Will you be my jelly?

I am an immigrant, not a real member of the club. A pre-brexit interloper. 

I hail from a former fishing town in Denmark but for romantic reasons moved deep into the Yorkshire Dales in 2015. Apart from the insane (!!!) amount of rain and tragic lack of saltwater (I suspect I’m part Selkie/Kraken, if you ask the husband) I do love it here. Yorkshire humour is very Viking.

HOWEVER

Seeing as I am a grown axx woman making new friends and building up a network is not as easy as it was when I moved to Germany when I was 19. I already had friends ... Friends I loved more than life, back in Denmark. Over the last seven years I have slowly but steadily met women (mostly, a couple of men too) who I know over time will be to me what my oldest friends are. Funnily enough two of them are Danish. And it is not because they are Danish we are friends, but because they are incredible human beings. 

I have become the 'auntie' to five children, and the 'sister' to one. 'Seasister' to another. I am blessed. By wonderful human beings who have taken me into their lives and entered mine too. But I'm still an interloper. And that is ok. I get it.

Sometimes I get lonely and want to cuddle up with friends and my grown children in Denmark. Feel that complete hygge where trust is so ingrained in the relationship, no talking is needed.

But then I feel ungrateful... I should be super happy for what I have here. And I am. But I can't show up unannounced and just hang out. Maybe I am too old for that. Is that it? Or is it just a matter of cultural differences?

Anyways. A while ago I met a woman I instinctively knew I would love to be friends with. And I didn't quite know how to go about it. Plus I am 50. Basically I could die of old age any moment now (a quote from my best mate Bruce who I sadly lost during covid) So I needed to speed things up.

Hence the note

How do you make new friends?

Can I come to your house and just hang?

Am I being a fool?

Will you move to Denmark with me?

#oldashouses

#friendships

#femalefriendships

#love

#gratitude

#willyoubemyfriend

#hygge

#hygsomt

#immigrant 

#sussilouisesmith 

#theenglishare...

#yorkshire

#danishgirlinyorkshire

#writingcommunity 

#shewrites

The Bleeding

 

#thebleeding by @johanagustawsson 

Probably the best thriller I have read the last few years. Intensely addictive, complicated, appealing and surprisingly educative. Oh and with that glorious dark humour we have come to know and love from Johana.

We follow three different women in three different centuries each with their own agenda. Each agenda more relatable/and/MAD than the other... There is a fire in their bellies 🔥 and it is not ready to be tamed ... From the Belle Epoque in France to 21st-century Quebec we are eloquently bewitched and keep turning pages until dawn.

I cannot recommend this book enough. And it is a FABULOUS translation by #davidwarriner 

Now I live in Yorkshire I truly appreciate a man who can speak anything other than #yorkshire 🤣😂

If you're not afraid of losing sleep, like a grizzly story so well researched you can find no flaws that stop your reading flow, in a language that pulls you in... Buy this, get a signed one. . . Keep it. It is the start of a classic series. Bloody #dexter meets #agathachristie and has a threesome with @kelleyarmstrongauthor

and we're in the front row.

#buybleeding #readingisasuperpower #orendabooks #johanagustawsson

#crimewriter #crimefiction #crimenoir

Karen at @orendabooks has GOT to be proud. I know I am. Can't wait to see you @capitalcrime1

The Topography of Tears

 

I was carefully caressing old papers

The kinds we treasure

Hidden in a wooden box, tobacco, from when smoking was still a rite of passage

Slips, notes, cuttings, beauties of visceral import

At the time, and now.

Amongst them a photocopy, the cover of a book I never managed to own

‘The Topography of Tears’ RL Fisher

The paper, velvet from my hands

unfolding it, smoothing, shedding tears on it, coffee. Re-folded. 

A ritual of sorts 

Under a microscope, in my tears, I am sure you will find crisp palaces.

Lake District mountains, deep Swiss lakes, filigree Norfolk river runs

If my life was depicted in tears

would you see icy oceans?

Or the lukewarm duckpond Kristine weed in when she was three?

 

Tears. Single drops or

cascades running off the Jostedal Glacier? Peeled onion 

ugly-crying? That perfect laughter tear?

Mine are smoke sodden, from the burning of heathers on high up moors. 

Tears long, black. The 80ies mascara kind. Visible

anguish

Dirty plaits braiding, hungry for reshaping. Seas digging into lands, my

boundaries fluid  

Does the sea cry too? The eaten land, does it bay? Like I do, for you?

Do tears tear up?

The possibility of tears’ tears, breaks me and all I can think of

is you

Your last tears, what did they show?

How can I know when I didn’t make it to catch

your last breath, your final tear

I would have let it run on 

to my finger, tasted it. 

Maybe bottled it. Saving the contours of its landscapes for later, 

maybe never in

fear of craggity sharp, vile Sauron landscapes

 I cry for you, we all do. The glaciers, the seas, lands, me. All the cries.  

Salty flakes in burial crowns and serenades

 

I fold. In all the ways a woman can. Fold that velvet page too

Topography of Tears, back in the smokebox

#sussithepoet

#grief

Read more about Rose-Lynn Fisher here: Rose-Lynn Fisher

This poem was finished with the support from https://londonwriterssalon.com/ where I have been turning up at 8AM most days the last months.

'Seachanger - Wave Weaver’ exhibition, Ilkley Library, West Yorkshire

 

Photo: S.I.Witt

Ilkley Library presents: 

'Seachanger - Wave Weaver’ exhibition 

by Sussi Louise Smith.

April 4th - June 1st, 2022, meet the artist on Monday 11th at 4 pm for storytelling and introduction to the paintings.

In April 2022 Ilkley Library welcomes Danish artist and author Sussi Louise with her exhibition 'Seachanger - Wave Weaver'. The title is taken from her latest book of poems. Like the book, the exhibition is a marriage of words and pictures, some from her published poetry, others entirely new. It is inspired by Ilkley’s surrounding nature and the sea pounding inside her. 

Most of the paintings and poems were sketched while Sussi ‘safe-distance-walked’ the moors and straggled along the River Wharfe. These creative endeavours are an expression of Sussi’s ever-growing affection for her found home here in England. As she says: ‘To me, Ilkley has a unique vibe, a geographical calm which I find immensely inspiring. And Yorkshire people are just the best. What you see is what you get, I love that’ 

But as its title suggests, the exhibition is not just about land and life in and around Ilkley. It is also about the sea and the sights, sounds and smells of the oceans that surround any land. It is a fusion of themes that lock the land with the sea. As the award-winning author Carmen Marcus says of Sussi’s fusion:

 'The sea in this collection is no passive soma to life's challenges, it surges, submerges, rocks and grinds the soul just as it does with stones, remaking it smoother, stronger. You will emerge from this body of words changed, joyful, remade.’

Sussi is well known for her Scandi-noir humour, commitment to breast-cancer awareness, and straight-talking water-loving ways. She is also a proud ambassador of the research charity ‘Blue Mind’ and shares its dedication to promoting the healing powers of water in any setting. Her work integrates her love of the sea into art and writing. She paints in her trademark colourful naïvistic style and reviewers of her writing praise it for being fearless and to the point. As one critic observes: ‘Sussi is a true weaver of word magic, the kind that takes up space under your breastbone and reveals the wonder of the world around you.’. Her creativity reflects this theme: it is a synesthetic endeavour, and expression of her multi-sensory perception of the world, where colours and sounds (and sometimes smells) are experienced as words and shapes.

All Sussi’s art, whether in words or pictures, can be accessed using the hashtag #SussisHappyArtProject. Sussi exhibits across Denmark & Britain, and she uses this platform to create more awareness about the profound impact of art on quality of life and healing. And as she says: ‘There is always hope. And chocolate. Just a bit. Not enough for the sugar-police to track you down.’

We are very pleased to have Sussi Louise share her new work with us here in Ilkley Library.  

 

BIO: 

Sussi-Louise is Danish-born and bred. Her early life was spent close to and on the blue waters of the seas around the island of Sjælland. She now resides in Wharfedale and combines her enduring love of the ocean with the calm, tranquillity and rugged beauty of Yorkshire’s Dales and rivers. A career in Danish academia overlaps her work as a creative artist and writer, especially of poetry. Exhibitions of her work take place on both sides of the North Sea. Sussi’s arts express a unique fusion and imagery of the land and the surrounding seas, in words, pictures, emotions and people. The Danes love their salt and Sussi is a self-confessed salty-liquorice monster. The stuff is hard to come by, but luckily the community of Danes in the area help each other out. 

Instagram: Sussi.Louise

Twitter: SmithySuzy

Blog: www.livsmalerier.blogspot.dk

Wave Walker

 

🌊

First I wrote the sea, the blues in me

Then I wrote the longing, the dreams, my love. 

Wrote them in acrylic and inks

Aquamarine, whites and indigo

Then wrote in words. Seven words

Just seven in a whole hour

And I was happier than I've been for ages.

"Wave Walker, 

Licking horizons with every step"

Thank you all you wonderful humans who show up every morning at the #londonwritershour who write hundreds, sometimes thousands of words. Who stare, sometimes the whole hour, out of the window, or write your morning pages. Thank you for being there. Has made a massive difference. Thank you for that. In a world of so many wars and so much illness and suffering, hours like these are precious. 

To me, they are

I hope they are for you too.

I am happy with seven words and at least seven blues. #bluemind happy. Which is the BEST kind

Ok, wait...

Top three at least

Being in love with someone who's in love with you is a mountain climber of a happy

Also

Sex, Coffee, Chocolate and Salty Liquorice. Although, they can all be done by the sea. So, I guess ....

Anyways

Point is

#gratefulforyou

#happy @brenebrown pretty sure blue mind happy is a feeling ❤️♥️👌🏅🥳🥰😍

#gratitude

#theseathesea

#seatherapy

#waterhealing

#paintingwithsaltwater

#sussithepoet

#sussishappyartproject

#actionforhappiness 

#payitforward

#lovingsomeonewithcancer 

And #cancersucks but #loverocks

#MPNawareness #leukemia #PolycythemiaVera #breastcancerawareness #cancerawareness