I’ve reached the technical stage.  Now I need to turn my ideas and sketches into a number of colour separations which will be layered to form the finished print.  I’ve decided to paint directly into the screen for the first layer and then will use either single colours or blends of colour for the detail.

I’m a little concerned that the sketches now look like lush rainforest, rather than a hawk’s habitat, so I may need to mute the colours a touch.  I’ve sketched out each layer and then hand-drawn each one full size, ready to expose into the screen when I go to the print studio on Friday.

The ideas are coming together.  I took Karen’s hawk photos as a starting point – I really want to work in the yellow of the hawk’s talons as a counterpoint to the calmer colours – and I found a feather at my allotment, and some more in a box when I was sourcing objects for another project. Scanned and solarised, they become something alien and unworldly.

I often work from photographs, so I took my camera to the Poetry Gazebo festival in Culpeper Community Gardens. I like the ‘hidden’ connections that are gathering in the print, with colours drawn from an event organised by Naomi Woddis, another Open Notebooks guest booker, and Karen reading her Wing poem as I took pictures of the greenness all around.  Next I searched my photo archives for images of leaves, water and wings. All these images are spread around me as I work on the colour sketches.

I was fascinated by the shape of Karen’s drafts for her own hawk poem; I hope to incorporate the form of her handwritten notes into the final print.

When Karen asked me if I’d like to make something visual in response to the hawk poem for Open Notebooks I was so excited I danced around the room a few times… when I stopped, I wondered if emptying my head and expending energy this way is actually the start of my creative process?   I often find the starting point for my ideas is a little like meditating – or maybe daydreaming…

Before I put anything on paper, I like to let ideas and images float and form before I start to model them in my head.  This usually happens when it would be difficult to note anything down; if I’m sitting on the bus, or swimming, or taking a shower – for some reason, being immersed in water often helps to kickstart the process.  Once the ideas are clearer, I make written notes, followed by tiny, extremely rough schematic pencil sketches to note the colours, techniques and processes I plan to use.

This is the stage I’m at now.  I know that the piece will have three segments, to echo the title of Karen’s film and the form of my own poem, and I know the colours I plan to use, and the broad shape of the piece, but I’m not sure yet if it is one print or a triptych, or whether I will incorporate text in the final work.  The next step will be to research some images and build the colours.

April was an intense month. Firstly because I had committed to the 30/30 challenge to write a poem a day for 30 days, and secondly because I got married on 1 May.

Another 'notebook' entry: signing the register

I completed 18 poem drafts, which is a lot for me. I was also designated to provide a weekly prompt. The quality of the prompts amongst the group was high and I wanted to provide something that was stimulating and resonant. Ironically, I didn’t get much from my prompt in terms of a poem — perhaps because I’d expended a lot of creative energy on the prompt itself.

Scroll down to read the prompt in full…

I’ve invited the 30/30 poets who took part to share their poems/drafts here, along with comments about the process and I’m delighted to include a selection on Open Notebooks.

ANNE WELSH
The hawk poem (No. IV in the sequence) I wrote straight after viewing your
video, straight into my Facebook notes.

Then I copied it into my notebook and a couple of weeks later make the pencil changes to it.

Once I was happy with it, I rotated my notebook 90 degrees and copied it out as a final draft. I always
write my final drafts on the 90 degree angle so if I am at an open mic, I can flick through my notebook and find recent final drafts quickly.

And here the final poem:

You have rendered the hawk’s eyes obsolete,
broken in the river like the one I loved first.

To dream of crows is to long for sadness
but it’s the hawk’s competitive spirit

I cannot understand. You hold my hand
in the darkness, kiss me awake.

What intrigues me is Annie’s process of typing first, straight into Facebook, then copying that into her notebook and continuing with her edits in long hand. This forms part of a sequence Annie wrote throughout 30/30 — her first — and as the poems and the story unfolded day by day I became hooked on the sense of serialisation.

ANDREA ROBINSON

Draft 1

And the edited version with indented layout.

NAOMI WODDIS

To Dream of Hawks

What news do you have for me, hawk?
Your dead eye frozen, caught staring

at a flat sky, your talons the colour
of daffodils, your wings as beautiful

as they ever were in flight. This stream
is deaf to the dead branch of your body.

Your tiny head cooled by its rush of water,
what message do you have for me now?

AOIFE MANNIX

JOCELYN PAGE

I found it fascinating, the different responses: some referring directly to the hawk itself, others working the bird into the poem. The themes around death and resurrection following on from an earlier prompt. The intensity of writing a new draft each day brings an immediacy to the work — that original energy that can often get lost as we hone and refine. The 30/30 group is closed, so writers can produce drafts outside of the critical, public gaze, so I’m particularly grateful to have the work to include here in its earlier incarnations. It’s not easy, releasing poems when they are still embryonic.
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