In our fortnight creative writing group meeting at the Belgrade Theatre last Saturday, Jo our facilitator, came with several pots of daffodils which she put on the table.
She told us that the day was a celebration of St Davids day, or in Welsh Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant hapus. She came up with an interesting exercise for us on how to describe colour and wanted us to think about colour related to yellow. As yellow as a daffodil on the table. Our reading that day was a poem “Daffodils” by Wordsworth.
We worked individually as to how we can describe yellow from all the things we saw. At the end of the exercise, many found the same things such as yellow banana, yellow yolk, yellow pineapple and I said turmeric yellow. We had an interesting time sharing our thoughts. There are some yellows that I had never heard of before such as titanium yellow or vanilla. Even topaz has yellow colour.
How colour also can also describe feelings. As the facilitator said at our meeting, “we can connect with our readers by giving an extra data with visual scenes, colour helps us to process and store images more efficiently”. I remembered that the yellow coconut/palm leaves is a sign of happiness. If you put “janur kuning”, yellow palm leaves, in front of your house the meaning is that there is a marriage. On the other hand, if there is a yellow flag in front of some one’s house, that means there is a death in that house.
While reading the poem and listening to the recitation, I was smiling thinking that a host of golden daffodil “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance” and I realised how a simple daffodil can give such a pleasure.
