• _{Block colours}

• _{Freehand lines but deliberately placed}

• _{colours are vibrant and energetic in contrast to the pose of the boy that feels he is in a quiet moment}

_Invocation

_{As old houses harbour ghosts, so do words.}

_{Take museum which comes down from the Greek,}

_{a place to put things that please the Muses,}

_{a shrine or seat of the old goddesses.}

_{What you find here might not be what you seek.}

_{Rich, poor, citizen, commoner, lady, lord:}

_{mortal trace made immortal by design.}

_{Surrender as you enter through their door;}

_{know all are equal here: in Time’s brute trust}

_{we are held – the quick, the dead, the blest, the curst.}

_{Open heart and mind to those who’ve gone before,}

_{to honour the Muses – virgin, mother, crone,}

_{and hope to glimpse them ninefold in this house,}

_{daughters of Memory, oracles of grace.}

Cora, Auntie

 Staring Death down
 with a bottle of morphine in one hand,
 a bottle of Jameson in the other:

 laughing at Death--
 love unconditional keeping her just this side
 of the threshold

 as her body withered
 and her eyes grew darker and stranger
 as her hair grew back after chemo

 thick and curly as when she was a girl;
 always a girl in her glance
 teasing Death--humour a lance

 she tilted at Death.
 Scourge of Croydon tram drivers and High Street dossers
 on her motorised invalid scooter

 that last year:
 bearing the pain,
 not crucifixion but glory

 in her voice.
 Old skin, bag of bones,
 grinning back at the rictus of Death:

 always a girl in her name--
 Cora, maiden, from the Greek Kopn,
 promising blossom, summer, the scent of thyme.

 And we would know the very moment
 it was time to go and leave her
 in the arms of Death who desired her so

 and walk out under the stars of April
 thrown like sequins
 on the velvet of night.

 Sequin: she is standing on the kitchen table.
 She is twenty one.
 It is nineteen sixty one.

 The women are sewing red sequins
 to the hem of her white satin dress
 as she moves slowly round and round.

 Sequins red as the berries,
 red as the lips of maids
 in old time ballads,

 red as blood on the snow,
 as blood on the bedsheet,
 as this red pen on this white paper

 I've snatched from the flux
 to catch this poem
 at my own kitchen table--

 Cora, Marie, Jacinta, my aunties,
 Helena, my mother, Mary, my grandmother--
 the light of those stars

 only reaching me now.
 I orbit the table I can barely see over.
 I am under it singing.

 She was weeks from taking the boat to England.
 Dust on the mantelpiece,
 dust on the cards she left behind:

 a black cat swinging in a silver horseshoe,
 a giant key to the door,
 emblems of luck, of access.

 All that year I hunted sequins:
 roaming the house I found them
 in cracks and crannies,

 in the pillowcase, the eiderdown,
 under the stairs,
 in a hole in the lino,

 in a split in the sofa,
 in a tear in the armchair
 in the home of the shy mouse.

 With odd beads and single earrings,
 a broken charm bracelet, a glittering pin,
 I gathered them into a tin box

 which I open now in her memory--
 the coinage, the sudden glamour
 of an emigrant soul.

Although she opens up about her own personal experiences with death and discusses it seriously and authentically, it is also a very witty and enjoyable talk to listen to

What a lovely surprise it was to get your email & hear your kind thoughts about my poetry. I am honoured by the attention you have paid the lines and really moved that the poems offered comfort. I cannot think of a higher praise than that.

My sincere condolences on your loss of loved ones.

I love the subtlety of watercolour & I know from my own attempts that it is a very unforgiving medium. Your images carry a fine spontaneous touch - and I know that’s the result of hard work, the ease that comes of a disciplined practice.

I wish you every good thing from your work & I hope you get rest & restoration over the holidays & that you get to spend plenty of time in the creative zone.

All the very best,

Paula

I thought back to what originally inspired the theme for this project - my nanas house and all the feelings that cropped up as we sold her house a year after she passed. She covered her walls with mismatched frames full of memories of her life and the lives of those she loved.

For my final presentation of work I will gather preloved frames and place my illustrations in them, and display them in a mind map sort of style: scattered

A practical approach of discussing death and what happens after. I find this comforting to hear a direct and matter of fact way of speaking about death because that's what it is - a matter of fact. We are all, some day, going to die. We all, some day, will have to make these decisions

"In Ireland we die predictably"

"7 steps to have a good death:

• take control of your death

• think about it: a little and often

• understand how you are likely to die, we can't always predict it

• identify your trusted friend, tell them what you want after you're gone

• get and use your end of life planning tool

• practice the decision "I've had enough medical care"

• imagine yourself having the best death that you can (imaginative psychology)

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday-- You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle--'
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life--
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk Together through the shops and stalls and markets Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight And you smile up at us - eternally.

---------

NOTES:

The main message of this poem is that we should appreciate our loved ones and treasure the time we spend with them. This bond is so strong, however, that even when they are gone, we may gain some comfort from seeing them in our mind’s eye – as Kavanagh does – smiling up at us ‘eternally' - Pg. 33

https://aoifesnotes.com/junior-cycle/Paper-Two/docs/studied-poetry/A%20Complete%20Study%20Guide%20to%20JC%20Poetry%202020.pdf

The work above was inspired by poem by Emily Dickinson, Hope is the Thing with Feathers.

Simplistic and quirky. I like how he has brought the cage to life. I'm not sure if I will continue to use poetry as a reference this semester.. maybe I could reference it in a less direct way than putting the words in the drawings..

My focus last time was the feeling of loss when a loved one passes. Reflecting on this, my first thought was to switch this perspective from what is gone, and focus on what is still here. Grief always brings up the topic of staying connected, whether it's wishing you could call your loved one again or feeling your family come together as one to mourn.

This work is specific to the connection within the community. It is a sort of tribute and celebration of the town I live in - it's heritage and values.

It shows one person wrapping their arms around someone else holding them close. It could be interpreted in different ways.

Maybe the person being hugged is grieving and the other is showing their love and concern for them.

Maybe the person being hugged is someone who has passed and is being grieved.

I think it's nice that a simple hug can have so many meanings

(I'm not sure I love how I arranged the arms to cross, might alter this)