Renaissance – RobinCravey

All I can tell you is that I went through dislocations, international intrigue, misfortune, determination, friendship, relocation, and escape. Obstacles kept arising, and I kept stumbling over them, supported by loved ones.

When the surge of time became a flow again, I found myself here, in Rhode Island. I found some writers. We talk. We don’t really know each other yet, but I see possibilities.

These writers are putting on a public reading called Emergence. Local poets and other writers will read on the subject. I’ll be there. I’ll read.

As it happens, I have a poem that has been waiting quietly since 1979 for this moment. Forty years patient in the journal. Now it will emerge. I’ll have some printed folios for those who want one. Art added by Sean Haworth.

The reading will take place across the street from Blake’s Tavern, in front of a mural called Adventure Time. That’s Thursday, August 5, at 7 to 9 pm at Washington and Matthewson in Providence, Rhode Island.

This event is hosted by What Cheer Writers Club in partnership with The Avenue Concept and in collaboration with PVDFest. It was made possible by generous funding from the Providence Tourism Council.

Edited thanks to the Tilted Planet Editorial Board.

The manuscript is called My New World. It tells of a life-change. Change is the universal constant, yet we have a hard time figuring it out. This manuscript represents a few years of trying to figure it out.

You may remember that I was resuming work on the manuscript after some time rolling the rock up the hill.

I sat down and finished the manuscript in three days. It’s pretty much done. A couple of pages need to be redone, and a couple of pictures need to be touched up. I believe in substantial completion.

I think the next step is to look for a gallery that will show them. They’re meant to hang on the wall.

These are real-world only artifacts. They will not be published online. They contain feelings and photos that have meaning to me and to those who are close to me.

If I am able to schedule a showing, then I will print a catalog of the show, for those who attend and want them.

For the cover I chose an old woodcut from the nineteenth century, Flammarion. It’s anonymous. I have always loved it, because it portrays a man taking a look past the edge of this world to a larger world, an unfamiliar world. It seems to me a Renaissance concept, or Enlightenment. It also partakes of the spirit of Walt Whitman. We are creatures, sentient, in a cosmos.

I’m working at coloring it. The picture here shows my first attempt. I hope I will do better.