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This week’s books:
The Rabbits by John Marsden, Illustrated by Shaun Tan
The Day of the Dreader by Cressida Cowell
Dart by Alice Oswald
Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction by Peter Stockwell

I’ve been incredibly nervous this weekend as I start back at art college on Monday. It’s the only non distance-learning course I do; and its also only one day a week, but I am terrified of putting myself back in the classroom situation. It reminds me of the years when I was being horrifcally bullied at school and dreaded term restarting so much that it would make me physically (and mentally of course) ill. So the order of the day has been escapism, found in two beautiful children’s books- “The Rabbits” by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan (one of my favourites) and the latest “How to Train Your Dragon” book- “The Day of the Dreader”. I also read “Dart” by Alice Oswald which blew me down the stream of her powerful narrative of the river.

The rest of the week’s reading was taken up by one (though quite a challanging) book: “Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction” by Peter Stockwell. I recently did a FutureLearn (the UK MOOC) course called “How to Read a Mind”. I knew it was going to be about psychology, but I didn’t realise that the “read(ing” of a mind was literally what the title meant- as in how the mind processes reading- rather than an interpretation of someone’s general psychological processes. The course was very basic, but it suggested several books at the end of it, and I have to admit I chose this one partly because it is written by the academic who created the content for the course, but mostly because it was the cheapest book on the subject (and still was pretty pricey). Though I will be forking out for further books on the subject.
I found the idea of “image schemas” particularily fascinating- looking at the way words on a page trigger a subjective response dependent on the context of the reader. I also found the chapter that tackled Possible World Theory very interesting- it explored the way our brains create another possible world whilst reading. I have previously written an artist manifesto (which I mean to expand on after reading this book) that looks at how creativity is linked to the possibility of parrallel and entirely seperate universes/worlds to ours. I published a vague outline of it on another blog last year: http://thereare13universes.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/a-manifesto/ (when I expand it I will also make it slightly less mental- I admit I was hallucinating and manic when i originally came up with it at the age of 13).

I’ve been warming up for art college by doing some paintings, mostly of really tall cats like this one:

tall cat

It takes on the spirit of my own cat who sits like that guarding me whilst I’m writing and painting in my shed.

I may have mentioned before that I run a local art group for Rethink (my mother runs it with me and obviously she does most of the talking, I just write the creative workshops and help people out with the arty bits). At this week’s meeting we worked in clay. Here is what I produced:

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Yes it is indeed a man with a cat on his head!

LINKS:
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-read-a-mind

I’ve had the pleasure of having several of my poems published this week on Carolyn Jess-Cooke (author of “The Boy Who Saw Demons)’s blog: http://www.carolynjesscooke.com/blog/

I have also been published this week on Luna Luna, with an article on the creative freedom of self-publishing poetry. http://lunalunamag.com/2014/09/09/selfpublishingpoetry/ The article takes my experience of publishing “Catharsis” (yes I am Azra Page, kind of obviously): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catharsis-Azra-Page-ebook/dp/B00MW6EPH4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410718026&sr=8-1&keywords=catharsis