This week, you’ll hear wonderful poems by our community poets, and you’ll “meet” a 19th century Irish poet whose two poems give us both our SPARK and DARE. If you'd like to participate, please send me your poems (1-7: your choice) in the body of your email (no attachments, please!), to kate@katechadbourne.com by Sunday, April [...]
It's happening - and YOU'RE INVITED. You'll find all the info on how to participate and our wonderful prizes in this video. I would love to have you with us! https://youtu.be/3LWedfHRaMs
Just a quick word of encouragement from a "found" poem, discovered in a sheaf of papers recently. Can I just say again: I love my students. I feel so lucky to teach them. And I feel lucky that every day I sit at the piano and help someone to sing or play the piano or [...]
Sometimes, a visitor to my home notices the mermaid-blue typewriter or the record player or the crowd of ink bottles and fountain pens on my desk. From time to time, one of them asks why I have these things in a tone that suggests I may be keeping a zebra in the bathtub or a [...]
Sometimes in my morning writing, I ask questions of “Wise Kate” – that part of me that knows more than I do at present. Today, I asked her: “What do you believe about pleasure?” Here’s what she said: +That it’s as necessary as air and water to life, and more than that – to [...]
Do you know what Bards do? They learn stuff - demonstrable, actionable things that can be shared on the spot. Sing a song? Check. Recite a poem? Got it. Tell us a tale? Gladly! This picture shows the evolving repertoire of one of my dearest and most long-standing Bardic Academy students. At present she knows [...]
I’ve been a whirlwind of fruitful work this year. It has been exhilarating and sometimes tiring but always, always worth it. I feel I’m using my gifts and I’m helping. I love my students and my days are about my favorite things: songs, stories, poems, and enchantment. What could be better? And yet, I’ve also [...]
Yesterday I finished listening to the BBC podcast, “The New Gurus” – or rather, almost finished listening because when the host began to cover things I’d rather not think about, I turned it off. Same with a book I began reading recently. About twenty pages in, I set it down. “Nope,” I thought. “Three hundred [...]
I'm very inspired by the idea of the "thought store"* and on a grumpy, anxious day recently, wrote this little piece in my journal and changed my whole day: I closed my eyes and entered The Thought Store. I carried my needless anxiety - a black garment with scratchy lace - and marched up [...]
Have you noticed that people who have ruled out all possibility of magic are a bit… depressed? And even, dare I say it – depressing? Please note that I didn’t say, “People who don’t believe in magic.” No. What I mean instead is people who have declared either with actual words or with their whole [...]
