Hi all,
First, a quick note: I’m offering two workshops on zoom, Saturdays May 4 and May 11, 2024, through the Amherst Writers and Artists Write Around the World fundraiser. My workshops are called Poetry for People Afraid of Poetry, a pair I’ve offered in a slightly different format before, and I really enjoyed them. They can be taken together or standalone. How it works: you sign up for the workshop(s) through the AWA website, and donate 20-40 dollars, and then I donate my time to offer the zooms. I’d love it if you checked them out.
The magnolias at my house are out! Blossoms like teacups holding the light, thick and veined as porcelain (that description was in a poem that really didn’t work long ago, and I’m so glad to get to use it in this newsletter. Kill your darlings. They’ll come back in some other form like zombies!).
The white one in the front courtyard by my house is out and proud of it. Magnolias are lovely trees altogether, and proud of themselves. They’re always dropping little bits of detritus – little pods and leaves and the furry covers of buds – to remind us that they are there. It’s like they’re saying, “Don’t forget about me! Look how hard I’m working on my blossoms!” I like that in a tree.
The neighbours’ pink magnolia by the side of the house, right on the line between our back yard and theirs, is heavy with blooms too. I look at it out the window by my desk every time I write, and it reminds me of abundance and spring.
Speaking of the change in seasons, I’m writing most days again after a rather resistance-filled break in January and dreaded February. I’m back in the saddle and letting the horse decide where to go, meandering around by way of “Morning” Pages. Those of you familiar with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way will know about these. Three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing done in the morning.
Mine are “Morning” Pages because they are rarely done in the morning. They usually include an external weather report in which I describe what I’m looking at through my window and the colour of the sky and whether there’s any wind, and an internal weather report in which I describe whatever goings-on there may be inside my head and sometimes body. It’s like journalling, but makes a bit less sense. (By the way, if you’re interested in journalling, stream-of-consciousness or otherwise, may I suggest Feed the Monster, where BA Lampman includes Taking Note, little hand-inked posts each suggesting something you could write or a way you could be writing in your notebook. I love them.)
The joy of “Morning” Pages are twofold for me. They’re a place to process whatever’s going on and (I like to think) keep me saner, and they are a way into writing that’s pretty easy. They take me 30 to 40 minutes, and because they’re not a poem or a piece of actual work I have way less resistance to doing them.
And they get the ink flowing. For example, I wrote “Morning” Pages before I started writing the draft of this newsletter, and it slipped off my fingers onto the keyboard much more easily than usual.
Maybe you should try them too? But don’t feel you have to do them in the morning. Just label them with quotation marks, and do them any darn time you please.
FROM THE SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
I wrote in an AWA workshop a couple weeks ago (did you know that AWA offers monthly online writes for a very reasonable price?) The prompt was a picture of hippos. My screen was backlit so that I could only see one on the zoom screen, but one was enough for this little piece. I think it’s kind of neat in its tininess.
River Horse
Hippopotamus means “river horse” in Greek, but these animals cannot be ridden. No saddle has ever been fitted onto this hippo’s broad back, no sugar cube ever slipped into his open mouth.
What would it be like to be unrideable? To be so wild no one even tries to domesticate you? Not to know the bite of the bit, the feel of the rein, the sweetness of the sugar?
NOTES
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And thanks, as always, for reading.
Yours,
Kelsey
Are your “morning” pages completed “daily” like mine? ;)
Lovely! And yes, the magnolia trees are so beautiful right now!