NaPoMo poetry party.20

Photo Credit: Victor Poirier

Good morning everyone, and welcome to our guest Deborah Lampitt-McConnachie. Deborah joins us from Kelowna, British Columbia, where she awaits the new post-covid world order along with her husband, Muddy the Whoodle, and Four the Burmese cat.

Deborah’s longtime blog is how we first met, and then again through a hip poetry party she threw at SOPA Gallery, Kelowna, a few years back. Deborah is a writer, stylist, editor, and performance poet who spent several years in fashion television in the UK (Planet Fashion (world wide cable); The Fashion Show (L!VE TV, UK); A LA Mode (UK Living) and Looking Good (BBC2)). Currently she writes and puts together the college magazine for Centre for Arts and Technology.

So good to have you here with us today, Deborah. As you know we’ve been looking at three questions with each of our guests this month, so let’s move into your responses to those right now.

Lesley-Anne: We often say we wish we had more time for certain things. Are you spending your time differently in view of our current world challenges? If so, how?

Deborah: Guilty as charged – I am always saying that very thing. Unfortunately, I am as yet to get more time!  I’m extremely lucky to have a job that has continued – albeit virtually – despite the Covid 19 crisis. I run several departments at the Centre for Arts and Technology here in Kelowna, and we have managed to shift our course delivery online for our new term which started this past week. This has meant completely reorganizing classes and instructors, implementing a new system from class delivery. learning the new system, and making sure our instructors learn the new system, etc. So the past three weeks have been no-holds-barred, all-hands-on-deck, getting things up and running.

But we are now there, and I am hoping that maintaining (work-wise) from home will now free up a little bit more time. After all, think of all the time I will save time in commuting, putting on makeup and getting dressed! ;-)

So… now that things are calming down, I hope to have some time and headspace to get stuck in to the 4-5 creative projects I have been trying to find time and headspace for – a combination of various poetry and visual arts projects that have been rolling around in my head for at least a couple of years.

The one thing I have manged to institute over the past weeks is a morning online transformative meditation. It’s a magical 45’ish minutes for me, and has been also great at helping keep anxiety at bay.

Lesley-Anne: Why is art important?

Deborah: Art asks us to look at things in a different way. Maybe a deeper way. Maybe a broader way. Maybe a completely upside down way. But art takes something and turns it into something else we can examine from a new perspective.

It makes us slow down and examine.

It (poetry especially I think) takes something small and personal and transforms it into something universal. And in doing so makes us feel less alone.

Art makes us think. Makes us feel. In – sometimes – whole new ways. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Or undervalued.

Lesley-Anne: What is one surprising thing that happened today?

Deborah: A new poem is starting to niggle its way into existence. That always makes me happy.

 

Thanks so much for spending time with us here today, Deborah, and for the poem you are about to share. I look forward to seeing more of you and your poetry in the days to come.

Blessings and good health,
Lesley-Anne

Photo Credit: Victor Poirier

Reverse Origami

Like the paper crane
I exist 

Only

In intricate folds

My complexities 
Layered

Hidden in the depths
Of wafer thin tissue 

A heart of 

Washi

Sculpted to steel

Through the 
Moisture of tears.

Unfold me

Transform me

Mine my
Porcellanite seams

Unpleat 
Untuck 
Ungather

Me

Like reverse origami
Undo me

Make me 
Into

Something new…

		

DH Lampitt | 2011