A list for moving:

creating a poem

A blog for writers
There are three sections to this blog. The first and main one is In the Beautiful Middles of Nowhere, which is a kind of journal of our eco-project and the seasonal changes here on the land we tend in Brittany, France, the produce and dilemmas, and my ecocentric approach to our attempting to grow food veganically, in harmony with all the other-than-human species with whom we share this land. I’m passionate about our collectively changing our approach to how we live with other species; at the moment, our species tends to take the approach of exploitation, seeing other species as a ‘resource’.

The Wheel of the Year section is for the eight festivals of the Celtic pagan year.

Some of you will know that this section, Fire in the Head, is about my writings, and with related content hopefully of interest to other writers. I’ve spent 33 years leading courses, retreats and workshops in many aspects of writing: creative, reflective, spiritual, therapeutic, memoir, journalling and eco-writing. Increasingly, these courses have taken place outdoors. Always they’re influenced, tacitly or overtly, by my own practice which draws together my deep commitment to a nature-based spirituality with my 40 years of Zen Buddhist practice.

~~~

For several years I was a regular columnist for MsLexia women’s writing magazine. I also contributed longer articles, and one year monthly contributions to the MsLexia diary. I happened upon this column I wrote several years ago now the other day, so thought I’d post it here, with many thanks to my friend and gifted poet Jo Cornwell. Although it’s ostensibly about making a poem, it’s also about how we navigate and process change and grief. I’d love to think you might find it helpful and interesting (and comments are always very much appreciated).

Till next time, I wish you a gentle September.

A List for Moving

My friend Jo has a very beautiful poem titled as above and written as she was moving house. The poem moves between image (‘Take the sun in squares on the door’) and the abstract (‘The word dusk’), and the concrete personal (‘Milk teeth wrapped in tissue’) to the mythic (‘Take two dogs; one light one dark from the dappled wood’).

Writing such a poem is not only a creative, but also a neat, a wise, way to mark an ending. I wrote in a previous column about the research carried out into how writing about difficult events allows one to better process one’s emotional responses in relation to such experiences, and boosts psychological health and wellbeing. Interestingly, it also has a positive and measurable effect on one’s physical health, too (in, for instance, increased immune resistance to colds and flu, as well as in an increase in white blood cell count).

Sometimes we can’t easily move on until we’ve made, and marked, an ending. An enormous amount of psychic energy is bound up in holding on to the emotions surrounding a painful event; but it isn’t always easy, or appropriate to dump them onto friends, or even family. Writing’s an excellent container or medium for the release of these emotions (and cheaper than a therapist). Plus there’s the creative satisfaction if something new – a poem, an idea for a story – emerges from the grit.

It’s often the events in our lives with the strongest feeling content that remain in our memory, shape our lives and offer the greatest creative potential, too. (I should stress that they don’t have to be unhappy events; but they probably will be ‘threshold’ events, bringing challenge, heralding change.)

If you’d like to, take a situation that still holds an emotional charge for you. Perhaps it was the last time you saw someone. Maybe it was a row that hasn’t been resolved. Maybe it was a change of state – leaving home, changing countries, divorcing.

Close your eyes and allow a pictorial memory of that event to arise, or a place/objects associated with it. Try and picture yourself in the scene.

Start with a piece of unstructured freeflow writing. Dive right in. Include your feelings. Try, though, to keep as much as possible with the concrete, the specific details of the time/place/situation.

When you’ve finished, underline the phrases, lines, words that seem to encapsulate the nub of the event, or are strong images/metaphors.

Think about the beginning and ending.

Try a list poem, maybe finding a repeating word for the beginning of some or all the lines. (‘Remember’; ‘Once’; ‘Begin’ – Brendan Kennelly’s poem ‘Begin’ has spawned an extended family of ‘Begin’ poems.)

For both prose and poetry ‘showing’ is always stronger than ‘telling’; can you use the concrete details as metaphors? Think about weather, clothes, buildings, plants, objects, sounds. In other words, don’t spell it all out but let us bring our imagination to it.

Keep the poem short and focused.