freedom

shift, nearer

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Yes, I went a little bit silent. Despite the sweet encouragements of the wordpress world (‘you’re on a [insert number here] day streak!’ I got absorbed into another direction.

I have been making a rhythm path into my creativity, but also, I notice now, my living.

As my creative practice is continually also an investigation into the nature of existence, the living and the art are closely intertwined. Deep shifts have been going on in my own deep life, old stories have been moving to take up new positions, new stories may or may not be being born, but they will only be able to be born if space is made for them.

Such a work is one of great tenderness and almost perpetual bewilderment, perseverance yes, and perhaps this is why this has been such a focus.

But now the shift has completed, or is completing, and then a new space is opening up. As usual the space comes with a sense of dizzying exposure alongside the delight. What will fill this space, what discoveries will get made, who will arrive to commune with it, how to protect it? It is a space for tiny flutterings and glimmerings yet as with all tender spaces most likely the giants of the land will be waiting to sneak in forbiddingly.

So I go gently and write and try to inhabit peace and trust. And to soak up and reveal in the creativity of a moment of blossoming freedom that comes rarely in life and is a gift of great power and beauty.

goodbye

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I reached the top of the mountain
all of a sudden, unknowingly,
of us
Suddenly, there was no more climb
beneath me
you were far away
and lost forever
and my diligent everlasting love
and my efforts,
had not saved you.

So I discovered
(or had they; perhaps
I will never know)

But they had saved me
or, it is truer to say
they made me; they made
my bones, they made
my freedom
they made my love
stretch further than
it ever had before,
they made my fire more
ferocious, they made my
passion reach beyond
the bounds of
everyday imagination,

they made the rock,
they made the heights,
they made the view
they made the ‘we’ of friendships
strengthen to a wondrousness
they made a miracle
oh, and you will miss it,
that is sad, but someone
else will live that substance
with me
and, with me, will
revel in its glory.

Thank you.

hushed

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I was in two minds about whether to write this writing first, or the other one, which I will soon also write and post, but this came first and it felt like it deserved its place.

A hush really descended with the painting and poem that arrived called hush.

‘A hush descended’ – an evocative phrase to which I have never given a moment of serious attention, and all of a sudden the precision of the image is startling, as are the implicit poetics. ‘Descended from where’, I have literally never asked, despite encountering this reality many times.

From wherever it was previously, it descended. Perhaps it also was where it was previously, like a mist.

And it descended on to me, into me, a saturating silence, and had an effect, as to order all the atoms of my being in a peaceful direction, like the magnetic field on iron filings.

Mysteriously this is accompanied by a kind of paralysis of thought, but not an alarming one. Instead of making an effort to dig deep, uncover, investigate, tease out, they drift. A freedom, a mystifying intertwinement of the heights and the depth, and me.

And here I am in that hush and a kind of new beauty feels like it is unfolding.

the year of the poem

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Almost the minute I pressed ‘publish’ on the post discussing ‘poetry resvolutions‘, I felt the sick feeling of having overcommitted myself instead of maintaining a ‘free spirit’ feeling about the year.  Why make something  a ‘project’ that is perfectly happy being a joy?  Why imprison something fleeting and mysterious in a cage of expectation?  I contemplated deleting the post, liberating myself from my own too-quickly imposed concept.

Well, I haven’t taken the post down yet.  Instead, I decided that I will be in charge of what the ‘year of the poem’ means to me, and it will certainly not involve anything that compromises joy.

The idea of the ‘year of the poem’ is to be an enabler, a permission giver.  By orientating my attitude toward poetry, I make it more likely that I will devote space in my life to poems, words, silence, story, experience, contemplation.  These things bring some of the deepest joy I experience in myself, a different joy to the joy I experience in the presence of other people, a very valid and precious happiness of my own.  I know from my observations so far that space for poetry is the quickest to disappear and the slowest to return. It is easily overwhelmed by to-do lists, travel, chores, demands and needs. While I don’t want to slip into a battle metaphor I do want to be alert to everything I can do to create a little space for poetry whenever it wants.

Like a pet, maybe!

(I am now completely distracted by the idea of poetry as a pet, and a thousand thought avenues of pondering whether this is a good or bad metaphor for poetry itself.)

Come back, come back!

I’m still not quite ready to make resvolutions (maybe I will put a question mark in the post title to let myself off that hook), but I can report that I have so far found two possibilities – a WordPress poetry boot camp in April, and a series of residential poetry courses.  I have asked my poet friend to recommend which of these he thinks would be the best for me.

Two small notes:

* A friend sent a message to say that they wish for a poem to be published in 2016.  Thank you!

* I read a poem which included the line ‘you are truly the poetry of God’ – a phrase of such power I had to put the book down. What could that possibly mean for my life? For all our lives?

So I think these things are the kinds of things that the year of the poem means, and I will try to be open to new ones and to growing and to what is still unknown…

 

wild night run

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We were wild women
that night, when the
trees waved, whistled
and wove their spectral
shadows in the night.

Howling, a gale
streamed past our
spindly lines. We called
out to each other, another
runner shrieked in my ear.
I jumped higher than you
might think.

Dark, though only
early, but blackest
winter made the
lamplight dim. A
late-walked dog a tripping
hazard that might prove fatal;
the head-torch glare
seared my night-sight.

‘Whole trees in motion,
effort needed to walk
against the wind.’  All
ordinary cares cast
sideways; office politics,
lacklustre lovers, let
loose and hurled about.

An eye, a calm, a
freedom borne of
drama outside the
domestic sphere.
We were wild and
free, we ran faster,
we ran
like the wind.

 

Note: The quotation in the third stanza is the description of ‘land conditions’ for number 7 on the Beaufort scale.  This scale has captivated me since I learnt it as a little girl.  Now I realise this is because it is all poetry:  ‘Large branches in motion. Whistling heard in overhead wires. Umbrella use becomes difficult. Empty plastic bins tip over.’ (number 6, but it wasn’t dramatic enough for the poem).