Brita Granström: a small fleeting moment, the wide blue sea

September 27, 2022August 21, 2024 ~ jama ~ 11 Comments

I had to catch my breath the first time I saw Brita Granström’s, “Tea for Two”: the soft light at the window framed by gauzy blue curtains, the expectant posture of the woman looking outside, the gorgeous blue tea set. Love how she captured the ethereal beauty of a fleeting moment in time.

Living and working between the UK and her native Sweden, Brita is a fine arts painter as well as an award winning children’s book illustrator (most notably in collaboration with her husband Mick Manning).

No surprise – I’m totally enamored of her interiors, which depict people engaged in domestic tasks – arranging flowers, cutting rhubarb, rolling out pastry dough, cutting apples, relaxing with a crossword puzzle. Her “soft focus” approach gives her pictures a dreamy, haunting quality that pulls us into her visual narratives. We are witnessing ‘life as it happens.’

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cultivating ideas with a blue spade

June 11, 2021August 21, 2024 ~ jama ~ 22 Comments

“The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

All Aboard!

Let’s take a little trip.

THE BLUE GARDEN
by Helen Dunmore

'Doesn't it look peaceful?' someone said
as our train halted on the embankment
and there was nothing to do but stare
at the blue garden.

Blue roses slowly opened,
blue apples glistened
beneath the spreading peacock of leaves.

The fountain spat jets of pure Prussian
the decking was made with fingers of midnight
the grass was as blue as Kentucky.

Even the children playing
in their ultramarine paddling pool
were touched by a cobalt Midas

who had changed their skin
from the warm colours of earth
to the azure of heaven.  

'Don't they look happy?' someone said,
as the train manager apologised
for the inconvenience caused to our journey,

and yes, they looked happy.
Didn't we wish we were in the blue garden
soaked in the spray of the hose-snake,

didn't we wish we could dig in the indigo earth
for sky-coloured potatoes.
didn't we wish our journey was over

and we were free to race down the embankment
and be caught up in the blue, like those children
who shrank to dots of cerulean
as our train got going.

~ from Glad of These Times (Bloodaxe, 2014)

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embracing the blueness

February 5, 2021May 4, 2025 ~ jama ~ 51 Comments

So, one day not too long ago, I was minding my own business when dear writer friend Jessica Swaim sent me the following Brian Doyle prose poem. Does she know me, or what?

*from The Blue Whale by Jenni Desmond (2015)*

THE BLUE ROOM
by Brian Doyle

I was in a library in Utah the other night when
A small boy asked me to help him find a book.
The boy was perhaps four years old and intent.
I said what book would you like, little brother?
And he said, 'One with blue in it. A lot of blues.
One I can smell the blue. I love that blue. Mom
Says people can like other colors too, but why?
Is there a shelf for blue books? If lots of people
Read the book does the blue wear out? Is there
A blue bank where you have to get a new blue?'
You know, many times I have sighed that I am
Not able to help people who ask me for advice,
Or directions, or counsel about this or that. But
I don't think I ever wanted so much to say, hey,
Little brother, come with me to the room where
All the books are so blue that you have to laugh
At the seethe and soar of it; books about oceans
And herons and jays and the sky and Vida Blue,
Books about how blue used to be and might yet
Become, books brimming with azure and cobalt
And cornflower and iris and periwinkle and teal,
Books so blue that you dream in blue for days . . .

~ from How the Light Gets In: And Other Headlong
 Epiphanies (Orbis Books, 2015).

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happy blue day, america!

November 7, 2020August 21, 2024 ~ jama ~ 33 Comments

Hooray Hooray Hooray!

For the past four years, we thought, dreamed, and believed in blue. This week, after we voted for blue, it finally came through.

Congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for prevailing in a historic election.

What a relief (maybe we’ll be able to sleep at night again?)!

And now, chocolate chip ice cream for everyone!

[review + recipe] I’m Feeling Blue, Too! by Marjorie Maddox and Philip Huber

October 9, 2020August 21, 2024 ~ jama ~ 58 Comments

Look! Just what we all need: a new BLUE book!

Yep, this one’s got my name written all over it, and I simply had to share it with you today.

Safe to say, most, if not all of us — young, old, somewhere in-between — have a crazy-making case of the pandemic blues. It may come and go, but some dark shade of it always seems to linger in the back of our minds. Or maybe we just have the blahs, feel bored or uninspired (confinement can do that to you). No better time to banish the ho-hums and embrace the unique power, beauty, and wonder of blue. 🙂

In I’m Feeling Blue, Too!, a poetry picture book written by Marjorie Maddox and illustrated by Philip Huber (Resource Publications, 2020), a young boy celebrates the essence of blue, discovering its presence in the world around and within him.

A sequence of 13 poems drives the narrative, which takes place on a summer’s day from morning to night. The opening poem is a wake-up call for all: