Another example of a writing prompt/practice

Another example of a writing prompt/practice

Jun 12, 2023

Another example of a writing prompt/practice

The Glosa is a poetic form that usually has four ten-line stanzas, preceded by four lines quoted from another poem. The lines from the existing poem are used as the last lines in each stanza.

In essence, one is “writing toward the borrowed lines” of the poem you have chosen, almost as an epigraph or an honoring of the poet or poem. (paraphrased from In Fine Form, p. 88)

Here’s a sample of 15-minute Glosa that I worked on in a writing group, inspired by a David Whyte poem I love:

From David Whyte’s poem, “The Edge You Carry with You”

The lines and the glosa:
Your way home
Understood now
Not as an achievement
But as a giving up

Walking through the unknown
Up to the edge
The thrill and nausea of gazing over into the darkness
Is it annihilation or freedom?
Is it chaos or discovery?
Is there even a difference?
Standing at the edge, breathing, stomach beginning to settle
I look into the darkness and begin to fall
In the wind I hear the words
Your way home

It’s like waking to a new world
Transported in time – back, forward, across
I am really not sure
The air is crisp, the ground is soft yet sturdy
The darkness had dissipated into an easy clarity
As if in a blink of an eye, everything I look at has sharpened into wise focus
The fall landed me somewhere new, somewhere reassuring
Somewhere
Understood now

There is no rush here
No sense of urgency sounding itself through my nervous system
Keeping me on the edge of myself instead of right in the center
Here there is time
Here there is permission
To swim into the cleansing waters
And emerge renewed
Not for anyone else but me
Not as an achievement

It’s both familiar and strange, this new place of arrival
This world that exists over the edge, into the seeming darkness
There’s a language my bones understand
A rhythm in which my heart can rest,
An unknown that isn’t a threat, but rather an invitation
To enter into the mystery
Eyes open
The ancient and vast mystery
Not to grasp onto and figure out
But as a giving up

First Sharing

First Sharing

May 1, 2023

First Sharing

I’ve decided to share a glimpse of what I imagine will be the kinds of creations we are exploring together in this space and in upcoming workshops.

The first is a free-write poem that came from a collage workshop I participated in last year. I have included an image of the impromptu collage and the poem itself.

The second is a free-writing piece that came out of a guided visualization I participated in using the imagery of a lily pad.  The experience happened just after Imbolc, so my psyche was already in the space of seeds rooting down and beginning to make their turn up towards the surface come spring.

Embrace the Bardo
The in-between
Not here, not there
The crack
The fissure
The formless, yet to be formed 

At times quiet
At other times chaotic and wild
Untethered
Unanchored
Unmoored

The space of potential
of unknown
of yet to be and always has been

Let your wildness roam free
Unencumbered
Limitless
Without bounds

The roar of aliveness rippling out through the layers of Earth and the dimensionless Sky

Announcing
I am Here
I Matter

I can’t tell
If you grow up from the bottom
Or you reach down from the top.

It seems in some way you’ve always been both, suspended between the worlds of dark soil and sunlit blossom.

Holding the tension, while softly flowing with the water’s gentle current, like seaweed but rooted. The freedom to go wherever you want doesn’t exist as it does for seaweed, washing up on shore, drying out on sandy landings. For you, the freedom is held in the tension, the movement and unfolding can only happen between the earth and the sky, cradled in the nourishing water, forever growing both down and up.

Some might think it’s a shame that you don’t get to travel to other pockets of place, go on adventures or explorations; some may see your life as limitation, even in its beautiful blossom. You may not ever know the salt of the ocean or the heat of the baking sun on the earth. But what you do know is how living both rooted and sprouting allows for a different emergence, one of surprise, one of cycles, of birth and death, of dark and light.

It isn’t as limited or boring as the roaming seaweed might imagine. Instead, the world is continuously opening to new worlds, deeper worlds; the soil gets richer, darker, more alive, and the reach upward to blossom again in a different way each time brings renewal. The petals never take in the sun the same way twice.

And so, it is also, tethered to the places and the history of family, while also face-turned up to the sky, growing towards a new warmth, ready to unfurl uniquely and singularly.