The Travelling Professor
Kara Ghobhainn Smith is a Scottish-Canadian professor travelling and documenting her world through poetry. Follow her on @ghobhainn and at travellingprofessor.blogspot.com
lundi 14 octobre 2024
Dùthchas: Honouring
jeudi 10 octobre 2024
Dùthchas: The Bridge
Dùthchas is a series about learning from the land. I have been reflecting on the daily lessons placed in front of us, each day, in the very environment in which we live, work and worry.
At the bottom of the croft where I live on Lewis, there is a land bridge. You can only really see this bridge at low tide. At high tide, it looks like the land is completely separate, independent from the wee island in the middle of Loch Erisort. Occasionally, sheep will wander across at low tide, grazing on seaweed and continually looking for that better bit of green grass. When the tidal waters return, they cover the connection and trap the sheep on the wee isle, but the sheep aren't worried. They know there is solid land under the water, and that if they only lay down and wait, with time, they will cross back again.
The waters - like the politics, conflicts and gossip that we are flooded with daily - segregate us. Underneath, we are one. We are all human. We all live on the same underlying bit of land. If we remain in high tide, in a state of turmoil, we will never see the solid ground beneath our feet. Conflict requires time. Time to reflect, wait, and reconnect to the whole that we are.
This land bridge is a reminder to me today: to reconnect, to reflect on what makes me whole beneath the moving waters.
samedi 25 novembre 2023
Top 20 Strong-inspiring Films for Womyn
Top 20 Strong-inspiring Films for Womyn
'I’m handing in this apron of silence, so
dimanche 16 juillet 2023
I sit and watch
soft silent breathing, and creamy newborn smell.
Relaxed into his onesie cuddle.
Breath up and down, up and down
All the world ahead.
All the world a wonder.
All the world critical, skeptical.
mercredi 5 juillet 2023
Learning to Belong by educator Anita Toronyi
⛺'I assembled my acculturation tent as a migrant by securing it in 4 places:
1. Getting out of my comfort zone – embracing the new language, culture, and customs through assimilation & tremendous resilience.2. Seeking out mentors in each place - strong mother figures were my anchor.
3. Participating in all social settings open to me as a newcomer.
4. Accepting my new identity -the new me in this society- as a growing part of my multiplicity.'
mardi 17 janvier 2023
Look Below, 2023
👁️ Look Below 👁️
For artist Leonard Jubenville, on the occasion of his life’s retrospective exhibition, ‘What Lies Beneath’, Thames Art Gallery (January, 2023).
Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full.
Absorbed beneath the visible, sheen of this evolving floe
Genesis of new life, labouring dark and birthing light.
Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full.
A river bank, a complex womb, forging, feeding
through the opaque gloom.
Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full.
Beneath green pears, lie limpid brown; ripening fruit and Summer’s down.
Sun-dried laundry covers warm, moist soap scented of the foundry’s mint.
Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full.
Fall leaves foster fresh new shoots - amaryllis, gladioli
and velvet suits.
Across the furrowed fields evolve, the living gestating resolve.
Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full.
Seams left on a marble snowscape, guide us to our Winter’s feed.
As it is, beneath the surface, in all dark patches of our sphere –
everything important lies below the toiling gloss of rich and full.
mercredi 9 novembre 2022
In painting, 'it's the spaces in between that create the picture.'
Years ago, our Erieau neighbour, painter Carol Bowman described her process with water colours. She said:
‘It’s not the objects that are important; it’s the spaces in between that create the picture. You spend your time in the spaces.’
This has always stuck with me. So much of life is the space between.In literary criticism and intersectionality we are told to, ‘Pay attention to what is not there.’ What has been left out?
samedi 9 avril 2022
3 Leadership Lessons from Canal Boating
Three Leadership Lessons Learned from Boating the Oxford Canal 🛥️
1. The front always leads; but it is the stern, where you originate from, that will secure your ship to shore.
2. Work ahead while waiting. This will ensure a smooth transition through locks and changing waters.
3. Work with the natural rhythms of the weather: Pause when it is stormy; Sail as much as you can when the energy of the sun is shining.
mardi 29 mars 2022
50 Words: Lon Dubh (Scottish Book Trust)
[Image: Chatham-Kent artist Tracy Root's painting, 'Solitude of Silence' 2021]