structured creativity

Looks like the trinity poster is striking again!  Perfect timing to be kicking off the first day of my February break too.  After watching some TED talks and reading some posts about schools killing creativity I remembered a poem and had written last year after an educational psychology class.  Basically it was based about some ideas put forth by Whitehead and my own experiences related to this ideas in my own ventures in my photography and writing and while they started off purely instinctual with the help of some structure I was able to raise the creativity to a whole new level!

Whitehead’s Theory

for Darren, Baylee and Lauren

Trading free time

    for time tables

and passion

for precsion

sometimes it takes

structured instruction

to expand beyond

instinctive creativity

It's a book alright...

One thing I am surprised I never got around to blogging here is the fact that I did indeed collect some of my favourite poems and self published them as a book - Bits from the Boldt - which can be found here: Bits from the Boldt by Jeff Burton.

It was a pretty fun process and ended up getting a lot more attention then I had expected.  The local paper did an interview with me, I also had an interview with On Campus News from the University of Saskatchewan (I look terrible in the picture) and was asked to be part of the Pelican Bay Arts Collective arts festival as one of three authors in an event.  This last one was amazing; not only was it my first public reading, it also served as a launch for the book and I got to read alongside a writer who inspires me and helped me in my writing process - Allan Safarik who had some amazingly wonderful things to say about me.  Add to all of this the fact that people actually bought copies of my book!  I really made the book more as a personal thing to have a collected book of my poems on my shelf but the fact that other people actually were willing to pay for it as well blew my mind!

So here we are a few years later and I have another book brewing.  I am planning it to be released alongside a showing of my photography in the local museum later this year.  This blog post came out of the fact that I have been looking at my stuff to start organizing this new book and figured it was as good a reason to post as any lol!

This is the cover for my new book coming out later this year!

Oh yea...on the geek side of my life - Toy Fair is only days away!! SO excited to see whats being pitched for Minimates!

From the ashes

Wow, I have not posted here in a long time and oddly enough was not sure I ever would again.  Not that I don't want to but just I am pretty busy with life - school, family, hobbies and all that.  But inspiration has been building and coming form odd and unusual places.  One big part is that fact that I now have 2 other blogs on the go - one devoted to Minimates (which has been going for 399 days consecutively as of today) and then my teacher blog.  So did I really need to resurrect my first blog and make it a trio?  Well things in my life seem to run in threes (triplets I swear) so it really only makes sense to bring it back.  This will be the home of thoughts and ideas that just don't fit those other two blogs as well as, of course, poetry.  Enjoy!

Inspiration

It started in the littlest toe

and slowly sweeps

into the others

rolling through the

foot and up the legs

gaining speed

and intensity

as it steamrolls

through the abdomen

it thunders across

the heart

and rockets up the arms

until the fireball

of brilliance

collides with the mind

unleashing a magical torrent

of ideas

MMMM turkey day

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone for another year. Tasty food, both the traditional but often forgotten lasagna as well as the other traditional turkey, and an overall nice weekend. Got Kye's 'broken' room all cleared out of clutter anyways, and it was good timing too as it is raining and still leaking...no band-aid is gonna hold this one, its gonna need real repairs much to everyone's displeasure. I've had some good inspiration for paintings lately so I am gonna get at those quick too. Today is my homework morning, Kye and the ladies have school and Melinda has taken beanie with her to go grocery shopping. I am torn on which direction to go though, I have some typing to do and some painting to do...maybe I'll do both, a little of each! Anyways here is the new poem, as always comments are greatly appreciated!!

Poetry

thoughts half finished

ideas half formed

scribbled down

at a moments notice

some make sense

some are barely

coherent

the pen is my

Isis

searching the shores

of my brain

for the fragments of poems,

her Osiris

well almost another one in a week!

Well I didn't quite get this one in under the week wire but its still progress! I have been busy - as always - and have my first math test on Thursday. Not really looking forward to that but hopefully some more studying will help those nerves. On the geek side I got the Iron Man dvd and watched that, it was definatly as good as it was in the theater - now to just wait out the chance to get the minimates from it - very excited about those!! Anyways todays poem goes along the lines of the upcoming exam. Enjoy!

What You Don’t Know

Exam

the clock ticks

the time has come

blank sheets of paper

sit before you

The sheaf of

interrogation

is passed out

and the pen

is hoisted

in shaky hand

As the pen flies

frantically

from

line

to

line

you begin to realize

this test

expresses more

of what you don’t know

2 in under a week!

Hah! I sneak in under the wire of a week between posts....that actually makes me quite happy - it is a positive step to making this a regular habit!

Schools going great, just need to make more time for homework...feeling very painting and writing inspired so gotta nurture that one. We did some shuffling in our house this week, mostly temporary things but it feels kinda nice to do it too.

Well not much to say as I am eager to get onto the meat of the subject, a poem I wrote tonight so its making the rounds here first! DAMMIT - I just previewed this and it will not keep the format i typed it out in, that is frustrating!!


the saliva
drips
slowly
dangling from the edge
of its teeth
long and razor
sharp
a mouth full of them
with no other job
then ripping flesh
to shreds
its yellow eyes
gleaming in the
bright
white
moonlight
the breeze shifts
and the fur
bristles
on the back of its neck
and it tilts its
head upwards
sniffing the air
muscles tense
and it runs off
after the scent of food
to satisfy the bloodlust
that consumes it
once a month
releasing the beast
with in the man.

Its been a long time...

wow I really have to get my butt in gear on here if I want to keep this going! I have reorganized my poems so that should help. I have a ever going stack of them so updating should be more regular I just need to not be lazy about it! Lets see where to start. Summer flew by, the Kids camp rocked!! I miss it so much, which is a good thing. I am back at school, Kye is in kindergarten 2 days a week and the ladies are in pre-K Mon-Thurs mornings. It has been an adjustment but everything is going well. Miss a is getting some more teeth and her eye infection is kinda getting better but has also spread to her other eye...she is on the list to see a specialist about it, I wont try to spell the right name for it lol. The San Diego comic con came and had a flurry of cool minimate news, and more good stuff since then. My package with the exclusives and giveaways is on its way to me - very pumped to see those ones up close! Man I have slacked on this so much I dont know where and what to say for life updates. I guess I'll just leave things at that and head right to the meat of my post with todays poem!

Masterpiece

The hum of the motor
buzzing fills the air
revolutions so fast that it’s barely noticeable
yet the sound is unavoidable

This leads into the sensation
scraping
scratching
across the skin
as a line is drawn

The needle dances
as the motor buzzes
and pigment floods the skin
as a masterpiece is created
of flesh and ink