Reflective Summary – Stage 2
This stage of the course has been a journey through memory, identity, and language, and in many ways a journey back to myself. Looking at the work produced across Relations, Perspectives, and Language, I can see how each unit opened a different internal door, helping me understand not only my creative voice, but also my place in the world.
In 2.1 (Relations), I began to understand how my experiences: Greece, Italy, China, the Isle of Man, my family, my childhood, the factories, and constant travel, form an interconnected map of meaning. I realised that my work always begins with lived experience, and that the relationship between place, memory, and emotion gives my poems and images their strength. China became a particularly powerful source of inspiration: the factories, the isolation, the cultural contrasts, the Opium War Museum in Dongguan, and the people working like honeybees. These experiences reshaped the way I see labour, humanity, and the world.
In 2.2 (Perspectives), I learned to look again, to reflect on distance, exile, and belonging, and on how my personal Odyssey shapes everything I create. I recognised myself as a storyteller moving between two worlds: the external world of travel and observation, and the internal world of emotion and reflection. My drawings, poems, and photographs became tools for shifting perspective. Works such as Kanenas, Leucothea, and The Land of Lotus Eaters marked this phase. This unit also led me towards combining photography, narrative, and music, culminating in The Autumn Festival Story.
In 2.3 (Language), I found my voice. I wrote poems that weave mythology with autobiography (Aeolus and Nausika, Penelope in Me) and learned that simple language can carry profound truths. Much of my work seeks to offer a moral reflection, a pause, or a small lantern for the reader. I explored ”Greenglish” as a hybrid language and I continued developing narrative work through The Bird Who Came From Afar. As an outcome of the above, I created my own website to be a personal portfolio of images, poems, and memories.
Overall, Stage 2 helped me understand who I am as a creative practitioner: a traveller, a storyteller, and someone who transforms lived experience into meaning. Most importantly, it showed me that my journey matters and that my voice is finally becoming my own.
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