My muse was a feminist

I just recently came across this quote from Joseph Conrad, possibly my great great uncle, whose work I adore and whose style I am studying in earnest as I take on a literary challenge. Thanks dear Uncle Joe. Your family considered itself Polish living in Ukraine. Mine lived in the next village over and considered itself Ukrainian living in Poland. In either case, I am happy to adopt you as my muse as I embark on this new challenge, a historical fiction story about my family's migration during WWII. I hope I can live up to your example.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

- Joseph Conrad

Historical fiction

Human art

Yesterday, out of the gloomy grayness, I started writing my mother's story again. Called 'The Unwilling Immigrant', it's the story of wartime migration. This time, I am writing it from scratch as a historical fiction piece. I didn't know I was going to start writing. I just did. Surprise, surprise. And Joseph Conrad is declared my muse.

'All roads are long which lead to one's heart's desire.'

- Joseph Conrad

Meanwhile, tomorrow morning I will attend a workshop supported by the Arts Council called A Poem in a Morning with Alice Kinsella at the Linenhall in Castlebar. I will perhaps finally learn what poetry is and whether some of what I've been writing is indeed considered poetry. 

When Joseph Conrad may be your uncle

My birth name was Daria Olena Korzeniowski. I was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1954 to immigrant parents who left their country, a part of Ukraine at the time ruled by Poland, during World War II.  The town my parents hailed from was near Lviv, called Yaroslaw. But my father, Marian Korzeniowski, originally came from Peremyshl.  Przemyśl in Polish [ˈpʂɛmɨɕl] ( listen) (Ukrainian: Перемишль, Peremyshl, German: Premissel) is a town near where Joseph Conrad was born and raised.