the coloured pages

I sort my writing by the colour it is in my brain. And that's as good a description of my sorting method as I can give. So I will be building collections by colour as I go through my Attic, finding old pages and scribbling on some new ones.

If it's not the same colour for you when you read it, well, that's curious. And we could have a conversation as to other sensory attributes words have (taste, texture, sound...). Because words have weight and life to them. They are who they are. Also curious.

Some of the images I've paired with my poems are my own or my family's photos. Some are from unsplash and other creative commons sites, and are used with permission from their creators. Some are images of artwork created by me or someone who has graciously allowed me to use their work on this site. Thank you to artists (!) for making our world more beautiful, and more "seen."

Red collection

The red poems have an element of life blood to them. The drop of crimson that carries who we are and is so susceptible to being lost...

Blue collection

The blue poems heave with the drama of the sky and the sea and the night and the unknown mysteriousness of grief...

White collection

Ah. White. Clean and unspoiled and blank potential, but bundled up full of all the colours of the spectrum, hiding in plain sight...

Gold Collection

Gold bursts into consciousness as a seduction of value; as currency of the cosmos, as the final reckoning, and the most durable of what is mined...

brown collection

Earthy, practical, warm and the ground for all growth. The colour of the rotting underlay of any trail that smells of spring and fall at once...

pink collection

Just a delicious note of loveliness and elegance. Beautiful in its delicate rarity in nature, and overly copied in apparel, it is nonetheless a sign of hope...

green collection

The richness of this entire spectrum is in its complete association with Life and Health and Vibrancy and a little bit of the terrifying Chaos...

watercolour collection

Does water have a colour? Or does it magnify or distort what it washes? Water is a medium, a lens, an element, and a world unto itself...

Black Collection

Night and the dark are where poets live, fortunately or unfortunately. As long as there is light there is a shadow, and art is nothing if not a way to explore what lies beyond the firelight...

Grey Collection

Between any two extremes is that fuzzy amorphous area that could be where the answer lies, but which is so hard to locate...

multicoloured collection

Sometimes colour is not so much a singular entity as an abundance, an uprising of the spectrum, a prismatic explosion of light in all its diverse expressions...

Orange Collection

Fire and tigers and the dying of the day are mantled in a warning colour that is hard to miss, but carries with it a tinge of terror, or is it warmth, or is it awe...?

silver collection

Gossamer, pearl, starlight, moonlight, candlelight, water reflecting impossible light - silver encompasses those colours that draw us in rather than shine out. Perhaps the most introverted colour of all...