Date Archives February 2016

Killing the Last Chicken in the Yard

Dedicated to we few, we crazy few, we band of poets For the first five years of the 1970s I was an inhabitant of two worlds: suburban Mountain Brook, Alabama (one of the richest cities per capita in the country) and Southside, in downtown Birmingham, the “arty” part of town where there were record stores… Read More

The Mattress Show

Some years ago I had a studio in the old Cobb Lane building on Southside in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, up on the third floor. I had been there for two years and would have stayed longer but one day I came up all those stairs and opened the door to my studio and there was… Read More

Being a Realist

February 1 – oops, it’s February 2 I thought I had gone to bed so I could be rested for work tomorrow (“work” being finishing a watercolour of a blue bearded Iris), but I have to take tamoxifen every night because of a bout with breast cancer two and a half years ago and if… Read More

Supernatural

I wish I could say I was reading something complex and perhaps in French but instead I am reading Collected Ghost Stories by M.R. James. I love ghost stories and am always in search of a new one – but it is neglected genre, probably because it is hard to write. My favorites are The… Read More