I was very excited to have been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2022, with this poem! It was inspired by an incident which occurred as I sat in the hospital gynaecology department. An immigrant woman, heavily pregnant, was trying to communicate to the receptionist, but had no English. The receptionist was shouting at the woman as though she were a second class citizen. Talk about dehumanisation!
AN IMMIGRANT DARES TO SING
The bellies are fecund, dumpling-doughed in their roundness.
The names roll, no one choking. I clutch my pot, all yellow, all of it.
In walks a womb. A refugee cradles it. It is full of child but does not exist for
its mother has no tongue to match our ears and she knows none of our songs.
The receptionist gets loud and slow, and people stare. This woman has the audacity, they say
to bring her womb to birth babies, steal roofs from heads and snatch notes from palms.
To sleep with ears not bleeding and folds of flesh safe in the knowledge they’re her own.
I am ashamed to be English. To nurture a visible womb.
I have been searching for a studio space for the last four years, as I had to work in my living room and as a consequence, my sofa is covered in splatters of acrylic paint!! But now I have the luxury of a 3-metre wall to work on! I can splatter and splot to my heart’s content! The studio space is in a fab place called ‘Fountain Arts’ and is a little community of artists. There are 9 artists or crafters with spaces, and with them being open plan, it is great to chat to others. But when I am alone, I get out my bluetooth speaker, hook it up to my phone, put some happy music on and paint away to my hearts content! (I dance too, but shhhhhh!!)
I painted my first larger acrylic floral before Christmas and wow, what a liberating experience to be let loose with the acrylics and SPACE!!! I abandoned the reference pics and just went with the flow! I let my spirit free and worked intuitively, letting my soul make the creative decisions!
‘Fizzy Poppies’ evolved gradually over the space of a few weeks!
1st stage: I painted a weak wash with watered down acrylics. This provided the base layer for the rest of the work:
2nd Stage: I painted on a white background at first, defining the flowers and vase using negative space. I then added some yellow, and the green base. It looks a little patchy! That green is so intense!!
Stage 3: At this point, I had a total change of direction and was driven to use a palette knife to add red petals, which became poppies! I used a sharp pencil and scribbled all over the painting, gouging into the wet paint. My son joined in! It was great fun!! I could have tidied up the patchy background and this would have been a good artwork. But I got caught in the moment, and I needed lots of red and a sense of movement:
I made the vase edges less defined, then used a black oil pastel to define the poppies and add some shadows. I scribbled round and round each poppy with a pencil and the tip of a palette knife, which was unabashedly hedonistic! But I love the textures. Gold paint was scraped onto the canvas using a palette knife. OOooo I just LOVE palette knives!!! Such fun! I love big brushes, too!!
To add the final touches, I used thinned-down white acrylic and a brush for my very favourite part of my ‘artistry’! The SPLATTERS!!!!! Yay! I get really physical, hurling the paint across the painting! i do think it gives a sense of movement though.
Hey Presto….’Fizzy Poppies’ had emerged in a whirl of evolution!!
So there you have it!! The evolution of Fizzy Poppies! I am going to enter it into the Ferens Open Exhibition 2024 (the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull). Last year, my watercolour painting, ‘Cluckers’ was chosen for the exhibition. I used to visit the Ferens very often with Grandad Pett and never would have believed I would have work displayed in there. Honoured and privileged!
You can find me on Instagram: @sarahdruryart and on Facebook: Sarah Drury Art. And I can be contacted though the contact page on this website.
Am I a poet?
Do the words that flow in book or on screen
Reflect dramatic emotions that go unseen?
Does my happiness make you smile?
Do you bare your satisfied teeth like a hungry crocodile?
Do my words of suicide hanging in the air like a cloud of despair
Destroy your sanctimonious bliss beyond repair?
Do they have you ringing 999 whilst you panic inconveniently in your chair?
Yeah, I thought so.
Am I a poet?
Are my words like rock salt on a frozen ice rink?
Does my punctation uncontrollably stammer,
is my modest pretense full of glamour?
Do I lift your sorry spirit or make your joyful heart sink?
Just because people smile doesn’t mean they are smiling
and just because they shout the loudest doesn’t mean they can sing.
And the words aren’t always soothing like a triple gin and tonic
They can fucking sting.
But I meant to do that.
Am I a poet?
Do I thrill you? Do I chill you to the arthritic bone?
Do the words paint pictures of terror, images so uncomfortable
That you get off Instagram and shut down your one thousand dollar phone?
Or do you take delight in the fright, in the sight,
In the horror before you, your nightmare Twilight Zone.
You’re a loser, you needed some company, you feel so alone.
You’re a regular sociopath, your friends have all gone.
Do I do that?
Am I a poet?
Do I live with my eyes in the tangerine sky?
With my mind up ahead in a fairytale shed
Do I dwell in the lands of the metaphoric
Reality not living up to the dream as I ask myself why.
As I deal in yarns of happy, happy, happy talky
Where the words paint a picture so far from my life I could cry.
Where I am a crack dealer, but the high is a visible lie
When the words fail to come, then my bullet is up and I tragically die.
A lie, right?
Am I a poet?
Or am I a purveyor of meaningless, nonsense words?
Or a dreamer of attainable dreams, a weaver of worrysome woes
A creator of the highest joys, the lowest, the deadest, the absurd?
Do I bleed enough for you every night on screen?
For my words are my creative, poetic blood.
Each night I slit my wrists again and again
Just for the chance that I might strike gold
That my words might actually be love
That my life might actually
Be inspired from above.
the starry-eyed mermaid 