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poetry

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Poetry: Destinations

October 27, 2012

Meow Gallery: The gallery is empty.

 

Destinations

You are the exotic destination
I depart to, my fervent feet
walking the streets
to the Venice of your heart.

Or perhaps you are Oliphants,
deep in the Kruger, from where high
above thorn trees, I watch hippopotamus
float down the river somehow.

Or perhaps the Eiffel Tower,
shimmering in the morning light,
from where I look down at the city
laid out like the story of a novel.

You dream and then one day,
you step on a plane and arrive
to do the most ordinary things
in the most exotic way.

You are my destination,
sometimes nearly ordinary,
sometimes taking
my breath away.

creativity introversion writing

Making space to speak

July 29, 2012

The balance between partnerships and creativity, between being together and being alone, between doing/being and reflecting on the doing and being, is often a fine line. Like many people, I have sought to manage and maintain the balance. It is often easier to create when you have space and solitude; but relationships, family, work and friends are all so important.

Tillie Olsen’s, ‘Silences‘ published in 1978, is about the conditions for creating art, and the circumstances that inhibit and foster the development of writing and other art forms. She examines what works for creativity; the circumstances that she analyses include gender, race and economic situation. A product of its time, ‘Silences’ identifies the high number of women, for example, who have not married or had children and created works of art. Certainly the personal and social situations we create, choose and find ourselves in are an influence in what we create and the conditions in which it is created.

I wrote about this some time ago in a poem that still holds true for me about the balance between relationships and creativity:

Half a Man

If I had even half a man now
could I write the night,
out into its waiting wings
to penetrate delight.

If I had a part of one
who tried to gather all,
I’d run because his promise
is not wiser than the call.

If I had a whole man
who could teach me to receive,
I’d write between the space he gave
and love with sudden ease.

Sometimes , the space itself, when we do find it, can be almost too much, overwhelming in its vacancy to fill. The feeling of all that open space in which to create, once we have organised it or when it is just there due to circumstance, can in itself be intimidating as May Sarton writes in ‘Journal of a Solitude‘:

The ambience here is order and beauty. That is what frightens me when I am first alone again. I feel inadequate. I have made an open place, a place for meditation. What if I cannot find myself inside it? (p12)

I love the approach of Australian writer, Kate Grenville, to capturing every inspiration and opportunity to create. As she documents in ‘Searching for the Secret River‘, Kate uses a series of mantras to keep herself writing: ‘never have a blank page,’ ‘don’t wait for the mood’, ‘fix it up later’ and ‘don’t wait for time to write’. She further writes:

I learned to work in whatever slivers of time the day might give me – one of my favourite scenes in ‘Joan Makes History‘ was written in the car waiting to pick up Tom from a birthday party, on the only paper I could find, the inside of a flattened Panadol packet. I had slivers of time, so I wrote in slivers of words: a page here, a paragraph there. Eventually the slivers would add to something. (p145)

So it seems there is no perfect formula for making space to speak. Whilst some conditions might make writing and other creativity more likely, if we are serious about it, we need to write and create in whatever situation we find ourselves. It’s possibly also that waiting for the perfect conditions is just another form of resistance to getting down to work.

That’s why this blog is so important to me; it’s a stay against silence, a way of creating space to speak, a way of practising making space, so that my writing here now (nearly) each week is an achievement, a making of space in an otherwise very busy life.

So with all this in mind, what habitat suits you to create? What conditions help you write or create art? What have you learnt from your experiences in creativity over time ?

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love, loss & longing poetry

Poetry: Optical Illusions

July 1, 2012

Personal poems recount lived experience so it is re-felt, but with resolution, rising above the tragic.

‘Writing Personal Poetry,’ Sheila Bender, p4

Sometimes, eyes can play tricks. What seems solid and tangible is only a shadow, possibly your own. You try to get hold of what you love, but it fleets downstream. You choose a setting, you hold a camera, you level a fixed lens, you get just the right aperture and the shutter clicks firmly. You have a perfect image, but not the original you desired. At least you have that image to hold onto for a long time afterwards. Even then, it can still play tricks, watching you, reflecting the light this way and that, catching a smile, wandering and jagging like a fishing line pulling at something, possibly your heart.

Optics

Every night that river chased dreams
like sleek fish
running from the echo
of sleep.

Rivers seem so simple now:
just filling themselves
endlessly,
no emotion to speak of.

You stood in a doorway,
I took a photo,
and there was a river
dancing behind.

You, the one clear eye
I craved and strived to
capture neatly in a
single frame.

That horizontal string
of sparkling promise
you always offered,
that river I can still taste.

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love, loss & longing poetry transcending

That you couldn’t feel

June 10, 2012

My younger brother died tragically five years ago this coming November. His death changed the face of my world, and that of many others, forever.

Not. a. day. goes. by.

It’s especially when the sun is shining in a beautiful place where I happen to be, on a day when I have felt the greatest sense of achievement at work, when a song I love is reaching me and making me smile, that I feel his presence.

The beauty and achievement collides with this presence and then the sense of absence comes, keenly and sharply.

I have learnt to live with these moments. I have learnt to learn from them. But still they catch me, not unlike the moment when I found out about his death. The stillest moment of absence against a day of pure sunlight and the greenest of trees. Me sitting there unable to move, still trying to take it in. After all this time, I have learnt that you really never fully can take it in; you just keep trying.

Reflecting on this has made me search for the poem that came resonating back in recent days, the quintessential poem that equates such joy and sorrow, such beauty and pain. It is John Keat’s ‘Ode on Melancholy‘ and it captures the feeling of where the saddest feelings so closely align with joy and beauty, as if the extreme counterpoint brings the other into play.

So it is for me: sometimes I go deeper into the sadness as below, feeling it or thinking about what it means; other times, I celebrate the beauty I am experiencing, my achievements or  happiness and think of how it relates to my brother, our family, our achievements and our happiness over the years before all the pain and that makes me smile.

That you couldn’t feel the possible beauty

of this sunlit day, beside the harbour,
by the edge of the aquarium,
the sails of yachts lashed with gold
like the promise of the treasure,
of another day, buried, while
the lean bodies of dark fish move past.

That you couldn’t feel the possible beauty
that night, of a small shard of hope,
a tendril of smooth glass to hold
to cut through past midnight,
to something like the chance
to hear again a song you loved.

That you couldn’t feel the possible beauty
of the ordinary flags of another day,
rainbows littered around,
scraps of coloured paper you could
write a life on, strung together
to harmonise the way.

That you couldn’t feel the possible beauty
of this very ordinary day now
finds me sitting by the harbour
as I bathe in the brightest warmth of light:
your absence shouting from the sparkling seas
and speaking from each body fleeting past.

1 Comments
poetry transcending writing

Poetry: Into the Light

June 3, 2012

I’ve always loved poetry, read poetry and written poetry, on and off and over many years. It is the great life-blood of transcendence: celebrating the small moments; recording how you or others uniquely see and link ideas; connecting with the highest joy and worst of grief; and making sense of the deepest pain and anger so it doesn’t stay with you, in that form, forever. It’s the working through to light, mostly, though this often involves working through some elements of darkness. It’s the reworking of feelings and perceptions in order to understand them, hold them in time for a moment and then move on.

As Sage Cohen writes in ‘Writing the Life Poetic‘:

Poetry gives us an opportunity to experience our lives twice. First, as it happens, in real time. And second, in heart time. The poem gives us a kind of cosmic canvas to savour a moment, make sense of it, put a little frame around it, and digest it more completely. It also gives us a way to travel profoundly into experiences that are not our own and, if we are lucky, alight on a  moment of truth about the human condition now and then. (p1)

So here’s to bringing my poetry, and the poetry of others, into the light here as part of a journey and record of transcending.

Image

 

Narrative

She starts up high, facing north

towards slow mist,

watching the sea wash

into the rain’s drift below.

 

She is called to the beach

as if to a baptism, bride-like,

white as the air, stepping

down the rough rock stairs.

 

She narrates her life,

writes as she walks,

as if the sand and shells are

the bones of her story.

 

And the pieces connect her:

an imperfect white oval shell,

a fig leaf from a canopy,

the sketched black lines

of a creature’s moving home.

 

Cool and tight limbed,

she ends in another place,

as if washed by waves,

her contours, clear and shell-lined

as the Borromean grottoes

of Isolabella,

her white shining lights

coming home.

 

Previously published on the net at Sage Cohen’s ‘Writing the Life Poetic’ – Poetry for the People student poems.

In what ways has poetry helped you move into the light?

7 Comments
creativity poetry writing

Gems #14 Writing Poetry

March 26, 2011

 Some gems on writing poetry whether you are just getting started or an old hand needing inspiration and direction…

Writing the Life Poetic: An invitation to read and write poetry – Sage Cohen

Poetry is often seen as a rarefied art on the fringes of life; even when you are a poet yourself, you can feel like this. Sage Cohen’s Writing the Life Poetic takes poetry from any pedestal it might have ended up on, and brings it firmly back into the central context of your life. The book is beautifully written and gorgeous to hold, with quirky graphics through-out. It feels like you are being taken by the hand and gently led back to the heart of poetry and its rightful place for you. As Sage points out in the introduction:

Poetry gives us an opportunity to experience our lives twice. First, as it happens, in real time. And second, in heart time. The poem gives us a kind of cosmic canvas to savour a moment, make sense of it, put a little frame around it, and digest our experience more completely.

Especially for people who love poetry and might have lost it somewhere along the way, Writing the Life Poetic helps you discover or rediscover the power of poetry, its place in everyday life and how to engage practically with this creative space. The book is full of advice such as starting where you are, showing versus telling, working with the senses, using imagery, reading poetry, understanding how stanzas work, revision, writing rituals, creating a system for poetry practice and so much more. Each chapter is short and focused with  exercises to practically apply the skills and concepts discussed.  It’s like a sensitive guidebook to take you through a deep engagement with poetry from wherever you are starting or recommencing your journey.

Writing Personal Poetry: Creating poems from your life experiences – Sheila Bender

I found this brilliant book in my local library and then had to have it so I could read it more fully and over time. The introduction ‘Poetry is always a good idea’ had me saying, ‘Yes, yes!’ as I read through. Sheila quotes poet Louise Gluck saying that:

writing a poem begins with a haunting, as if the finished poem already exists somewhere. In this way…the poem is like a lighthouse, “except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away.”

Coming from a similar space as Sage Cohen, Sheila Bender situates poetry in the context of daily life, commenting that poets also ‘cook, clean and take out the garbage..’ and then identifies how finding that writing about the ‘lighthouse-that-already-is’ can be part of this daily life.

Sheila’s focus is personal poetry, why we write it, how to empower yourself to write, acknowledging your poetic intelligence, getting the confidence to start, the value of reading poetry, tools for writing poetry and the poet’s stance. There are some excellent poems in progress included in this book from Sheila’s students’ work. They show how a poem progresses from an idea to a draft to a revision to a fully realised piece of work. I loved these students’ poems and what they showed about the progress and realisation of their art. There is much to be learnt from this book: especially heart for the journey and specific processes and techniques for writing personal poetry.

Creating Poetry – John Drury

Creating Poetry  is a little more technical in approach and this a useful complement to the above two books. It’s an accessible introduction to poetic terms like metaphor, assonance, simile, alliteration, rhyme and enjambement. These terms are explained with clear examples. The book also provides an excellent summary of poetic forms and rhyming patterns: ghazal, haiku, pantoum, sestina, villanelle and sonnet, for example, again clearly set out and explained.

The book takes you through the stages of preparation, language, the senses, shaping, patterns and traditions, voice, sources of inspiration and the revising and finishing processes. Full of practical exercises that help you engage as you read, the book is an accessible reference for the more technical side of writing poetry.

All three of these books have a central place on my poetry writing bookshelf and are heavily underlined. They are guidebooks I visit regularly to help me orient my poetic journey, to keep me moving positively ahead and to ensure I have courage and skills for the writing process.

What are your recommended guidebooks for writing poetry?

Image by alexschwab  from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks: One poem of thousands located on the longest poetry wall in the world in Changde, Hunan Province, China.

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