Briana McCarthy

Poetry by L.E. Bowman: The Evolution of a Girl 

L.E. Bowman’s writing is raw and honest: it feels fearless. It’s how I feel when making visual artwork but not always when I write: I want to write bravely. I’ve dabbled in it, thus far. I try to be honest and have started to recognize when I am still trying to hide in the writing. Often, the hiding happens behind rhyme schemes. There is something in solving the word puzzle to make a rhyme and say the thing I want to that produces a particular satisfaction but saps the emotion out of it. The writing becomes more practical and about clever word use rather than emotion. I enjoy making rhymes, but mine lack the weight of feeling. Releasing myself from the rhyming structure, the words began to emote again, though I began wondering if that was allowed: was it valid to follow your own internal thought rhythm and call it poetry? I hadn’t read much poetry prior to the MA course. If I had, I think the answer to that question would have been obvious. I have read a fair amount of poetry this year, and sometimes it is difficult and I can’t find the beat, but Bowman’s rhythm feels familiar, which helps me believe the validity of my own: her words have allowed me to be freer.

Below are some poems from L.E. Bowman’s The Evolution of a Girl. I have almost every page of the book tagged, so it was difficult to narrow down what to share, but these are a few, of many, that strike me deeply.

Bowman, L.E. (2019) The evolution of a girl. Burbank, CA: Black Castle Media Group.

The Bleeding Tree by Hollie Starling and Evolving Context

This book has been with me since Unit 1. It was a catalyst for multiple artworks such as Unit 1’s 8 Day Vigil: 9 years, 37 years, 70 years, context here, and Unit 2’s How Monstrous if I Healed. 

How Monstrous if I Healed was inspired by a passage in the book wherein Starling equates the feelings of grief and loss to that of losing a limb (Starling, 2023). The passage describes the tradition of a community in Fiji that required the amputation of a finger when a leader passed (Starling, 2023). I discuss that particular passage in detail as a Unit 2 context, but I revisit it here because How Monstrous if I Healed birthed the severed finger as a symbol that continues through my glass pieces at present.

The Bleeding Tree has had a cascading influence on my practice: one work heavily influenced per unit, until Unit 3, where the severed glass finger rules the day. Only one artwork from Unit 3 doesn’t feature the severed finger design and every glass work does. The more work I make, the more the symbol becomes my own, but its origins will always be with The Bleeding Tree.

Starling, H. (2023) The bleeding tree: a pathway through grief guided by forests, folk tales and the ritual year. London: Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.