It's wonderful to be a part of this 20 minute film about Penzance, Cornwall and the local area, by Italian filmmaker Sara Pozzoli.

Sara contacted me a while ago after seeing my exhibition over the summer, and asked if I'd like to take part in her film, featuring the town and its traditions ...

I watched the finished film over Christmas and it's a beautiful, gentle portrait of a day, from sunrise to sunset... with the Battery Rocks Belles and Buoys wild swimmers, wild food foraging, Newlyn fishermen and market, rag-rugging, St Michael's Mount, fish and chips, an artisan shepherdess & basket-maker, local singers, the Golowan band and much more....

... including me at 11:55 mins in, for about 1.5 mins, bundled up due to a cold and blepharitis! walking to Portheras Cove with Jake :-) and then back at home with the star - Charley the cat! - helping me with the finishing touches on my skylark felting x 

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I've been reading the wonderful 'A Year with Rilke' translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows; these are daily readings which bring together many of Rilke's beautiful works, and for the 3rd of January is the poem 'Entering', from 'Book of Images' - just right for the year's beginning:

'Entering' by Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever you may be: step into the evening.
Step out of the room where everything is known.
Whoever you are,
your house is the last before the far-off.
With your eyes, which are almost too tired
to free themselves from the familiar,
you slowly take one black tree
and set it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made a world.
It is big
and like a word, still ripening in silence.
And though your mind would fabricate its meaning,
your eyes tenderly let go of what they see.


Rilke's poetry often explores beginnings and departures, seeing and creating anew, being on the verge of the undiscovered... and stillness - evoking a presence beyond words and concepts. I always see strong visuals and colours when I read his work and love the creating and letting go in this poem...

Do you find this too? That when reading poetry or any form of writing, you experience colours and visuals?... I'd love to know whether reading inspires you to paint and create.