This
morning I read the winner of the Open Category of the Annual Poetry
Prize in the newspaper, Stillborn 1943: Calling Limbo by Derry
O'Sullivan translated from Irish by Kaarina Hollo. There was
something inherently moving about the way the poet, with undramatic
grace wrote of the stillbirth of his baby brother. A moment of
immense pain wrought with an intuitive touch, disturbing and
haunting.
I
wondered, as I felt like the old woman who lived in a shoe, whether I
would ever be able to tether my butterfly brain to work with so many
distractions, so many other demands on my thinking. Maybe this
fractured way of working, this running from studio back to kitchen in
borrowed snatches of time, allows that lightness of touch and
intuitive mark of pencil on paper to be read below and beyond the
mere surface...I hope so but butterflies only live for a day don't
they?
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