You may know that in addition to my artwork I also write poetry (posted on my blog Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That?). For the next several months I will be posting here a combined art/poetry project, Large Artist Sketchbook 2020.
I fill up sketchbooks with all kinds of art. Some contain images only and some of them I use the images as inspiration for poetry. In these books the image is on one page of the spread and the poetry on the other. This book is set up in this manner.
I’ll show you the image and then add the poem that goes with it. See what you think.
This is the last entry in this book. You’ve seen it all. Thank you for following along through all the months of poems and images.
For Our Safety
Well, you who
have come to my door
and for what
aim? What end?
What do you say? Is it safe
to greet you to smile
to ask you
to come inside? No.
I must not
and yet I
loathe the hostile aloofness
I sham. Forgive me.
Large Artist Sketchbook 2020 image 31
shadorma chain
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
Your poem captures that sense of home feeling like sanctuary and that we are made vulnerable when people puncture that space.
Yes. We have doors instead of just doorways for a reason. SOmething has to regulate how and where the world outside intersects with our own.
Sometimes it’s best not to open that door. (K)
Yes. Simply just yes. And grateful to have that door.
Hostile aloofness! Wow that hit me kind of viscerally. Amazing poem and amazing images in your piece that capture the feelings evoked from the poem!
Thank you. Sometimes I feel like I have to have this hostile aloofness just to survive dealing with whatever comes to the door (literally) and in general life and existence. And I am sad to feel this way.
That is true and great insight and it’s too bad it’s like that…
Hope you will start a new sketchbook of artworks and poems. I have really enjoyed the series. Thank you.
Thank you. I am always in the midst of a sketchbook (often more than one) and I know I will be posting a new one after this, but it is pictures only, I didn’t do any poetry for it (I did art on both sides of the pages). I find these books allow me to just make art, let my feelings out, whatever. I have a good supply of blank books ready for the future!