‘Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.’
From T.S Eliot’s ‘East Coker’
T.S.Eliot
In the end is my beginning
Art, calendar, poetry
A calendar of images by Anne Corr based on interpretation of poetic text
In an unashamedly brazen attempt to get you all to look at my illustration work I have put together twelve images from my Redbubble page which have all been inspired by poetic works from various poets. I have a preoccupation with the themes of time and nature , and constantly draw solace and inspiration from art and poetry alike that resonates. The title of the calendar was taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem East Coker from ‘The Four Quartets’ – a poem that invites speculation and re reading time and time again.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
I hope this is inviting enough for some of you to investigate the other products that have my illustrative work on them and please forgive the self promotion! At the moment Redbubble are offering a 20% discount with the code THESEDAYS. Simply quote the code at the checkout stage.
Send in the Troopers
Art, illustration, poetry
A digital watercolour of the lovely ladies I spend some time with each morning in Essex, and they always seem prepared to converse and mend the world with me. This piece of Eliot’s poem East Coker goes some way to prepare me for another week. Strange how I revisit his poem on a regular basis. I shall have to share it with these belles.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
Reflections on a rolling stone with Dylan, Elvis and T.S Eliot
culture, Life, music, poetry
I don’t often talk about music, it just is a part of my life I kind of take for granted. Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate it because I do, I know how much less rich life would be for my without it. How at certain times in my life it has created pockets of succour that I view as life saving. There are times too painful to feel your own pain, when music is able to express for you that which you can’t – likewise with joy. But like family, it exists, it just is.
Robert Plant writes about his icon Elvis Presley so personally that he showed me both Elvis’s and his own humanity.
There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves. It’s transfiguration. I know about that. And having met Elvis, I know he was a transformer.
Musicians on musicians – fascinating and wonderful. http://www.rollingstone.com/
But what I really want to share with you today is something Bob Dylan produced last year, and I have only just discovered courtesy of http://jjennajane.com/
This is one of his most iconic songs, one that moved a generation, how great an influence on thinking Dylan has had is unquantifiable. One man. One young man. One creative dare-devil. Twenty-four years of age when he wrote it, it took a while to get the video right, but he did get it right. It is a brilliant commentary on the constantly blinking perspectives of the world now, seen via multi channels across the globe. Interactive, you can adjust what you see via the up/down keys on your keyboard. You won’t see what I see, but the flavour will stay the same. You may have to put the link in your browser because I don’ think I can embed video. I swear you won’t be disappointed.
Robert Plant again on Elvis:
“When he died, he was 42. I’m 18 years older than that now. But he didn’t have many fresh liaisons to draw on — his old pals weren’t going to bring him the new gospel. I know he wanted to express more. But what he did was he made it possible for me, as a singer, to become otherworldly.”
Bob Dylan on Bob Dylan;
‘My songs are personal music; they’re not communal. I wouldn’t want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I’m not playing campfire meetings. I don’t remember anyone singing along with Elvis, or Carl Perkins, or Little Richard. The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions. A performer, if he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, doesn’t feel any emotion at all. It’s a certain kind of alchemy that a performer has.’
That last quote reminds me of something T.S Eliot spoke of, the surrender of the ego I suppose,
‘What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality….
…Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.’
(excerpt from T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Sacred Wood. 1921.)
Visions and revisions with Alfred J. Prufrock.
Art, books, illustration, poetryToday I am concentrating on ‘The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock’, a poem I have mused upon for a while now. It embodies the melancholy I appear to have been born with, a vague blast of icy air that swirls around my life. I love my life, but simultaneously have deep feelings of despair at the human condition, at the vagaries of existence and the inability for me to hold a meaning behind it for any continuous body of time. All is indeed paradox. But back to T.S. Eliot and his intriguing expression of modern life, containing this human experience of being, feeling, understanding conflicting abstractions, the confusion of being alone in a crowd.
My endeavour is fitting visual imagery to complement the text, and so far I have come up with some ideas that make sense to me.
What always interests me is how other people interpret the same content , and whether my interpretation manages to resonate with anyone. I choose an intuitive response to his poem, and have avoided reading analyses because I find it muddies my own thinking. After I have finished, I may go and discover what other readers have encountered in reading it, but I want to be ‘clean’ of influence. It may not be a scholarly approach! 
main image An advanced dressing station in France Henry Tonks 1918
image The Brown Tunnel Henry Moore
moving in time 