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Greetings.
I'm Claire, a South African-born artist, writer and interdisciplinary researcher living and working in Ōtepoti Dunedin, a small university city on the South East coast of the South Island, Aotearoa New Zealand. Special passions are the Arts as instruments of communication, healing, environmental advocacy and peace-building. I have been blessed over the years to meet and work with remarkable men and women in unusual and sometimes-surprising circumstances and places. This has led to valued collaborative partnerships with scientists, composers, fellow artists and writers around the globe. Two summer research seasons in Antarctica [2005 & 2008] continue to deeply inform my work. My poetry, flash and short stories have been widely anthologised in NZ and abroad, most recently Short |Poto (Massey University Press, NZ), Te Moana e Reo | Ocean of Languages (The Cuba Press, edited by Michelle Elvy & Vaughan Rapatahana), A Liminal Gathering (Elixir & Star Press, 2023), Poetry for the Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures (Litoria Press, Australia, 2021), Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2022 (Massey University Press) and Cumulus: An Anthology of Clouds (Caselberg Press, 2023). My first collection Open Book— Poetry & Images was published by Steele Roberts in 2009 and my long narrative poem, For When Words Fail Us | A Small Book of Changes was published in December 2024 by The Cuba Press (NZ). Processes of 'making' offer a much-needed counterbalance in a time and world too often hell-bent on 'breaking' and 'taking'; they can engender a sense of hope and inclusivity, empathy and connection. Life is full, busy and can sometimes feel like a very fast spin on a slightly manic merry-go-round. In amongst the chaos and whirr, I aspire to the steadying rhythms of a contemplative life with its accompanying disciplines of quiet, simplicity and repetitive practice. Welcome, and thank you for visiting. |
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C O N S I D E R
if you will a line. Whole worlds can be tilted upturned, undone or drawn into being by a single line. A thin scratch will scour the air bend the wind to blow in from a different direction. And then again a line dropped plumb from an unseen height will part waters, skirt a question shore mist into cloud bunches that rub shoulders with mountains. A sideways slip of the pencil and crossed lives may find that by some invisible grace they come to settle on holy ground. One careless stroke will dismantle ranges, crumble rocks, drown travelers beneath an avalanche of thunder. Consider a line or more than one a smudge of black on your hands the smatter of dust at your feet. A distant chill. A warm round stone. Claire Beynon © |
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Photographs in the text body: Heather Libson (London, UK) |
Header photograph: Stephen Inggs (Cape Town. SA) |