About the Poem
When we formed Chalk the Sun, we wanted a name that would distinguish us from the plethora of “Write Stuff”, “Write Idea”, and “Write On” titles which litter the internet. We wanted a name that embodied the idea of creative endeavour, of struggling to express ideas in words. We toyed with “Tangled Web” but decided it sounded like a weaving group – or a coven of white witches. We felt that “Figment” had a lot of appeal but realised that so did a highly successful film production company. We then trawled through some writers who’d found metaphors for the writing impulse, but rejected T. S. Eliot’s “The throbbing taxi …” as being too … well, throbbing, really.
So we turned to Ms Dickinson (or “Emily” as we prefer to call her), a long-time favourite of ours for her economy, density and passion. We loved the colourful imagery of ‘cochineal’ –the flamboyant pink of crushed beetles – and ‘mazarin’ – the dazzling blue of butterfly wings – together with the graphic quality of the central simile: ‘as a hand did try to chalk the sun’. We realise that as a title it is rather obscure, but it means that when people ask us about it, we can quote a bit of Emily at them, which is always a good thing.
COURSES
RECENT POSTS
Living in Interesting Times…
Merry Safe Christmas... To say that 2020 has been an unusual year is an understatement of similar magnitude to saying Trump’s not the most statesman-like president nor Boris the most truthful prime [...]
We welcome Fliss Chester, ex-Sunchalker and author, as our guest blogger
Fliss Chesterphoto by Capture It Agent hunting tips from novelist Fliss Chester This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor can I guarantee that by following these tips you will land [...]
