Poetry Muse

I listened to a talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert on nuturing creativity at www.ted.com.  She spoke about an interview she conducted with American poet Ruth Stone.  Gilbert met Ruth Stone who's now in her 90's and has been a poet her entire life.  Stone tole her that when she was growing up she would be working out in the fields in rural Virginia and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape.

It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barreling down toward her and shake the ground under her feet.  At that point she knew that she had only one thing to do: run like hell toward her house and grab a piece of paper.  She had to get to a pencil and paper fast enough so that when the poem thundered through her she could write it down and get it on the page.

Sometimes she wasn't fast enough, so she would be running toward the house and the poem would go through her and continue down the landscape looking for another poet.

I was amazed when I heard this and I used this as a prompt for me to create this mixed media canvas which I'm rather proud of!

Poetry Fields

In the wind swirls I have place words from Ruth Stones poems