FASCINATING WOMEN YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF

ByLee Ann

More and more historians have started probing history to uncover fascinating women and their contributions over millennia. Historical novelists, too, are telling the stories of women, either known historical people or characters based on what we know women experienced and accomplished in the past.

In my role as a features writer for the Historical Novel Society, I get to read new releases of historical novels. I interview authors to discover the people and events that have inspired them to write their books.

Several authors I’ve interviewed recently have told the stories of women I’m betting you’ve never heard of. So as summer softens into cooler days and earlier darkness, why not explore history through the lives and contributions of some fascinating women?

Below are links to my author interviews. You can find the books at your favourite independent bookseller, or your local library. Happy reading!

Lee Ann

The Stolen Lady, by Laura Morelli. OK, you probably have heard of the enigmatic Lisa Gherardini… or as she’s more often called, Mona Lisa. But did you know that the staff of The Louvre spirited most of the museum’s collection (including Lisa’s portrait) out of Paris just before the Nazis arrived to plunder the treasures? Women drove the escape vehicles!


A Most Clever Girl, by Stephanie Marie Thornton. Who was the person who ran the largest Soviet spy ring in the United States during the Cold War? A woman by the name of Elizabeth Bentley. Her confession to the FBI not only identified 41 Soviet sources operating throughout the U.S., it essentially took down the golden age of Soviet espionage, which had been ongoing for over 20 years.

Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters, by Jennifer Chiaverini. You likely know at least a little bit about Abraham Lincoln’s wife. What about her sisters? Mary Todd Lincoln’s relationships with them were some of the most important in her life. Elizabeth Todd Edwards and Emilie Todd Helm both lived extraordinary lives in their own right, and were present during a particularly transformative time in America’s history.


Dark Earth, by Rebecca Stott. Did you know: under the remains of medieval London lies buried the once great Roman city of Londinium. It was abandoned around 420AD for reasons unknown. So much remains unknown about this period of history that it’s known as the Dark Ages. Author Stott delves into the lives of women during this time through two female characters who flee to the haunted city. Isla is a master sword maker, a skill forbidden to women. Her sister Blue is a master of myth and magic.

|

PERSPECTIVE

ByLee Ann

The creative process has a lot to do with perspective. I was reminded of this a couple of years ago when I went to a painting party. Over a few hours, an artist showed a group of us how to create a simple painting of a sailboat at night. No two pieces of art, even though they represented the same subject, were the same. Each nascent artist brought a specific perspective when creating their painting.

Of course, an artist’s skill level also plays a role in the resulting piece. Do you know the most important skill any artist needs to hone? Observation.

Keen observation: the building block of artistic perspective!

Think about it. Even in the context of the painting party, each person’s ability to observe – the interrelation of the boat’s parts, how parallel lines converging give the illusion of depth and distance – in large part determined the success of the final product.

Observation + Perspective = Art

Poet and author Molly Peacock goes so far as to say that a poet’s skills are “noticing and comparing one thing to another.” She says a poet must become “an expert in observing.” I think this goes for all artists, whether their medium is poetry or dance, painting or song.

What an artist notices and what they think about that is the heart of any piece of artwork. If an artist is very skilled at observing and then expressing from their observations – well, they’ll have endless creative output! Plus, a skilled artist often brings to us new insight via their work.

If you want to read a delightful example of observation and perspective, look for American poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s book, The Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014). It’s a collection of over 30 different poems, each written from three perspectives: that of an old woman, a tulip, and a dog.

Meanwhile, why not try practicing keen observation of what is in your world? Notice what you notice! Then express it somehow, even in a post-it note that you stick on your monitor. You just might begin to awaken your inner artist!

Until next time, here is my tribute to Ostriker: “Aging from Three Perspectives”.

Lee Ann

TAKING A SHOT

ByLee Ann

I don’t often use sports metaphors. I’m more of a face-in-a-book, dreamy, poem-writing type. But recently, I was sorting through a number of poems I’ve been working on and I decided I wanted to “do something” with a few of them. They didn’t suit being turned into Poetry Art – they were either too long, or didn’t have a suitable photo – so I decided to enter a poetry contest.

The Canadian Authors Association National Capital Region runs a contest every year; I’ve entered before, but not for quite a while. When I noticed this year’s judge was a poet I admire – Governor General Award winner Lorna Crozier – I started picking and polishing what I thought were my three best.

And I took a shot.

And here’s where the sports metaphor comes in.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky

What is not often quoted is what he said right after this:

… even though there is only a one to five percent possibility of scoring.

Here’s the thing. I felt a bloom of pride when I did the work, decided the work was worthy of a shot, and made the effort to submit. Even though this is a contest open to poets across the country, which made the possibility of my poems “scoring” one of the top three prizes about the same as Gretzky’s chance of scoring a goal.

But that’s OK. I picked and polished and submitted anyway. And I tell you: that bloom of pride is something to aspire to, something very worthwhile.

As it turned out, Canadian Authors notified me that one of my poems was shortlisted: one of six poems selected by Crozier as finalists. It went on to win second place in the contest.

This, of course, is a very big deal for me as a writer! I wanted to share my delight with you, yes. But more than that, I wanted to describe to you that blooming sense of pride that comes from doing the work – whatever that means to you – believing in the work, and taking one step towards making whatever you’ve worked on even bigger than it already is. I wanted to remind you to take the shot.

Do it!

Lee Ann

P.S. Thank you for your patience as we sorted out the lost subscriber list! If you are reading this, you don’t need to do anything to “re-subscribe,” you’re in!

If you had unsubscribed from my site in the past and suddenly got notification of this new post, my apologies; we had to cobble together a new list from past ones, so you inadvertently got re-subscribed. Of course, I’d love it if you stayed with me, but if you prefer, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking at the bottom of the email notice you received about this post. I’m truly sorry to see you go.

SIGNS OF SPRING and A GENTLE MANIFESTO

ByLee Ann

Hello again! It’s been awhile…

As you know (my faithful followers!) I am on a mission: to find, photograph, and be inspired to write from the beauty in my everyday world. Through this, I hope to provide a small respite for you, a moment of calm and inspiration in the form of pictures and words.

First bloom soon!

This is not a new mission; I’ve been doing that and sharing the resulting Poetry Art on this site and at the owaa Art Gallery in Ottawa for years. Yet somehow, here and now in April of 2022, I find myself needing to review and renew my commitment to this mission. Chalk it up to a particularly dark, cold winter season – and I’m not talking weather. COVID-19 lingers. Ottawa is still feeling the effects of February’s 24-day occupation of the city. War escalates in Ukraine with terrifying implications.

All events that affect you and me and that we have very little influence on. A terrible feeling, yes? One that I find has crept over me like some kind of sinister spell this winter, causing me to lose faith in my belief in all things lovely and good in the world. Maybe this is how you’ve been feeling too. I hope not! But in any case, upon review, I’ve decided to renew my commitment to my mission. And further, I’ve decided that my recommitment will take the form of:

Morning Light
  • taking 10 new photos of beauty in my neighbourhood during the month of April (some of which are here in this post!)
  • exploring new options for sharing my Poetry Art (stay tuned for updates), and
  • posting more regularly on this site. I’ve missed doing so and want to provide you with some fresh, new, positive content that reaffirms there’s beauty in people, and in the world.

This month’s Poetry Art has taken the form of a gentle manifesto as I move ahead with renewed energy. I want to remind us that, like the arrival of spring every year, beauty is real and can be counted on.

Here’s I Lost My Rose-Coloured Glasses. As always, I’d love to hear your feedback!

May your spring season be full of the lovely and the good.

Lee Ann

Spring Migration at Sunset

CREATIVE SPARKS

ByLee Ann

The creative process is often triggered in surprising ways! Did you know that artists’ inspirations – their “creative sparks” – regularly come from outside their own genre? Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham designed ballets inspired by a wide variety of stimuli. These included modern painting, the American frontier, religious ceremonies of Native Americans, and Greek mythology.
  • In 1975, musical group The Bee Gees’ first big disco hit, “Jive Talkin’” was born of the rhythmic sound of their car wheels rolling along a bridge over Biscayne Bay, Florida.
  • Architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s favourite muse was Mother Nature. His entire body of work focussed on integrating human-made structures into the natural world. He took his inspiration from the surrounding environment and created beautiful, innovative buildings. They not only fit into, but also echoed key elements of their settings.
Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright

Music as Creative Spark

Music is probably as big an influencer of art as Nature. A 1993 study coined “The Mozart Effect” went so far as to say you could improve your creativity by listening to the piano concerti of Mozart. Whether that’s true or not is under debate. Yet maybe a little background Wolfgang couldn’t hurt, right?
A few years ago I had the experience of being quite transported by a jazz performance. Has this ever happened to you? Music takes you to a different place or time – beyond simple memory to a place where Truth is found. Music has the power to do that. As a creative, my genre is words, so in response to my experience I created a poem sparked by that music. To complete my piece of “Poetry Art”, I then took a photograph to enhance the poem.
So I’ll leave you with this personal example of how an artist’s inspiration comes from outside her genre. As always, I’d love to hear what you think!
Here is “Summertime.”
Lee Ann

| |

THE CREATIVE PROCESS, PART 5: How Confinement Can Expand Creative Expression

ByLee Ann

COVID has taught us something that I think relates to the creative process: being confined can lead to greater creative expression. We can’t get together with friends for dinner, so we sign up together for an interactive cooking class online. We have to wear masks everywhere we go, so we find some fabric that makes a statement or makes us smile. Europe is out of bounds, so we discover new places we didn’t know existed, right in our own neighbourhoods. This is how, in the pandemic world, confinement can lead to new creativity.

I am a poet whose typical style is free verse. By definition unstructured, free verse has few rules beyond those that relate to good writing. But sometimes I feel the need for a poetic structure with very specific rules. Surprisingly, it’s that very restriction that can expand the creative expression in a poem.

There are so many forms of structured verse that entire fine arts graduate courses are taught on this. Structure can be found in rhythm, in rhyming sequences and in the number of lines or stanzas in a poem, to name a few.

How Shakespeare Did It

For example, Shakespeare’s preferred rhythm structure is what is known as iambic pentameter. The best way to think of iambic pentameter is that it’s like a heartbeat. It goes like this: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Here’s one of Shakespeare’s more famous lines in iambic pentameter (see if you can get the rhythm structure):

If music be the food of love, play on.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Nice, eh? Shakespeare, of course, was a master of rhythm, using its structure to help express all kinds of different emotions.

When Every Syllable Counts

Haiku is a structure that consists of three lines, the first line with five syllables, the second line seven syllables, the third line five syllables. Here’s one that I wrote after my dad passed away:

LAMENT FOR MY DAD IN HAIKU FORMAT
We always ended
phone calls the same way. Now, for
all time: “love you, ‘bye.”

From the straightjacket of those three lines can come very big thoughts and emotion.

Repeating Lines

When I started writing my most recent COVID poem, I was feeling the squeeze of Ontario’s latest stay-at-home order. The first draft was in my usual free verse, but I was unhappy with the result. It did not convey the constriction I wanted to express, so I turned to structured verse. A pantoum uses four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

Demanding? Yes. Constricting? Actually, no! I found that pantoum’s structure itself provided the sense of restriction I was feeling. That sense became an integral part of the poem, without me having to spell it out. So, structure allowed me to expand the creative expression in the poem, beyond what I could have done with free verse. This is how, in poetry, confinement can lead to new creativity.

I hope you’re finding innovative ways to live within the restrictions of COVID. Maybe this structured poem will help you to appreciate how sometimes, being confined can lead to greater creative expression. Here’s Hope and Chaos; I’d love to know what you think!

Lee Ann