ROWENA SCOTNEY
  • Home
  • Paintings & sketches
  • Feltings
    • Commissions
    • Kind words
    • Ethical Felting >
      • Links
    • From felting sketchbooks...
    • Wedding
    • Sheep
    • Cards/Prints
  • Needle-punch sketches
  • Poetry
  • Exhibitions
  • HSP & healing...
    • Intuitive Painting Grace & Joy Website
  • 1:1 Art & wellbeing sessions
  • Joy & Resilience Coaching
  • Online Courses
    • Creativity & Wonder sessions!
    • Birdsong & Wonder! for Summer 2022
    • New Shoots for 2022!
    • Joy & Painting packages >
      • Painting,peace & presence
  • About
    • Contact
  • Blog
 ​BLOG
​
  Poetry, inspirations ...​


Sometimes the blog takes approx 10 seconds to load fully ....
​please do wait as it will load :-) 


The Marvelous, Magnificent Dung Beetle!

24/7/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
I just had to create my own needle-punch sketch!

​
​This morning I listened to ‘Natural Histories’ with Brett Westwood on Radio 4.  I can hardly believe the effect a 30 mins programme can have! Heart beating with excitement, and, honestly, pure joy… listening to an exploration of the dung beetle – in poetry, literature, music and art. 

As one of the contributors mentioned, when describing how the dung beetle navigates using the Milky Way, it makes his chest ‘feel expansive’… such astounding wonder! I feel this too - and also when listening to these programmes!

Artist Billy Childish performed his dung beetle song and an entomologist described how they are ‘relentlessly optimistic creatures’ and that you can see it in their eyes 😊 It takes 20 mins to create their dung ball and then, if a female comes along, she climbs onto it, walking backwards on top of it, like a great circus act, whilst the male rolls it along, backwards! in an astonishingly straight line… oriented by the stars.

How beautiful and comical and deeply poetic …. x
 
And Sarah Watkinson’s beautiful poem x

DUNG BEETLES NAVIGATE BY STARLIGHT*
 
I track my treasure home on star beams, hide
my finds in caverns, steer them clean away,
before I’m stranded in the clueless day
with all my musky gleanings dull and dried.
Straightness is all. The constellations guide
my angled legs. The facets of each eye
lock on to glimmers. Sensed how? Who can say?
The system works for me. I’m satisfied.

I know those lines of light shine down for me,
the dung deposited on dewy ground
a providence. Through moonless dark I see
in multiple dimensions beacons round,
and every blessed night miraculously
Precipitates new turds for me to find.


*Dacke, M et al., 2012. Dung beetles use the Milky Way for orientation. Current Biology.

From Norwich Writers’ Circle Open Poetry Competition 2013 Anthology, poems selected by George Szirtes



Picture


A while ago I created a felting of a woodlouse and moon, inspired by a celestial woodlouse in conversation with a poet... and have created needle-punch sketches of beetles, flies, grasshoppers, woodlice and snails ...and a Moloch Horridus.... there's something about the tiniest of creatures, or the seemingly most reviled....something sacred and divine....as all of us. 
1 Comment
Nico link
1/6/2022 01:52:50 pm

I enjoyed reaading your post

Reply



Leave a Reply.



    ​Archives

    May 2022
    November 2021
    February 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    Categories

    All
    Arapawa Sheep
    Bingz Huang
    Bird Sketches
    Blue Bramble Gallery
    Budgies
    Cards
    Celebration
    Charity Auction
    Cornwall
    Discovering Joy
    Dung Beetle
    Eckhart Tolle
    E E Cummings
    Empath
    Ethical Wool
    Exhibition Previews
    Fears
    Felted Vessel
    Felting
    Filming
    Fleece
    Folt Bolt Shop
    Forgiveness
    Gentleness
    G M Hopkins
    Haiku
    Happiness
    Happy Sensitive
    Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
    Iceland Adventure
    Imposter Phenomenon
    Introvert
    Intuitive Painting
    Joy
    Kobayashi Issa
    Leonard Cohen
    Love
    Mary Oliver
    Mooji
    Morvah Schoolhouse
    Narcissism
    Nessie Dunsmuir
    Newsletter
    New Zealand
    Pablo Neruda
    Penzance
    Poetry
    Politics
    Resources
    Rilke
    Robert Duncan
    Robert Holden
    R S Thomas
    Saying Yes!
    Self-compassion
    Single Mothers
    Sister Corita Kent
    Snail
    Squirrel
    Thank You :-)
    Triggers
    W S Graham
    W.S.Graham

© Copyright 2020 Rowena Scotney. All Rights Reserved. 
  • Home
  • Paintings & sketches
  • Feltings
    • Commissions
    • Kind words
    • Ethical Felting >
      • Links
    • From felting sketchbooks...
    • Wedding
    • Sheep
    • Cards/Prints
  • Needle-punch sketches
  • Poetry
  • Exhibitions
  • HSP & healing...
    • Intuitive Painting Grace & Joy Website
  • 1:1 Art & wellbeing sessions
  • Joy & Resilience Coaching
  • Online Courses
    • Creativity & Wonder sessions!
    • Birdsong & Wonder! for Summer 2022
    • New Shoots for 2022!
    • Joy & Painting packages >
      • Painting,peace & presence
  • About
    • Contact
  • Blog