Here is my blog: ColourCirclesite

I wrote a play recently and it premiered at a Zoom event at the end of November. It’s called ‘Sea Too’ and it’s about my moving up here, then the lockdown, and it’s also an eco-play. Here is my write-up on the performance ‘Sea Too’.

Here are some assemblages I do outside, with shells:

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Here’s an amazing seaweed I found on the beach just near me, and a sheep eating on Embleton High Common.

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And then I also have a little film. maybe this is quite funny because it is about some form of modelling: – shadow posing by the (sea)wall.

Here are 3 poems I wrote in the summer – ‘Run Riot‘, ‘Up Down, Side‘, and ‘Out of Light‘. The first poem is an Earth poem, the second one slightly about the lockdown, and the third one about drawing, and tracing outlines, so that’s the most painting related!

Run Riot
Earth looked deep, densely layered
in the river, by which I sat
the land had been quite arid,
horrid at times, and reaching here
turned out to be a destination
not just a place to pass through
 
metamorphic rock rages in the torrent
touching the senses, I must write
feeling metaphors and memories 
mingling in the ages, raging by
past me, unfolding my past here
unsettling a place unsurpassed
 
I hadn’t noticed how I stagnated
now at last I can pass, the threshold 
is open, the river is ripe, I overflow
going insane in the course of it
but it has to this way, this path, this 
is an initiation of sorts, or a riot
 
out of concrete, outside of
view, with hindsight, you say
you had guessed it, but had we
really known, really been here
at all, isn’t it all new now, as
is each moment, a river running.

© Ursula Troche, 7.2020

Up, down, side
 
Once there was a different world 
upon a string of memories, lived 
within, now gone. into the outer 
reaches of reality. A sideline to a 
centre now shifted and dropped.
 
Out of use, order, or further beyond 
functioning, now it doesn’t work 
like this any more. What might 
have been a dream then is normal 
now, and vice versa. 
 
The way we live has turned upside under 
and downright different. We wanted a change 
but we didn’t see the direction, or its dimensions 
coming. You drove the car and took the train. 
We kept meeting in the middle. 
 
Stopping at nothing but emptiness. 
As if that’s the only thing we wanted.
In there was the rust and the dust, 
the reality and the dream.
And we turned them over and over again.
                                                                                    © Ursula Troche, 8.2020

Out of Light
 
Take a line and connect it to itself. 
Then let that circle be unspoken. 
Speak of other things, 
not how you made this space for yourself. 
 
I let moments pass, in an experiment on patience.
I went to sit on my desk looking 
deliriously out of the window behind it. 
The sky transformed beyond my eyes 
from cloudy to glowing. Colours emerged, 
a spectrum. Then a prism, a rainbow, 
aftermath of the rain. The play, 
then the display, and even the discourse 
of the colours prompted me to run 
downstairs and go out. I wanted to be 
closer to the show, I wanted to see 
the picture bigger, larger, everywhere. 
I brought my notebook with me, to 
take notes from the sky on location, 
out of doors, out of the house.
And there it was, big circle in the sky,
filled out with sun. This one had never been 
a line, its space is primal. Lit, too. I wrote
in my lined notebook, on the blank page 
not filled yet. Underneath my note I drew 
the circle of the sun. But I couldn’t fill 
the light in. I just couldn’t. Don’t mention it.
                                                                                    © Ursula Troche, 8..2020