Catching Shower Flowers

Welcome to my new place of practice.

Tess Guinery

Jun 08, 2023

Is it the water falling so easily across my shoulders

and

down

back

that lets the words fall easy too? Their perfect little storms rising to the heights of ceilings and landing in my hands in ways that say - they too need the water.

Slower breaths and the daily grail that lets an entire day be washed off my skin if need be or worn like a perfume if I will it so. I count it important and lovely to notice that in an entire house of rooms, water itself has its very own room— an invitation to a daily practice, where words have their way, while washing my hair.

Welcome to my new art-house, a place where my writing will begin to live…

You have found me here, behind this friendly little paywall, where you get choose what is worthy of your digestion…

If you are here,

it’s because you have chosen to,

and for this I am beyond thankful…

Rather than my usual “free to air” approach in the dire hallways of algorithms where my immovable stubbornness wills to not puppeteer my art in a way that is continuing to grow in strangeness and becoming unsustainable quickly, I find myself here, early days, beginning a new writing practice, because really, when I break it all down, all I want to do is write.

And so in the name of “seeing the artist” Substack has entered the chat… offering artists and writers alike a place to make and meet (minus the gimmicks) and although I am a late bloomer to this already established table, I am thrilled to see many of my favourite writers and artists here, sowing their time into their craft and sharing it with people who are intentionally here too.

I’m here to expand and stretch and bend and move with the sun and the shadows and embrace my growing love for writing… I’m here to trek the very real limitations of my own vocabulary and stretch myself some more. I want to move here with no restraints in regards to the medium I should use when the words beg for them— be it larger essays, ink, poetry, paint, dance, photography, voice memos, journal excerpts or whatever else expresses the words necessarily—there will be good stuff to see, eat, inhale and sit with here.

1. Why showers, why flowers?

My clearest thoughts commonly land in the shower… my current approach to writing hasn’t yet allowed me to acquaint with what I hope to become second nature. I want to stretch my writing practice further and learn to collect, catch and write in the trail that leads to my love for prose and poetry. I’m giving myself the challenge of carrying the language and catching it just before it lands into poetry whilst learning to sit more with the unformed tensions that sword play just before and sometimes after.

It’s here I want to set myself the challenge of engaging more with the pre-summaries and get curious about how I could navigate them with language.

I remember my very first run-in with a sideline critic in my earlier days of having my prose published in book form (The Apricot Memoirs).

“This collection of prose sounds like it was written in the shower or while she was casually doing the dishes, unnecessary really ” — Circa 2018, via unknown writing critic.

It hit with a different kind of electricity as her words condescendingly revealed my entire writing process on the eve of my book hitting bookstores globally... and in that fawning moment the words hit my naïve little body in a way that felt similar to thunder, it hit, because what she had said was true. I remember feeling lost in a sea of experts in that single moment.

I managed to move through the feelings that arrived with this experience which I now see as truly significant. I don’t write for the critics, I write simply because I must.

2. What assortments can you expect here?

Please keep in mind that this is a new practice, the improviser in me may tend to this non-methodically? You may get more of some things and less of the other things, new ideas might arise along the way…but all in all, I’ll honour this space with time I carve out for writing.

I’ll attempt the habitual disciplines of making art in the forms it calls. There will be spelling mistakes, likely technical malfunctions (setting this up was certainly a brain strain) so forgive me when things are amiss, I’m learning as I go. I’m promising a creative process, not perfection.

3. How often will my catchings land?

This for now is improvisational…

4. See below for payment tiers and offerings.

FREE / per month:

Pure gratitude that you are here
Access to the majority of content shared

$5.00 USD$ / per month:

Pure gratitude that you would sow into my practice of writing.
Full access to Catching Shower Flowers, an email that comes to your inbox when I genuinely have something worthy and beautiful to share. Assume everything that lands in your inbox has been thoughtfully made with time sowed into it. I will not spam unnecessary makings.
Secret prints and poetry releases via my shop exclusively released to paid subscribers with password access for purchase.
Quit payment at anytime.

$80 USD$ /annually:

ALL OF THE ABOVE, plus:

A surprise digital prose emailed to you, so you can print and hang on your wall.

FOUNDING MEMBER $240 USD$ ANNUALLY

ALL OF THE ABOVE, plus:

A surprise A4 new poetry release printed on bespoke paper and mailed to you as a thank you / love letter, so you can frame and hang on your wall.
Other surprises that I’ll run with when the imagination wills it, just because I’m grateful for your support.