joy

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…

 

overheard joys

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‘Oooooh!’ ‘wooosh!’
‘Look at you!’ A
grandmother neighbour
greets her family
in the street outside
my house.
Laughter percolates
towards my bedroom
window. I hear the pause
of hugs exchanged.

On the café table
next to me, two
cashmere women
discuss a favourite
dancing show, the merits
of the ‘last man standing’,
the northern darling, the
East end lass, the tinkling
delight of little girls
let loose in dressing up
clothes. I feel their
inner twirling.

Returning from a
conference, three women
(unusual in Eurostar
Standard Premier class)
tease a colleague. Tall
tales, tender taunting,
their warm laughter
embraces the whole
carriage, washes me
with gladness.

We are a humanity of
constant hopes and tears,
and yet in streets, and
trains and
public places, there is,
it seems,
for a moment,
more than enough
joy to go round.

 

 

smell of petrol

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Smell of petrol and sea air;
a scrappy dirt-grey rubber dinghy
purchased by my father, secretly,
wildly overdrawn, while at home
our empty cupboards were
filled by kind friends.
Falling off backwards into
barely choppy seas,
hemmed in by boats of plenty.
Three children, bobbing about in
in buoyancy aids, our very
own, wild with
unfettered delight.
Utter freedom,
Shrieks of laughter.
Wild, alive, free.

(If my mother had had her way,
we would have been playing
in the back garden.)

red helium heart balloon – a poem for a cousin’s birthday

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I was thinking of your birthday;
‘A helium balloon!’  I cried to myself
(internally as there was no one
around to hear me).

I waited til the day before
to buy it as I did not want
even a sniff of helium to escape
or bring it too soon
down to earth.

That day, I forgot where
the helium balloon shop was
had to double back on myself.

I walked in triumphant
‘A birthday balloon’, I asked the
shop assistant.  The store was
filled with valentines

that crowded out the ‘normal range’.
I didn’t think you would like
a balloon loudly proclaiming ’40!!!!!’
or Olaf or the one from Planes.

A momentary qualm assailed me;
was my helium balloon plan to be
thwarted by the patron saint of love?

On the contrary!  The saint of love
smiled down fondly; a red heart
helium balloon perfectly fit the brief.

a heart for love,
a heart for hopes and dreams,
a heart for passions and adventures,
a heart for you.

‘Oh, that one please, on the
longest red string!’  The jaunty
foil heart balloon reached boldly to the sky.

I could not bear to
imprison it in a plastic carrier.
It is not what helium balloons
were made for.

I basked in the smiles of passers-by
as I wended my way home
thinking of your birthday.

‘She will be so pleased!’  I said
to myself.  ‘No one else will have
thought of such a thing.’

The happy balloon, full of love
and excitement, bobbed up and down,
couldn’t wait to meet you.

It was a windy day; perhaps I should have been wiser.
In a moment, the companion attached to my wrist
was gone.

Oh!  I looked up: A red heart took flight
into the street, up, up,
above the silver birch tree lines.

Up, up, UP, riding thermals beyond
the multi-storey car park.
Up consorting with the seagulls.

I saw it last as it bobbed behind
the church spire; a heart and a cross.
To infinity and beyond.

I wanted to give a heart
for your birthday – for love, for hopes,
for passion, for you.

But the heart wanted to give you a poem,
Show you that your hopes and dreams soared to
dance with the angels,
to mingle with the stars.

Show you that the heart is free;
and alive and full of grace
and beauty.

That nothing can hold it back.

in the wordsmith’s workshop

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Following a magical visit to the goldsmith’s workshop, now it is the wordsmith’s turn.

The wordsmith had visited the goldsmith’s workshop to help her with some writing because she does not find it easy to tell her story.

The wordsmith took the tools of her own trade with her to see the goldsmith – just a little silver laptop computer and a warm heart.  As the goldsmith talked, the wordsmith captured certain phrases, facts and stories.  Using questions wrought from the wisdom of experience, the wordsmith tugged at tales and pulled at pauses, and waited patiently in silence, knowing that in time precious nuggets would emerge.

Which they did, sometimes one or two, sometime more, with their own timing and rhythm as the goldsmith remembered, lit up, hesitated and shared.

At last the wordsmith shut her laptop, said goodbye and left the goldsmith’s workshop, ready for her own process of mulling, refining, and seeing what remained.

The wordsmith allowed the goldsmith’s stories to swirl around her imagination, and at last, sat down again with the goldsmith’s words, ready to start work.

As she pondered, she let the most important themes come to the surface.  Then she worked with them, adding little facts here and there from her notes; unwinding and bending phrases to become small facets of love and delight.  She brought the goldsmith’s passions and heart for people into a setting where they could be more easily spotted.  She highlighted the goldsmith’s bravery and pioneering spirit.

At last the wordsmith was finished.  She did a last check over her work, and then ‘ping’ sent it to the goldsmith’s team.

And then today, she visited them.

The goldsmith had loved the finished work.  It had helped her to recognise her own self, remember her great joy in her own work, its value and many riches.  It had helped her to see past the struggles and weariness, to regain her vision and strength.

The praise from the goldsmith’s team delighted the wordsmith.  She too suddenly realised the treasure of her work, its power to make things beautiful and full of wonder.  She felt encouraged in the middle of a day of challenges, and renewed for her own adventures into the unknown.

And now the goldsmith and the wordsmith are hard at work, in their workshops and at their desks, making…