About Christina Pagès
I grew up in Kent, England, and came to America in 1970. I wrote my first poem up a tree when I was about eight. The memories of climbing, of being tucked inside the tree, the view across the green fields to the Kent oast-houses, gave me the urge to write something about all the beauty around me. Knowing that my spot was quite snug and I would outgrow it, that the branches would soon break under my weight, gave me a taste of mystery mixed with sadness that such moments never come back. This translated into nostalgia, especially when I left my home country for the States. Nostalgia, beauty, mystery, inspire me today to continue writing poetry and to paint the scenes around me.
I don’t remember what I wrote in my tree-nook; perhaps I lost the scrawl on a piece of paper. But I knew that the poem had given me a reason to push up the rough bark, through scratchy twigs, that the real poem was being there, not what ended up on paper later. Being there is the real poem. And of course I no longer climb a tree to write a poem, but starting a poem pushes me to the right nook, and then something about the view spills out onto paper. My poetry continually hunts for a rise of ground and a clearer view. Many of my recent poems, written after January 2012 when I suddenly lost my partner and soul-mate, try to make sense of the sudden disappearance of a beloved face, body, companion, and of the heart-wrenching loss that not only taints but enhances all the beauty around me.
My painting began after I arrived in the States — Alabama to be precise. I was so homesick for Kent countryside, for old churches and graveyards, for crooked cottages and winding lanes, that I had to paint my memories to stay connected to them. My first painting was of a stone cottage in the Cumberland hills.
