Fixing life by drawing

This poem that appeared in Saturday 2nd May Guardian makes me want to find a Chinese bowl and some persimmons to draw. The message is so in keeping with the attitude I have about drawing as a way of fixing something... similar to what my friend Jeni Smith says about keeping a journal. What do you think?

Persimmons

(for Tom)

you must've


loved
those three globes of gorgeous orange


dense and glowing in our winter kitchen


enough


to put coloured-pencil and biro to the


reddest page left in your rainbow sketchbook


and make this drawing of


three persimmons in that Chinese bowl.

the supermarket flagged them up as


this season's sharon fruit


but we prefer persimmon (for


didn't it seem the rose of


their other name


would neither taste or sound as sweet,


would be a fruit of quite


another colour?)

such strange fruit ... we bit and ate,


enjoyed.


before we did you drew them.


- oh you'd say so what ?


(drawing, to you, is as everyday as apples)


but I know


they'd have come and gone like Christmas


if you'd not put them down


and made them worth more than the paper


they're inscibed on - see


those deft strokes of


aquamarine and white that


make our table-top lie flat, the fruits


plump out real and round and 


perfectly persimmon-coloured


upon their lilac shadows in the bowl's deep-


still life


still life, sweetheart,
in what's already eaten and done with.

now, looking, I can taste again.


Liz Lochhead

In terms of drawing I haven't made enough space to do it regularly (again). Last night I was particularly tired but caught a glimpse of these three swans that my mother (rather tongue in cheek) collected for me because I wanted to bring an object back with me from my trip that I took there - to celebrate/commemorate/remind me. Swans are what I observed most, so it seemed to be the obvious reminder.

I include the sketch as an invitation to everyone to send us more examples of what you are creating. It is the sort of thing I would probably tear out of my sketch book so I wouldn't have to look at it any more... but something is better than nothing and who knows where it will lead?