I will be publishing another collection by Myra Schneider in September and I asked Myra to write a few words ahead of the launch. Myra is a well published Poet and this will be her 17th collection.
I love art and looking at paintings which is maybe why I’m a very visual writer so my inspiration for a poem often begins with a painting. I like looking around me too wherever I am, so a starting point might be something I’ve observed. Like many other people I am very aware of the environment, climate disasters and our need to make considerable changes if we are to preserve the world we live in. I’m now ninety years old and my mobility is somewhat limited but I am keen to be out and about as much as possible so I often go out to our nearby park. This often features in my work in The Disappearing as does the weather. The title poem was triggered by looking at our very overgrown back garden and imagining what it might like in the future. A programme in several episodes on BBC television, in 2025 I think, about a recent journey scientists had made down the Amazon river, was the source of the key sequence in the book. I went over each episode again and again in order to produce a visionary poem. As well as paintings I sometimes use a photograph as a starting point as in the poem, Seashore. This was in a book and I also drew on the writing about it. Many of my collections include one or more poems about women; their role and the way they are or have been treated. This book ends with a poem which is partly fact-based in which I imagine how Shakespeare came to write his play, Anthony and Cleopatra and it focuses on how he presented Cleopatra.
Sea Shore
— Myra Schneider