Lily S. May–Life with Art
Here's another poem I recently wrote, plus a photo I took in 2021: Blue Forget me notblue silk skyof forgivenessof acceptance into the realmof all imperfect creation:the blue of birds' flightour sadness held by the skyreflected back to usto the lost blue soundof the heart of the landbeneath the cityto the seekers of deathto the… Continue reading Blue
I'm back again, this time with a poem I've recently written plus a sketch. Here they are: After the FlowerYears agoI named myself after a flowerbut hell on earth now calls forsomething less innocent,so I will call myself clenched teethfollowed by shouts out loud.I'd like to become:she of rock earth and treesshe protector of birds… Continue reading After the Flower
Last week I began rereading Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems. It's by the Palestinian poet, Ghassan Zaqtan. Straw Bird is translated into English by Palestinian doctor and poet, Fady Joudah. I bought the book in 2013 after attending a reading of the shortlisted poets for the Griffin Poetry Prize in… Continue reading Wood Carving by Ghassan Zaqtan
As I continue to hear and read about the horrifying mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the violence also in the West Bank, I again turn to art. Sometimes I ask myself what the use of art is. Then I think "use" isn't the word or meaning I'm searching for. It's more like , what's the point… Continue reading Art and News of War
Here is a poem I wrote in 2013 after a massive ice storm in Toronto. And a photo from the winter of 2017 at the Brickworks. Storm of ice A storm of icehas descended on uslasting over partsof three dayscoating branches and wiresbringing down the electricityacross the city.While the soft grey light remainsI sit writingthinking… Continue reading Storm of Ice
In order to preserve some scratchboard drawings I made in 2015 and 2016, this week I sent files of them off to be printed in a small experimental batch. I decided to print them as a set of postcards or small deck that I've named Unearthed. Here's the process that got me to this stage.… Continue reading Unearthed
The sky, it feels like freedom, like safety, like a reprieve from this hard time on earth, offering a different perspective that the birds know and inhabit, flying south to the lake in seconds, soaring and diving with grace. I imagine flying with the birds, unchained from fear and vertigo, into the dusk clouds as… Continue reading The Sky
This is the work I showed a detail of in my last post. It has gone through extreme changes and finally developed into this image that I am now going to stop working on and let be. In some ways it's an awkward piece and I felt it was trying to tell me something, so… Continue reading Raw
The heat wave has now broken, but we had hot and extremely hot weather in Toronto over the past while. During that time, I took to walking in the streets in the evening to listen to the cicadas and crickets. I discovered, to my surprise, that I was present to listening to the sounds of… Continue reading Threshold
Arts of May 