a very deep physical relationship to words. There is some brain science that suggests that as we read, our mind and body recreate the physical sensation of making the words we are reading. I want people to not only hear the words on the page, but to feel them and recognize them in their own body.

On a practical level, I have taught theatre to young people for many, many years and continue to work in that field. Working with youth keeps me honest. They engage me in their concerns and in what matters to them. It is far too easy to get ghettoized in your own age group. Working inter-generationally is vital to me.

Front cover of book These Are Not the Words showing torn paper, fragments of a drum set, a man playing trumpet a woman in dark glasses and a New York taxi cab.

In These Are Not the Words, Missy and her father write poems for each other – poems that gradually become an exchange of apologies as her father’s alcohol and drug addiction begins to overtake their lives. How can we use poetry to communicate with others and to heal ourselves?

I think that writing can be a way of talking to yourself. Ultimately, you are having a conversation with your mind and your heart. But I think you need to trick yourself into going more deeply.

When you have a conversation with a good friend, you usually stay on a particular level for a long time. But after a while, if you are close and trust your friend, it morphs into something deeper. Those are the special times where you get closer and listen harder and respond more honestly. You have to give yourself time to go through the superficial things before you can get to the heart of the matter. Writing poetry can do this. You write too much and then you cut out all of the fluff. You see what words are essential. That’s when you discover what it is you are really trying to communicate.

I also think that poetry, like theatre or calligraphy, is a kind of game. It’s got some great rules that give us a context for deep exploration. You play with sound and rhythm, and in that playing, you can trick your mind into finding new meanings.

Writing is about asking questions –– of yourself, of your imagined reader. Questions can form the base for a dialogue. It’s the best way to talk to yourself. And when you talk to yourself, you can heal.

Front cover of book A Planet is a Poem, showing sun and planets.

*Science and poetry may seem like strange bedfellows but they share commonalities such as formulas and patterns. What was your inspiration to write A Planet is A Poem, a collection of poems about the solar system?

A Planet is a Poem came about through a series of coincidences. When I was doing my MFA in Writing for Children, I started a serious study of poetic forms. I hadn’t done that before. My previous schooling was, at best, pretty spotty. I began working my way through the delightful The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry, and challenging myself to try out as many different forms as I could.  As we know, books for younger children rely on sound and word play, so I wanted to drill down and understand things that I had known about but had never tried my hand at. I had avoided writing poetry all of my life. I reasoned that there are so many bad poems out there, the world didn’t need mine as well. But this was a technical challenge I was setting myself, and I wasn’t thinking of publishing anything at that point.

At the same time, I was introduced to the American poet Joyce Sidman. Sidman writes non-fiction poetry books for young people. I love her work and it opened up a whole world for me. My first books had been non-fiction books for young people and truth be told, I am much more comfortable writing non-fiction than I am writing fiction. I became open to the idea that poetry could be a vehicle for young people to learn about nature. I thought that maybe I could write non-fiction poetry and it wouldn’t be as embarrassing as bad personal poetry.

The other influence was the CBC radio program Quirks and Quarks. I love that show and in one particular episode (September 11, 2015), they talked about the New Horizons space probe. It had just started sending images of Pluto back to earth and everyone was talking about these amazing things we were learning. On Pluto, the skies are blue! There are volcanos of slow-moving nitrogen mud! There’s a red, heart-shaped plateau that moves like a heartbeat! Who wouldn’t want to write a poem about that? I wrote A Pantoum for Pluto so that I could explore Pluto but also try that poetic form. Ultimately, we didn’t use that particular poem in the book, but the process was set in motion. Before I knew it, I was deep into researching (always my happy place), and the puzzle of writing non-fiction poetry.

*A Planet is a Poem offers readers multiple access points for interaction.There are its 14 poems which can be enjoyed on their own. Plus, there is accompanying factual information about each poem’s subject matter. And last but not least, there is information on the forms in which the poems are written. How did you decide to present the book in this format? And why was it important to you to create the book this way?

I had quite a few coffee dates with Katie Scott at Kids Can Press, where I tried to pitch her on the idea of non-fiction poetry about planets and/or insects (another area I was obsessing about because of Quirks and Quarks). But they already had a book coming out the next year on space, and one on bugs. The question was what might make mine unique.

I don’t know exactly how the idea of a cross-curricular book came about. I was pretty passionate about poetic forms, and somehow the brainstorming led us to a book that could give the science and the poetry equal weight. Both Katie and my editor Kathleen Keenan got excited about doing a book that could show kids both the magic of language and of the solar system.

Once we had the basic idea, I researched the solar system. I’m not a scientist, but I love astronomy and still remember being in the Hayden Planetarium in New York when I was a child. I researched each planet as though it was a character in a novel. I worked on matching those characteristics with a particular poetic form. For example, Mercury, which is the smallest planet, is incredibly fast. It travels around the sun more quickly than any of the others. So, I paired it with a very fast rhyming and rhythm scheme inspired by Dr. Suess, with only two beats to the bar.

Mercury’s tiny ––

Of planets, the smallest.

But named for a god

Who was known as the fastest.

I researched because I loved it. But as with my experiences in writing historical fiction, it became impossible to squash all of exciting things I was learning into each poem. So, we came up with the idea of sidebars to give more of the scientific information.

The more I worked on the book, the more I got excited about the poetic forms I was using. We came up with the idea of sidebars for the poetry too, just as there were sidebars for the science. It was designer Marie Bartholomew who had the tough job of pulling all of that together with the great illustrations by Oliver Averill.

*What advice would you impart to young people and the young at heart who would like to pursue careers as writers?

Read. Read everything. Listen to words, make them your friends and play with them. Sing them! Foster your sense of curiosity. Let your curiosity take you to new places. Always, always challenge yourself to try new things. Care passionately and let your writing follow your passion. Make it matter.

Young people engaged in disucssion on writing

Photo Courtesy of MASC

Where Do Books Come From?

‘Focus. Click. Wind.’ rose out of the earlier book like an unsuspecting phoenix and Miranda Billie Taylor became as real to me as the memories of my own life.

Today is the official launch of Focus. Click. Wind ! As I mark the occasion, I’ve been thinking a lot about the book’s genesis. In some ways, this book has been in the making for fifty years. But practically speaking, there are some seeds of the book that started about fifteen years ago.

At that time, I had a job in a city that required me to live away from home for most of the week. I loved the job, but my husband Tim and I missed each other. I’m not sure how the idea of writing letters came about –– not writing letters to each other, but writing “in role” as characters. At the time, we were both interested in exploring issues to do with the immigration of American draft dodgers to Canada during the war in Vietnam. My mother had been very active in the “Underground Railroad” in Toronto, and our house was a haven for drafters and people in need. I think Tim has always been fascinated with this aspect of my life. We decided that his character, Paul, would be living at my mother’s house, having fled to Canada from the States while my character, Jill, was left behind. I’d spent a fair amount of time in California when I was a teenager and had cousins who were ready to flee to our house in Toronto if they were drafted. So, I decided that I wanted to give Jill California as a home base.

All through that winter, Tim wrote to me as Paul, in Toronto, and I responded as Jill in Santa Cruz. We didn’t pre-plan anything. It was a writing exercise. We were playing to see where it would lead us.

Which was basically nowhere. The letter writing fizzled out.

Ten years and several books later, I was preparing to go to a writing workshop. I had just finished a full draft of a semi-autobiographical middle grade, a book that became my novel These Are Not the Words. I had no idea what I would work on next. All I needed for the workshop was two scenes, but the days were getting closer and I had nothing. I was close to panic when suddenly, unbidden, Paul and Jill burbled up into my consciousness. It was time to bring them together.

I figured since I was bringing these two characters together for the first time in their fictional lives, the first scene should be a sex scene. Then, since their relationship was built on the war, the second scene would be at a protest. The protests at Columbia University in 1968 were considered the epicenter of the movement that year. Two scenes, two rough characters. In bed. At a protest. In New York. Phew!  I could head to the workshop.

But These Are Not the Words was still in my head. In that book, the central character, Miranda Billie Taylor, aka Missy, lives in New York City. She is steeped in art and trails her father to jazz clubs and bars. It is set in 1963 and she is twelve years old. Missy had some rather difficult things to deal with and it was a relief to be in a workshop playing with Jill in 1968. After all, she, too, was in New York and surrounded by music, although this time it was rock and roll. I knew that she’d be about seventeen years old in 1968. I suspected I might take her to Toronto at some point. Jill became more and more real to me as the workshop progressed, and I began to seriously think about her role in a new book.

When was it that I did the math? Certainly, it was long after I’d left the workshop. Missy was twelve in 1963. Jill was seventeen in 1968. Both were in New York. Both were struggling with their relationships to men (father/boyfriend). Both were a product of their time (jazz vs rock and roll, Mad Men vs hippies.) How long did it take me to realize that Jill was Missy? Or rather, she was Miranda Billie Taylor, now known as Billie.

These Are Not the Words became, essentially, a hugely detailed backstory. A prequel. This realization was a gift to me as a writer.  Focus. Click. Wind rose out of the earlier book like an unsuspecting phoenix and Miranda Billie Taylor became as real to me as the memories of my own life.

People ask me if I’ll write another book with her as the protagonist. I find it hard to imagine. She’s been through so much and worked hard to come out the other side. I don’t want to make life hard for her again. But there’s a lot of living that still happens after you turn eighteen. It’s never clear sailing, and although Billie knows where she is now, she might still have some adventures ahead.

Her future is excitingly murky.

Synchronicity at the V & A

We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events.

On our last day in London, we decide that what we want more than anything is a dose of city life. We realize with a shock that we haven’t been to the Victoria & Albert Museum since our first trip to London in 1976. We’ve changed a lot since then, and so has the V & A.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (photo from website)

The V & A is a learning museum, originally dedicated to improving British industry by educating designers, manufacturers and consumers in art and science. That’s an ethos that still runs through the museum’s collection of over 2 million artifacts. One of the 10 largest museums in the world, the V & A is a constant source of inspiration. It’s a museum that you can spend a lifetime revisiting. This is the first of what I hope will be many revisits.

We don’t have a lot of time, so we decide not to plan. We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events. (I’ve just looked up the word synchronous and found that one of its meanings has to do with Astronomy: “making or denoting an orbit around the earth or another celestial body in which one revolution is completed in the period taken for the body to rotate about its axis.” This is a perfect metaphor. It takes time for an experience to turn and manifest itself within my thoughts. In the orbit, I can see the experience from all sides. But I digress…)

In the vast and somewhat overwhelming V & A, it seemed that with each corner I turned, with each new room I entered, I saw an object or a piece of art that felt like it was put there just for me. Something that reminded me of what I care about, about what matters to me. Something that showed me facets of myself and helped me remember and recognize the “person I take myself to be.”

Original Music and the Mirror score

We started our V & A ramble at the show “Re:Imagining Musicals.” Among the trove of records, playbills, sets, costumes, and curios, I saw an original handwritten score for “The Music and the Mirror,” from A Chorus Line, a musical that I saw in its first Broadway production. As with all aspiring actors, that song, in particular, was the anthem I sang as I headed off to theatre school. The manuscript was complete with changes made by both the composer and lyricist (Yes, the changed line “Let me wake up…” is better than “Let me awake…”) I was off on my journey.

Musicals segued into the museum’s theatre and performance collection. Sir Laurence Olivier’s iconic costume for Henry V is here, beside Vivien Leigh’s Cleopatra. Fred Astaire’s tails for Top Hat keep company with Charlie Chaplin’s tramp hat and cane.

Costumes worn by Sir Laurence Olivier in Henry V and Vivien Leigh in Cleopatra
Costume worn by Fred Astaire in Top Hat

Full of emotion, with songs in my heart, I do a soft shoe out of the exhibit into the next room ––a collection of paintings donated by Constantine Alexander Ionides –– and come face to face with “The Day Dream,” a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When I was in my twenties, I went through a huge Pre-Raphaelite phase, and this was a favourite.

The Day Dream, by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, at the V & A

Rossetti was also a poet and often calligraphed a verse on the frame of his paintings. The poem on The Day Dream ends with:

She dreams; till now on her forgotten book

Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.

Dante Gabrielle Rossetti

A young woman is quietly sketching the painting. My heart aches with love for her youth, and for her devotion to art. I am that dreamer again.

I meander. There is so much to see but I don’t want to choose. On this, our last day in London, I want to be surprised. And so I am. When I stumble upon the Cast Court, I almost collapse. There is a full-size plaster cast of the Trajan column, commissioned by Napoleon. I’m knocked sideways by memory.

Cast reproduction of the Trajan Column (in two parts)

In 1990, I travelled to Rome to study Roman lettering. The lettering on the Trajan column is the pinnacle for anyone’s study of the form. Completed in 114 CE, these letters are considered the perfection of letter design and creation. When I was in Rome, we climbed scaffolding to get up close. The column was being restored, and we washed the inscription lovingly before making rubbings to take home. It was an act of devotion.

Lettering on the Trajan Column, originally carved 114 CE (reproduction)

Seeing it again brought back all of the passion I felt at the time. It was as though the person who I used to be walked into the room to hold me, remind me. My heart aches with love for that young woman, and her devotion to art, too.

And so somehow, the afternoon at the V & A has become a metaphor for everything I had hoped the trip would be. It’s been a time to be with friends and family, and a time to discover new places. But importantly, it’s been a time to reflect on where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. It’s been a liminal space, a transitional moment, where I have been turning in my own revolution, while revolving around the themes in my life.

I don’t know what is coming next. But I am ready to find out.

We say goodbye to the city, head back to the Southbank and home.

Truth and Serendipity

“History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it.” Chris Killi

The National Portrait Gallery is one of my favourite places to visit in London. It is a gallery of humanity, of how we see ourselves and understand each other. If you have never been to the Portrait Gallery, you may think of it as a stuffy place that shows paintings commissioned by stuffy people to show off their status. I know I did. But The Portrait Gallery is filled with images of people from all walks of life. When done well, these portraits reveal inner lives, truths, and sensibilities.  Whenever I come to London, it is top on my list of places to go.

So I was broken-hearted to learn that it is closed for renovation until June 2023. However, I resolved that this was a good excuse to discover something new.

The Photographer’s Gallery is not far from The Portrait Gallery. I’m passionate about photography, especially black and white. My father was a photographer in the 1950s and I have spent much of the last two years pouring over his portraits of people and places in New York. The protagonist in my next book, Focus. Click. Wind, is an aspiring photographer. Yet I have never gone to The Photographer’s Gallery in London.

When I turned down Ramillies street, I was greeted by the sight of thousands of people, queuing. Were there really that many people lined up to go to photography exhibits? I cursed myself for not buying a ticket online and began to turn away. But I found it hard to believe that so many people had come out to see “Chris Killip: A Retrospective.” So I ventured on a bit further and saw the sign for the gallery with no line up out front.

a small fraction of the people queuing outside the Photographer’s Gallery

Inside, it was calm. People were enjoying Sunday morning coffee and cakes. “What’s going on out there?” I asked as I bought my ticket. “Auditions,” a young man smiled. I thought briefly about how years ago I would have eagerly joined that line up. And I thought about how much happier I was to be doing what I was doing.

I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of the Manx photographer Chris Killip (1946 – 2020.) He is known as the chronicler of the “English De-industrial Revolution,” and his photographs that show the stories of those who, in his words, had history “done to them” –– the men, women and children who lived in North Yorkshire, Northumbria, Tyneside and other harsh rural landscapes in the 1970s and 80s.

“History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it.”

Chris Killip

Killip spent years with people he photographed, and their trust in him is evidenced by the honesty of these pictures. They allowed him to access inner truths. These are profoundly moving portraits of isolated communities devastated by change.

I came away from the exhibit changed and deeply grateful for the ease and good fortune of my life. And for the serendipity that led me to discover a new Portrait Gallery.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/oct/04/this-was-england-chris-killips-pioneering-photography-in-pictures

Throwing ourselves to the fates

We did a lot of soul searching before deciding to go on an overseas trip.

Tim and I did a lot of soul searching before deciding to go on an overseas trip. We know that Covid still haunts us and are taking precautions. But the hardest decision about travel has to do with environmental concerns. It feels irresponsible to take to the skies these days.

We weighed our social responsibility against our need to reconnect with family in England. It’s been over three long years. Children have grown, elders have become elder. The joy of being hugged by friends and family is a powerful magnet.

As I write, we are sitting in the airport lounge. We have balanced some of our guilt by giving a donation to the Guatemala Stove Project, which reduces carbon by building efficient, non-toxic stoves for rural populations in Guatemala –– thus improving the lives of the people who cook over these stoves and reducing carbon in the atmosphere one stove at a time. It isn’t much, but it’s what we can do.

We also decided to spend a lot of time in the UK –– five and a half weeks –– to maximize our visit and reduce our guilt.  If the last three years has taught us anything, it is that we can’t predict what is around the corner. Who knows when we will next have a chance to make a trip like this.

Eleven years ago, we went for a year-long excursion. I was fleeing job burn out, Tim was pining with a deep nostalgia for England, and we both wanted to dig our hearts into European culture. It was a trip that changed us both profoundly as humans and artists. While this journey is much shorter it feels as monumental. Fighting the inertia of the last years has been hard. We’ve sheltered in place and been safe. But now we are stepping out into the wide world again, opening ourselves to the fates. It is exciting, thrilling, and somewhat terrifying.

I look forward to sharing the road with you. And I look forward to the changes in store.

Writing: These Are Not the Words

My new novel These Are Not the Words was officially released in North America on April 5, 2022.

Me with Scatty in our apartment in Stuyvesant Town, circa 1960. Self portrait taken with a timer.

These Are Not the Words is a semi-autobiographical novel.That means there are real people in it who do imaginary things, and imaginary people who do real things. I am not Miranda Billie Taylor, but we share a lot of history.

I started writing the story from a memory. I was taking the Picture Book Intensive at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Writing for Children and Young Adults program, and we had been given the prompt to write from an early childhood memory.

What came out was a memory of walking through the living room late at night to get a glass of water. The dark stillness, the flicker of the TV light, the sound of the record, the smell of cigarettes and marijuana are vivid. I was probably about four years old.

Nothing “happens” in that memory, but the assignment was to turn it into a picture book.

Because it was a picture book, the language was spare, evocative, and poetic. It didn’t work as a picture book, but it inspired me to begin writing vignettes, initially as prose poems and then as verse. As I began to drill down, more memories began to bubble up. I found myself writing a novel in verse.

Although I was writing from personal memories, I wrote in third person. I made the character older, and distanced her from me so I could tell, I thought, a larger, more interesting story.

It took a couple of years and many re-writes, but finally I started sending the book out on submission. The reactions were positive –– editors and agents told me that they thought it was beautifully written. (“Heartbreaking and lovely.”) But it wasn’t for their list, it was historical fiction and hard to sell, the character seemed too sophisticated. But one response really stuck out. An editor I respect they said that it felt as though the story was told from the perspective of an adult, not the child. It was verging on nostalgic. Clearly, I wasn’t “in” the story.

Out of frustration, I decided to try to write one chapter in first person. I’m not a big fan of first person and feel it is easily overused. But I chose the first chapter, the one that had started the process, just as a writing exercise. I was totally unconvinced that it would be possible. “I hate writing in first person,” I said to myself.

I remember starting to shake as I re-wrote that first chapter. Suddenly it was real, vibrant and alive. And suddenly it was a bit close for comfort.

I’ll confess to a lot of tears in the months that followed. But being a writer is not about being comfortable.

I created a book trailer for These Are Not the Words. I used some photos that my father took and a recording of Billie Holiday singing Tell Me More, recording it from a vinyl LP that belonged to my parents. I recorded myself reading a chapter of the book and then worked with a technician friend, AL Connors, to bring it all together.

Putting the trailer together was hard. The photos pull me back to those years. The living room is the one where that first memory came from, where I hear Billie, always. It’s the image and the sound that started me writing the book.

I am not Miranda Billie Taylor. But we share a lot of history.

Challenging Choices

A new family walks into my yard

In March, I marked a year of online programs at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre. I had to try to figure out what to plan for this summer. Last summer was the first summer OCT had done summer camps. We launched into running 17 online camps that were wildly creative and hugely fun. Everyone was thrilled to leap into online programming and our campers had a fabulous time.

A year later, we are all weary of our isolation and our online lives. But I had to think carefully about whether OCT was ready to make the transition back to in-person programming this summer. I had to try not to be impatient. Not my long suit.

I thought long and hard about whether to take a risk and pivot to in-person programming. I desperately want to be with students and instructors again! But in the end, there were too many uncertainties. I decided to keep the business online and stay committed to the virtual world for, hopefully, one last semester.

And yet my non-virtual life is thriving.

My writing life has taken off. I have a novel and a picture book in final edits. (I can’t wait to tell you more about them soon!) I’m working on new manuscripts, and a lecture for Canscaip for the fall. I have a wonderful and busy family who I want to spend more time with. My garden calls daily.

It’s a bit of a schizophrenic existence. I’m not entirely sure where I am at my most “real.”

I find myself wondering if this summer’s virtual camps will be the last gasps of my pandemic adventure? Or will life retain some of the positive elements that have come from my virtual life? Or, God forbid, will the variants take off and force us to endure another pandemic year?

The future is opaque. But whatever happens, I don’t want to pretend these past 16 months didn’t happen. They have deepened my relationships and priorities and made life richer in so many ways. They have helped to open new paths. Not always places I wanted to go, but places I returned from wiser.