Here is a visual note of an observational walk which many readers might recognise as the path down to the river at Lumb Bank. While I was here I took a lot of notes but felt I didn’t really have anything to work with afterwards.

The overwhelming emotion I felt at the time was frustration. This helped make my notes more literal at first and then veer towards a lot of metaphorical imagery I was less keen on. However, in the end, the landscape filtered through. Being near the water calmed me. The bear I was chasing turned up in a lichen overcoat. The rush of the river hummed like a PC.

I Heart Vie from Karen McCarthy on Vimeo.

This is a video diary from Arvon with the Complete Works crew that was led by Mimi Khalvati and Pascale Petit. There were many tasks set: one of which was to write a poem exploring animal myths. I was given a bear and had wanted a wolf. I struggled long and hard with the bear poem, then set it aside for a collage poem that had the added incentive of being a competition. Ten hot shots and one Amazon voucher in the offing.

I thought the non-narrative structure a collage poem naturally encourages might relax me, and also, distract me, as the bear poem was addressing two distinct but related subjects I’d been avoiding: my pregnancy and the imminent death of my mother-in-law from an aggressive brain tumour. Both felt too close to really get anywhere with at the time.

This is part of the way through the process. I’ll talk about some of the other decisions and sources for lines and phrases in a separate post. I’m working retrospectively here, as I thought it would be an interesting one to share as the process lends itself to Notebooks so readily. It’s one I prepared earlier as it were. I’m travelling backwards now, in the future I will be hurtling forwards.