I found this again when I was looking through my desk for something else. A friend had given it to me a while ago. I loved it then and today when I re-read it, it made me cry. Again. Because it's just so as it is.

Your children cut their hands on glass
by reaching through the mirror
where the beloved one was hiding.

You weren’t expecting this:
you thought they wanted happiness,
not laceration.

You thought the happiness
would appear simply, without effort
or any kind of work,

like a bird call
or a pathside flower
or a school of silvery fish

but now they’ve cut themselves
on love, and cry in secret,
and your own hands go numb

because there’s nothing you can do,
because you didn’t tell them not to
because you didn’t think

you needed to
and now there’s all this broken glass
and your children stand red-handed

still clutching at moons and echoes
and emptiness and shadow,
the way you did.

-Margaret Atwood, Your Children Cut Their Hands … 
Thank you allpoetryaside and One Day, One Room what a beautiful tumblr blog this is - great music and the rest...

Angell Trio Butterfly programme

Finished!!
(Phew)

Angell Trio invitation finished

One done - just the programme to go now...

Thank you brilliant Mrs Brown, for such a lovely review of A Possum's Tail...

mrs brown's books

Such a wonderful review of A Possum's Tail in Living South Resident magazine!

Living South Resident magazine - March 2014 issue

and a lovely review in Angels&Urchins - although why on earth did they get my Okido status quite so extremely wrong…? Cringing - nothing to do with me, honest Sophie/Rachel. Luckily it's only tiny. I mean the review. A tiny little review in a large sea of reviews…

And hey, Alex's bit is great…

Just buy the d**n book.

Angels & Urchins parenting magazine - March 2014 issue

Motif for The Angell Trio concert programme

Working on the latest commission - another invitation for the Angell Trio. We have this gorgeous butterfly in a box at home that's now of course become some sort of 'homage' to Damien Hirst...
Oh my, does he own ©butterflies now, too?

What a clever man he is...

So it all went well yesterday at the bookshop!

And the rest of life crowds in once again…

I can't stop thinking about the impossibility of finding - or offering - comfort after a terrible loss. I don't know what to do with such grief, the overwhelming void of grief that remains when all the crowds of friends and supporters have gone back to their own lives. Because we're on the outside and this grief is too frightening and doesn't belong to us, and of course, we fear it.
But the impotent sadness it engenders can be quite overwhelming.

how are you doing?

It feels impossible to ask; "how are you doing?"
when I know that a fragment of something intangible
has lodged in your soul
opening an inviolable wound.

I see that you now live in a perception of what it really is
to be (or not to be) here on this heavy earth,
because that other place has slipped through
and with invisible hands
stolen the beat of your life
leaving the taste of 4am in each moment.

With a hazy forgetfulness you awake rapt
and are destroyed every single morning.
Sometimes the soft drum of remembrance fades in slowly,
sometimes it strikes like a knife on bone.

And I cannot even ask; "how are you doing?"
because I do imagine the answer and I cannot touch that pain
because it is yours alone
and too private.

What did I expect and what good does it do anyway
when all you really want is life as it once was,
with him returned.
The smell of him, the breath of him
his whole self; solid, warm
held and loved entirely.

GD February 2014

We've been awarded the Urban Explorer "Badge of Honour"!

 

A Possum's Tail storytelling session at Tales on Moon Lane bookshop rolls in at number ONE in the Urban Explorer TOP TEN!!

Here's the poster - see you there!

Here's to courage, strength and hope.

Here's to love, embracing the faltering in warm arms

and never letting go.

Nothing but the here and nowness of you matters;

tides persist, skies heave and sway

and the damp earth nurtures.

Still, the smell of you feeds me, my soul's small self. 

I cannot breathe with joy!

Here's to everyday miracles.

© Gabby Dawnay

It's National Library Day!

Here's my poem celebrating the…

Legend of the Library

In the stillness and hush of the carpeted room 

In the space between Magic and Rhyme, 

By the window that lends a warm light to the gloom 

Sits a child who’s forgotten the time… 

With her head in a book and her heart in a land 

That is made up of legends and spells, 

She is holding a world in the palm of her hand 

And absorbs every tale that it tells… 

Many wonders reside on the pages of books 

Resting quietly, tucked up in bed 

As they sit on the shelves and collect in the nooks 

Waiting each to be picked out and read.  

Because here in the silence of library life, 

In the rustle of books and their kind, 

You will find that the pen is a mightier knife 

And that power lies all in the mind. 

© Gabby Dawnay 

Written for Cityread London 2013

Take a look at this fabulous website we have a little "interview feature" on:

LOOK/BOOK

It's a very cool and stylish blog 'reporting on the visual art of children's books'

LOOK/BOOK

IT'S HERE, IT'S HERE!!

I am so proud.

Alex, you're brilliant!

We did good.

OUR COMING EVENT AT TALES FOR...

...A POSSUM'S TAIL!

There will be storytelling, drawing, paper-cutting and BALLOONS!!!!!