Island poet branches out into paintings

She has also work published in Wavelengths, a Channel Islands anthology of poetry that she put together with co-editor and publisher Alastair Best. Most recently she has just released her new poetry collection, Familiars, which was launched in January.

But over the last year Linda Rose has also branched out into a new form of expression – as an artist. In her paintings, Linda Rose has explored the themes of the human and animal connection in large scale works that feature bright and bold colours in an almost naive and abstract style.

‘I started painting a year ago and it’s interesting because I don’t yet know how this is going to play out at all. It is a natural relationship because I often respond to a visual image. I might see a seagull in the rose garden, or in the park and that could spark a poem, but it can also spark a painting now.

‘It comes of the need to be making – that’s when I feel best, when I’m busy and involved in the creative process.

‘This gives me another form of expression. It’s impossible to say whether I’m painting instead of writing, but I don’t think so. It’s just I think that my relationship with writing has changed. In my apprentice years I was very strict because I had to be,’ said Linda Rose.

‘I had to really streamline work because I had very limited hours. I was teaching a lot and had two young children, so I had to really be very disciplined with the time available,’ said Linda Rose, who was born and grew up in the Island and knew that she wanted to write from the age of six.

‘It was one thing I was good at!’ said Linda Rose who left to study English and American literature at the University of East Anglia where she went on to do an MA in creative writing with Malcolm Bradbury.

After university she had a number of jobs, while trying to write at the same time, but it was when she married and moved to Germany and began teaching English, that she found the discipline and time to write regularly.

‘I first started writing on a daily basis when I was living in Germany. I think in that early work I kept journeying home in my head, because I was very homesick. I was looking for my own voice and I had to return to my roots to do that.

‘As my experience grew – living abroad, having children – then my themes expanded emotionally and intellectually. When you’re living outside your comfort zone, you’re more of an observer, but still trying to find what the connection is between the experience and yourself. It was good in many ways. Freelance teaching was great really, but jolly hard work. And both the kids were born there, Esther (32) is a musician and Samuel (29) is studying film and is in Istanbul at the moment.

‘My kids are very much citizens of the world. Esther about to study music therapy and I collaborated with her on her album called The Other Country and co-wrote quite a few of the songs. I also wrote the script for my son, Samuel Heinrichs’ short film Changing Light Of Seasons, which won the Branchage cinematography award last year.’

During the 18 years of living in Germany, Linda Rose had numerous works published in German magazines and anthologies, but eventually she returned to Jersey in 1995, six years after her marriage ended. ‘I headed back to Jersey because work was landing in my lap. I was already teaching here in the summer at a language school and then at Highlands,’ said Linda Rose who went on to run writing and poetry workshops at the Jersey Arts Centre around 1998.

‘Now I don’t have the teaching load, and only do the teaching that I want to do. And I don’t have young children so the time is much more my own,’ said Linda Rose, who since her return married environmentalist Mike Freeman, whose connection with nature and ecology drew them together. This extra free time has meant she has been able to turn her attention to painting and the recent release of Familiars, the title of her latest collection of poems, which can be interpreted in a number of ways.

‘Familiars comes from that mysterious connection that I feel, but a friend also said to me that anyone who knows your work will feel ‘familiars’ means ‘unfamiliar’ and that it’s a challenge, a provocation,’ said Linda Rose.

‘There are a lot of creatures in this collection, but I think that’s quite a common strand, certainly between Night Horses and this book. I think they’re even stronger there and I think for me, there’s some imaginative challenge about entering into, not just the human animal, but the animal animal, said Linda Rose, who is a vegetarian.

‘I think there’s a desire on my part to put a lot of power back into the creature because I feel we’re exploiting everything on our planet. And while the British perhaps are sentimental about pets and animals, there is terrible stuff going on. I have friends who are animal campaigners, so I think there’s a desire to reinstate that sense of the animal. In terms of the ancient gods animals are shape shifters and they can appear in your life at any moment.

‘I think there’s a strong element of that – an animal for me is not just a pet or something pleasing – I have a real fascination and a real connection,’ she said.

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