by Mary Ann Moore | Mar 21, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Diana Hayes new book of poetry, GOLD IN THE SHADOW: TWENTY-TWO GHAZALS AND A CENTO for Phyllis Webb (Rainbow Publishing, 2021), is exquisite in every detail: the design by Pat Walker Design and the papers used; the purple and gold of the cover; the size of the book; and the finely-rendered poetry written as a tribute to a beloved poet. Phyllis Webb will be 94 on April 8, 2021.
Diana Hayes and Phyllis Webb first met in 1980 and Phyllis “has been a mentor, friend, and a listening ear” to Diana. They both live on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Lorraine Gane, Diana’s editor, also lives on Salt Spring. Diana appreciates “walkabouts” she took with Lorraine as well as “the many insights and the courage to dive deeper into the work.”
The image that distinguishes the book’s cover is from an oil on canvas by Joe Plaskett entitled “Double Portrait of Phyllis Webb.” The frontispiece features both aspects of the double portrait, one of them a profile of Phyllis. Joe Plaskett’s studio in Paris was full of mirrors, Phyllis told Diana, and this may have led to the spontaneity of painting the two images. At first I thought the profile was of the aging poet looking to the youthful version of herself but as it turns out, Phyllis is the same age in both: 32 in 1959 when the painting was done.
As Diana describes them, the poems she has written are a personal expedition into Phyllis’s visual art and poetry. Diana began working on a “catalogue project” in 2017 to photograph Phyllis’s paintings and many of them opened the doors into the ghazals.
Diana’s introduction to the book of poetry, entitled “Night Journeys,” describes becoming intrigued by Phyllis’s visual art while also being a reader and collector of Phyllis’s poetry books. “The paintings,” Diana writes, “provided the maps for my journey into the ghazals. Lines from Phyllis’s poems echoed beyond horizons.”
What glorious night journeys Diana had in her writing studio built by her husband Peter Southam. “The ghazal was the official language of my nights,” Diana writes. Into the realm of poetry in the midst of the West Coast rainforest, Diana travelled to Paris, Egypt, Norway. There was opera at The Met, gods and goddesses, a monk and his lover, and many exotic flowers. A simply gorgeous introduction to the twenty-two ghazals she wrote.
Diana has inhabited a form “that Phyllis Webb made her own – the ghazal in its Canadian variant pioneered by John Thompson – “ Erin Moure says in her endorsement of the book. While echoing the poems of Phyllis Webb, Diana’s ghazals “are perfectly themselves” says Eve Joseph in her endorsement. And indeed they are.
Black facing pages describe elements of the ghazals such as “the black roses of Halfeti” which are naturally occurring black roses which only grow in a small village in Turkey called Halfeti. They only appear black in the summer months.
The photo of Phyllis Webb is by Diana Hayes, Salt Spring Library, October 18, 2014.
Sometimes the explanations refer to a line from one of Phyllis’ poems or the title of one of her paintings. One of them,” Bronze Icon,” was a gift to Diana and her husband Peter on their wedding day, December 31, 2015. (There is an image of the painting in the book.)
The ghazal originated in Persia around the seventh century. One of its famous practitioners was Hafiz whose poetry many may know through the renderings, of Daniel Ladinsky.
“Originally, ghazals consisted of at least five but usually no more than twelve couplets (shers)” Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve explain in In Fine Form, 2nd Edition (Caitlin Press, 2016). Like traditional haiku, ghazals do not have titles. The couplets are so independent of each other, their order can be changed “without damaging the poem.”
One meaning of the word “ghazal” is “the talk of boys and girls” which can mean “sweet talk or verbal lovemaking” Edward Hirsch says in A Poet’s Glossary (Houghton, Mifflin, 2014). “The ghazal tends to blur the distinction between erotic and divine love,” Hirsch says.
The Urdu master of the ghazal, Ghalib (1797 – 1869), wrote:” There is a wilderness within a wilderness. I saw the desert and remembered home.”
Diana Hayes echoes that sentiment as she writes of her night journeys during “twenty-two nights, twenty-two ghazals” disembarking when she was home again as “the mad gardener of the Salish Sea.”
There is a sense of loss in Diana’s ghazals which is an aspect of one of the meanings of “ghazal”: “The cry of the gazelle when it is cornered in hunt and knows it must die.” (Hirsch)
As Ahmed Ali puts it, this explains “the atmosphere of sadness and grief that pervades the ghazal” as well as its “dedication to love and the beloved.” (as quoted by Hirsh)
In Diana’s Ghazal XIV, “Ennui has stolen the day, run off the with colours of dawn,” and in Ghazal XXII, “Grief is a two-legged crow hop, laughing . . “. And in the same poem, “acedia” is noted to refer to “a state of listlessness or torpor” that has been referred to “as the lost name for the emotion we are all feeling during the Covid-19 pandemic.” As the poet embarked on a journey, readers do as well with the ancient form depicting the travels and explorations of a life, and the very real sense of the present day.
Diana’s final couplet of Ghazal XXII reads:
The porter drops my valise on the studio steps.
Icons or encumbrance. To what world have I returned?
“A Cento for Phyllis” is made up of twenty-two lines of Phyllis Webb’s poetry from Water and Light: Ghazals and Anti Ghazals (Coach House Press, 1984) except for a couple of lines which are from “Mad Gardener To The Sea” in The Sea is Also A Garden (The Ryerson Press, 1962).
“Cento” is from the Latin word for “patchwork” and the form is a wonderful way to pay tribute to the poetry of a beloved poet. The combinations and juxtapositions of lines can be intriguing and delightful such as:
The purple orchid he brought me.
Coloured enough, though featherless.
The book is a wondrous accomplishment by one multi-talented and multi-disciplinary artist in homage to another. The limited edition book is multi-faceted and multi-layered, a rich journey of discovery with modern insights written in a traditional form.
Phyllis Webb was born in Victoria, B.C. in 1927. While at the University of British Columbia for her undergraduate degree in English and philosophy, she was encouraged in her vocation as a poet by Roy Daniells, Earle Birney and John Creighton. P.K. Page was “the one who made me feel I wanted to be a poet,” Phyllis said (as quoted by John F. Hulcoop in his introduction to Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems of Phyllis Webb (Talonbooks, 2014). F. R. Scott, a founding member of the CCF (Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation), was one of the men who influenced her and persuaded Phyllis to move to Montreal. She worked for the CBC interviewing poets and became executive producer of Ideas which she co-created with William Young.
Phyllis Webb’s final volume of poetry, Hanging Fire, came out in 1990. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1992. (Peacock Blue contains poems from Hanging Fire followed by uncollected and previously unpublished poems.)
Diana Hayes has five published books including This is the Moon’s Work: New and Selected Poems (Mother Tongue Publishing) and Labyrinth of Green (Plumleaf Press).”Deeper Into the Forest,” a spoken word/music CD was produced at Allowed Sound Studio in 2020. Diana’s poetry has been included in several anthologies and her narrative photography has been featured in galleries in coastal B.C. Her practice of year-round swimming inspired the formation of the Salt Spring Seals in 2002. Diana has made Salt Spring Island home since 1981.
There will be a reading and celebration of GOLD IN THE SHADOW on Zoom on Saturday, March 27, 2021 at 7 p.m. To register for the event, email programs@saltspringlibrary.com.
To order a copy of GOLD IN THE SHADOW visit Diana Hayes’ website at www.dianahayes.ca.
The photo of Diana Hayes is by Ramona Lam.
Phyllis Webb and Mary Ann Moore at the launch of Blue Halo by Lorraine Gane at the Salt Spring Library on Saturday, October 18, 2014. Photo: Diana Hayes. www.dianahayes.ca
by Mary Ann Moore | Mar 10, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Julia Cameron has written a new book, The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2021), which she describes as a 6-week Artist’s Way Program. Do you remember reading The Artist’s Way which helped many of us enter a “creative recovery” program for six weeks? It was first published in 1991. A 25th Anniversary edition came out in 2016.
In her new book, Julia reminds readers of “the basic tools” from The Artist’s Way: Morning Pages, Artist Dates and Walks.
Morning Pages are a way to listen to ourselves each morning “thus clearing the way for further listening through the day.” To write “morning pages” is a daily practice of writing three pages in a stream-of-consciousness way, when first waking up. As Julia says: “We learn to trust that each word is perfect – good enough and even better than that.”
Anything and everything that crosses your mind is what goes into Morning Pages.
With Artist Dates “we listen to the youthful part of ourselves who craves adventure and is full of interesting ideas,” Julia says.
With Morning Pages, we focus “our attention on the problem at hand. With Artist Dates, we practice release, and our minds fill with new ideas. It takes the ‘letting go’ for the process to work.”
The Artist Date is a way to woo your artist self and is something you do on your own each week. While there are restrictions these days when it comes to art galleries, bookstores and the like, in our area we can visit bookstores while masked. Visiting the children’s section of a bookstore would be a fun Artist Date. There are amazing children’s books full of colour and stories to lift your spirits.
In downtown Nanaimo, there’s a small art gallery called Gallery Merrick. A visit to Joe and the art he has arranged by various artists would be a fun Artist Date. A fabric store, art store, craft supply store, or garden centre could be other possibilities. There may be gardens in your area that would be a good Artist Date where you could be on the look-out for signs of spring.
The Artist Date is a time to visit “something you love” and “come home to yourself,” Julia says.
Walks are a way to “listen both to our environment and to what might be called our higher power or higher self.”
Walking is the third tool as it’s a way to untangle “our often tangled lives” Julia says. Many spiritual traditions practice walking such as Buddhists with their walking meditation. It’s the form of meditation I prefer over sitting.
Julia says writing is indeed “a form of active listening.” For that reason, I’m using the theme of “The Listening Path” for the next Writing Life women’s writing circle that begins on March 31st. (Have a look under “Circles” for the Writing Life Circle (via Zoom) or for “Writing Life “from away” (via email).
In her book, Julia describes her days in Sante Fe as she writes about Listening to Our Environment, Listening to Others, Listening to Our Higher Self.
In the chapter on Listening Beyond the Veil, Week 4, Julia quotes Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: “The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.”
What a lovely phrase: “an inhabited garden.” Indeed, the memories of my parents, beloved aunts and uncles, friends and cats who have all passed on do inhabit my garden, my little part of the earth.
Listening to “the world beyond the veil,” Julia says, requires “spiritual openness.” She says: “All that is required is that we open the door. And so we write: ‘Can I hear from X?’”
She keeps in touch this way with two women friends who have passed on. Julia asked about something specific and it was if she was taking dictation as she “heard” the answer.
“But, Julia, what if your responses from the afterlife are just wishful thinking?” If so, her “wishful thinking” had led her in a positive direction, Julia says. “There can be no harm in the positive. The contact bolsters our self-worth.”
Week 5 is “Listening to Our Heroes” and one of Julia’s is Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. She has also connected to Carl Jung who answered her in a cooler way than Bill: “Ms. Cameron, you are on track. You have much to offer. You can express yourself well. Right now you are replenishing your stocks. There is much to be said for a deep, quiet life.” He actually recommended to Julia that she read Anais Nin!
Many years ago when I was teaching a creative writing class in Guelph, Ontario, I suggested that we write some advice from a beloved writer or artist. “Do you always do channeling in your classes,” a student later asked me. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Perhaps I was channeling advice directly from Frida Kahlo when I wrote a poem called “Frida’s Advice” but I thought of it as my vivid imagination and the knowledge I had of the late Mexican artist. Whatever the explanation, it is fun to do. I’ve included my poem, “Frida’s Advice,” below.
The final week or chapter 6 of The Listening Path is “Listening to Silence.” I so appreciate the silence in a poem – all that white space beyond each line where we take a pause. My poetry mentor, Patrick Lane, will have a new book of poetry released from Harbour Publishing in the Fall: The Quiet in Me.
“Most commonly, I’m told that stopping and listening to silence brings a sense of calm and possibility. For me, I know that is true,” Julia says. In each of her chapters she has “Try This” sections and in this chapter she suggests finding a quiet environment and noting your resistance to the silence and perhaps the feeling of missing out by turning off all devices. “Try making this a regular habit. Like any habit, it can become more natural with practice.”
When someone has died we offer a minute of silence, in remembrance. When someone is suffering a loss, we sit with them, no advice needed, in silence.
While we won’t necessarily follow Julia’s “Try This” sections in the writing circles, I have all sorts of ideas based on her weekly themes. I look forward to exploring them on my own and with others.
Fishing for Mermaids (Leaf Press, April 2014)
Frida’s Advice
Ask me why people are so fascinated with
my crazy life, mi vida loca,
and I answer:
it’s the combination of sinister blues, yellow love, gangrene
the difference they see as exotic,
my body,
of work
the flame in the pain.
I was in anguish and
originality,
the smell of the paint, the brush
in my hand –
transcended the pain.
I say:
Go to the centre of the fire.
See what’s there.
It may not be as hot as you think.
It may be blue cold.
Write in bed.
Surround yourself with what matters.
Explore red.
Come to Mexico.
Read Octavio Paz.
Free yourself from the still life.
As for my pain
it was always there
but an angel with cut-lace wings kept me breathing
kept me examining every fissure
on my face,
every symbol of my lineage
every radical expression
left in me.
I will write to you with my eyes, always.
“Frida’s Advice” won third prize in the Book Shelf’s Annual Poetry Contest and was published in the May/June 2005 issue of Off the Shelf, Guelph, Ontario. It is also included in Fishing for Mermaids (Leaf Press, 2014).
by Mary Ann Moore | Feb 20, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Today, as I begin to write this post, is the anniversary of my mother’s death. She died in palliative care at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto on February 18, 1995 at the age of 67. Mum was named Wilhelmina by her parents Mary Ann (Mayme) and Frank Dobberman in North Bay, Ontario and came to be known as Billie.
Mum married three times including my father Bob Moore when she was 18. Their marriage didn’t last very long, four years I think, before she left North Bay to carve out a life for herself.
Detail from bell pull
Mum’s spirit continues to be with me. I still write poems about her, remember her many gifts to me and my children, and expressions she used that she would have learned from her mother make their way into conversations. Sarah and I still use her cutlery every day (wow that’s a long time) and her crewel work hangs on the wall. The image to the left is a detail of a bell pull done in crewel work.
In the fall of 1995, the year Mum died, I went on a goddess pilgrimage to the Greek island of Crete led by Carol Christ. I had read Carol’s books and was intrigued by the idea of travelling in a circle of women; taking part in rituals to celebrate women; and learning about the ancient earth-based cultures that worshipped a Mother Goddess. Carol, known as Karolina during our travels, wrote Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete which came out in 1995.
We found the goddess in trees and caves, mountains and ocean, in the stories of my fellow pilgrims (there were thirteen of us), and in the various physical forms the people of long ago created with their own hands. The pilgrimage turned out to be a healing journey that led to me offering women’s writing circles in my Toronto living room. I found hope in knowing there had been peaceful communities in the past where women were honoured and revered. I knew it would be possible to recreate that way of life again.
The first archaeological site we visited was Knossos, near the modern city of Heraklion where Carol Christ now lives. Parts of it have been reconstructed since 1375 bce. Archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans gave the name Minoan to the culture of the early people after the legendary King Minos. The “Ladies in Blue” fresco pictured above was found at Knossos and reproduced. This means that artists filled in the blanks, so to speak, using the small fragments that were available to them as guides. It’s a modern-day depiction as is the interpretation of Knossos as a palace with a king and queen.
I have several of Carol Christ’s books including those written about pilgrimages to Crete, as well as glossy books about the various archaeological sites we visited including Malia and Gournia. I have photo albums and a few goddess reproductions including the Poppy Goddess. The original is made of terracotta and was found in a shrine excavated at Gazi on the western outskirts of Herakleion. I’m not ready to let any of these things go!
I’ve been looking at the various books to remind myself of the wonders of that journey to Crete. In recent newsletters, Carol Christ has said she has been undergoing chemotherapy treatments on the island of Crete. She will have surgery for her cancer soon. I wish her well.
In my effort to start paring down belongings this year I wanted to start with something simple which isn’t photographs and won’t be these books about Crete. I went to the bottom drawer of the living room cabinets. These are walnut cabinets that have been in Sarah’s family for many decades. Among the framed photos I had in the bottom drawer were pictures I took in Crete. They were on my wall in my Toronto apartment but there’s no room on any walls here in our Nanaimo home.
I’m appreciating the memory of the blue door that caught my eye as there are many buildings on the Greek islands that are white with blue shutters and/or doors. The vegetables in the market in Herakleion on the island of Crete looked so enticing. That’s not what you get though when you want to buy some. The beautiful ones are for display, the more misshapen ones are for purchase and they’re kept behind the display. The third framed photo shows stacks of unpainted pottery which caught my eye.
Greek salads are still a favourite and there are always Greek olives in the house. We buy Mountain Oregano, imported from Greece, from MB Mart in Nanaimo. Oregano was always sprinkled on the feta on the top of the Greek salads served family style on Crete.
Karolina will have surgery scheduled at the end of March. She’s grateful for the daffodils coming up in Heraklieon. A friend brought her some that are white with yellow centres.
I remember as Mum was dying in February 1995 (there was no treatment or surgery for her), there were yellow daffodils from B.C. outside a market in my Toronto neighbourhood.
It’s an unusually warm day
for February.
The market is trimmed
with daffodils from Vancouver.
The shopkeeper says:
have a nice day.
(from “February,” in Writing Home: A Whole Practice.)
by Mary Ann Moore | Feb 13, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
I’ve read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Ten Speed Press, 2014) and like her approach to keeping what sparks joy. I know we’re meant to do that with our book collections as well as our clothing and other belongings but I haven’t removed every book off every shelf to see if it gives me the “thrill of pleasure.”
Marie has whittled her collection of books down to thirty. That’s not going to happen for me! I keep many books for reference purposes although I do try to keep books moving such as to friends, little neighbourhood libraries, and to Well Read Books in downtown Nanaimo. Their bookstore supports all their literacy programs. I’m looking forward to the Writing Life women’s writing circles meeting in person again as I like to have book draws to pass books along.
Tisha Morris is someone else whose work attracted me and I read her book Clutter Intervention: How Your Stuff is Keeping You Stuck (Llewellyn Publications, 2018). I like what Tisha says: “In all art forms, the beauty lies in the empty space.”
While an empty space breeds fear Tisha says, “the void is also where creation is born.” Keeping unused art supplies for instance can “end up stagnating the creative process.” Tisha is right when she says: “Inspiration happens in a flash, in peak moments of life, not in piles from yesteryear.”
“Which items are relevant to you now and to where you want to go? Tisha asks. When I was writing, in my last blog, about notebooks and journals that people keep, some said they like to look back to help them write their memoir or to see how well they survived, reminding themselves of their courage and resilience.
I’m considering what Tisha has to say: “When the past is so present that your vision for your future is cloudy, fuzzy, or overwhelming, that’s when you know too much is too much.”
Recently I saw a reference to The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Scribner, 2018) and borrowed the book from the library. The author, Margareta Magnusson, describes her age as somewhere between 80 and 100. As she says in her light-hearted book: “Death cleaning is not about dusting or mopping up; it is about a permanent form of organization that makes your everyday life run more smoothly.” Doesn’t that sound ideal? The cupboards by your front door is the place to start Margareta says. And anywhere else you may have stored things such as the attic or basement. Thankfully, I don’t have an attic or basement. Or a storage locker.
Personal papers are the things I really need to go through. Margareta says don’t start with those or photographs as you’ll “get stuck down memory lane and may never get around to cleaning anything else.” She says “start with the large items in your home, and finish with the small.”
We really do need a de-cluttering guide specifically for writers as we can amass great quantities of paper with every draft of everything we’ve ever written. And there are file folders of rejection letters. Those could make a good collage, just for the fun of it. especially if there are some famous names in there.
Following her husband’s death, Margareta Magnusson took a year for death cleaning. She worked at “a steady pace” on her own, keeping in mind certain objects that her children adored.
Margareta has a sweet way of suggesting to people such as your parents who are getting old, that they ought to think about what they want to do with their “many nice things” in particular, “later on.”
She has some questions that could be posed:
Do you enjoy having all this stuff?
Could life be easier and less tiring if we got rid of some of this stuff that you have collected over the years?
Is there anything we can do together in a slow way so that there won’t be too many things to handle later?
“If you decide to downsize your home, it is a good thing not to be in a hurry,” Margareta says. She advises against getting “stuck in memories. No, now planning for your future is much more important. Look forward to a much easier and calmer life – you will love it.” All of this is done by taking care of your present life in terms of your home and garden and yourself.
[The vase pictured is one that Sarah and I passed on to a friend with some flowers in it.]
Margareta’s late husband had a toolshed (snickarbod in Swedish) where he would organize and examine his tools every day. It gradually became “what I believe today is called a ‘man cave’ Margareta says. “ In Swedish we also now sometimes call it mansdagis – a male kindergarten, which makes me smile and which feels like an entirely appropriate word.” It makes me smile too!
Another great Swedish word is fulskap, “a cabinet for the ugly.” This is “a cupboard full of gifts you can’t stand to look at, and which are impossible to regift,” Margareta says. “Usually these are presents from distant aunts and uncles that you put on display when the giver comes to visit.”
“This is a bad idea. If aunts and uncles see their gifts on show, they will only give you more!”
“What it all comes down to is, if you don’t like something, get rid of it,” Margareta says. No one is visiting these days so it’s a good time to get rid of ugly things. We’re fortunate that we can take ornaments and the like to local thrift stores in our area these days. You can always take a picture of what you’re letting go of and write about it in a notebook. Something else to let go of at some point!
“Death cleaning is also something you can do for yourself, for your own pleasure,” Margareta says. “And if you start early, at say sixty-five, it won’t seem like such a huge task when you, like me, are between eighty and one hundred.”
As I’m between 70 and 80, it’s definitely time to clear the way for what else wants to reveal itself, in the clear space, in terms of creative pursuits. And,to make it much easier for whoever has to deal with all the stuff. It’s easy to feel stuck these days as we can’t travel very far or gather in groups as we’d like to, so it’s probably a good time, being the Chinese Year of the Ox, to clear out and pare down. (2021 is a Metal year which represents a clean, pristine, even shiny environment.)
Tisha Morris says when it comes to “work supplies” which I take to include all those “ideas” files I have, let them go. (I can always write about them here!) “In seeing the bigger picture, you can let go of the old supplies and step more fully into the expanded version of your current self. Clutter is anything that keeps us anchored in the past, preventing us from moving forward.” We definitely don’t want that.
by Mary Ann Moore | Feb 9, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
I wonder if anyone reads this blog? (I think people do, they just don’t always leave comments!) A blog is like a notebook or journal but in a public form unlike the many notebooks I’ve kept through the years that no one else sees. The writing is different here as there is the expectation of readers whereas all those notebooks and journals I’ve filled are written with no one else in mind but me. I’m not planning to donate them to a university archives or leave them to my partner or children.
Among the notebooks are daily journals, travel diaries, many notebooks of reviews (for myself) of books I’ve read, notebooks that list books I’d like to read, visual journals with collages. I’ve got a perfect bound journal given to me by a friend in 1988 in which I describe things I’ve let go of. You’d think the book would be full as I’ve let go of many belongings since 1988 but alas, I didn’t always write about them. I think it’s a good idea though: writing about the importance of any object before letting it go. Really, it’s the memories of an object that are important rather than the object itself.
This blog may become that sort of letting-go type of journal in the weeks to come as the Chinese Year of the Ox which begins on February 11th is a Metal year. A Metal year is one that “represents a clean, pristine, even shiny environment in feng shui.” It’s time to “clear out, pare down, and simplify,” my We’Moon 2021 calendar says. I’m feeling in need of paring down. Among the things to clear out will be many handwritten notebooks and journals.
Notebooks and journals are records of our lives. We many want them when we’re unable to remember one friend told me. We also may use them to write a memoir or poetry as many poets turn to their notebooks for inspiration.
“I couldn’t live without my notebooks,” Rita Dove, who received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, once said. “I collect them like fetishes: my favorites are black-and-red bound notebooks that come in a variety of sizes from the People’s Republic of China.”
I wonder if Rita still uses her different notebooks at the start of each writing day, copying several entries onto a sheet of lined notebook paper “just to see how they work together.”
“Poems evolve slowly in spurts and sputters, on these college-ruled pages: a small stack of notebooks is always at the ready for browsing. For me, it all begins with a notebook: it is the well I dip into for that first clear, cool drink” wrote Rita Dove.
Other poets and writers keep notebooks too. Dorianne Laux in an essay entitled “Daily Doodles” says she was compelled to write from an early age as she wasn’t allowed to speak in the presence of her physically and sexually abusive father.
In looking back into one of her old journals, Dorianne realized: “There I was, a voice speaking to itself, a mind revealing itself to itself, a person coming into the world. I see now that I wrote to understand who I was, to become a witness to my life and to capture, without benefit of a camera, a certain slant of light.” (from Writers and Their Notebooks edited by Diana M. Raab, University of South Carolina Press, 2010)
Dorianne has students in her M.F.A. workshop keep a journal. No one will read what they’ve written but they’re required to write for an hour each day.
In the January/February 2021 “inspiration issue” of Poets & Writers magazine, some writers have described “the smudge and the scrawl” of their notebooks. Aimee Nezhukumatahil, author of four poetry collections and an essay collection, says “I worry that in this age of multitasking we forget what it means to look, really look, at something and to not rely on electricity or batteries to record it. Journaling helps me hold these moments like a hand pressed to my heart.”
In the image that is shown of Aimee’s journal, she has noted that Toni Morrison has passed away and there are “the earliest lines of what would be a poem, also a year later, that started with the mystery of not knowing how whale sharks give birth. Without this record of what I questioned and watercolored, I would have surely missed this sorrow and curiosity. I would have missed all this wonder.”
It was my Great Aunt Cec (pronounced “cease”) who kept scrapbooks and journals of her travels. That would have been where I first saw collections of such ephemera. I love to keep such mementoes myself, reflecting back on travel or even a daily excursion by creating a collage in a sketchbook or journal.
In the Poets & Writers feature, another poet, Mark Wunderlich, says: “My notebooks are also collections of ephemera – postcards, museum tickets – and these pin my work to a specific place and time. He writes in his own library with its sixteen-foot ceiling where he uses a ladder to access the upper shelves. His poetry books are behind him so he can reach back or climb the ladder to get what he wants. “And so this room is a place in which the poems I write and the poems I read and love are in a kind of sustained and ongoing dialogue.”
Mark also mentions binders where he keeps drafts of poems. Yes, I also have shelves of binders but that’s another topic for another day. Something else to let go of.
Novelist and short story writer Samantha Hunt says: “Everything I write starts in a notebook. Computers are nonprivate spaces, and I need to feel alone in order to think and write.” Samantha keeps her notebooks all together in one bookcase. “I like the thought of them mingling at night. When I return to thoughts recorded decades earlier, I’m surprised to find that my obsessions have changed little over the years.”
Samantha also notes someone who died: “September 2003: Johnny Cash died today.”
“A computer could never contain the sense of texture and treasure found in a notebook,” she says.
When I’m listening to a writer speak about their work such as Lorna Crozier or Gregory Scofield giving the Ralph Gustafson lecture at Vancouver Island University, I make notes. I even make notes if I’m watching a video of a writer being interviewed or during a podcast such as Padraig O’Tuama reading a poem. (It was one of Padraig’s podcasts that introduced me to the work of Aimee Nezhukumatahil.)
Because I consider myself a kinesthetic learner with a need to keep a pen moving as I listen, it was interesting to read Kay Ryan’s essay entitled “Notes on the Danger of Notebooks” (from Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose, Grove Press, 2020)
“You don’t have to worry so much about them [memories], in other words. And you will find that you experience a new availability of energy when you give up trying to preserve what preserves itself. You are relieved of a false and debilitating humility and can enter into a roomier frustration, a more generous appreciation of loss.”
An intriguing take on the subject, don’t you think?
Kay Ryan says: “I think we should try to do something, try to make something new, try very hard to write a poem, say; desire very much to articulate something that doesn’t yet exist, something we don’t yet know; try so hard that currents are created in the electric broth of what is not lost but not kept either, currents which draw to the mind the bits of the not-lost and not-kept that join together through the application of great mental force, extreme mental force, in some new and inevitable sequence appropriate to the new realm of the neither lost nor kept. It is incredibly stable when done right.”
“Remembering is not the negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting,” Milan Kundera says, as quoted in Kay Ryan’s essay.
Forgetting
Kay Ryan
Forgetting takes space.
Forgotten matters displace
as much anything else as
anything else. We must
skirt unlabeled crates
as though it made sense
and take them when we go
to other states.
As compelling as Kay Ryan’s opinions are, I am still fascinated by writers keeping notebooks and by those that have been published such as by Anais Nin and Virginia Woolf.
Joan Didion wrote an essay entitled “On Keeping a Notebook” and Brain Pickings featured excepts from it. Beware, looking will lead to read more about writers and their notebooks. Here’s a link to the article.
I like to keep records and that’s what many of my notebooks are. Records for whom I wonder? Do I have a need to look back at my reflections, lists, beginnings of poems? Dreams perhaps are useful to look back at if I want to work with them whether to analyze or write a poem. Mostly though, I’m not sure that I want to look back unless I think I’ll end up with a memoir like Sei Shonagaon’s Pillow Book in which the tenth-century Japanese “court lady” who lived in the Heian era, wrote of her likes, dislikes, events as well as lists of “Embarrassing Things” for example.
It’s the fact that all the journals and notebooks take up so much physical space in boxes and on shelves that has me wanting to shred, compost and/or burn. And to blog!
I will continue to write for myself as I have since I learned to write. It’s the writing I do in the moment that has the most value to me rather than the looking back. If I’m to let any of those old journals go, there may be some dipping in to lift a line for a poem.
by Mary Ann Moore | Jan 31, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
“Nothing’s changed. Everything is different,” said Linda, Sarah’s hair stylist when she came to cut Sarah’s hair in our courtyard garden one day when the weather was milder. She meant things continued to be different and in that way nothing had changed. (Or it could have been when she came inside; our only human visitor in many months.)
“Different” became our way of life in 2020 and has continued to be so. I continued to write and to do that in community. While we had to stop meeting in my living room in the spring of 2020, the Writing Life women’s writing circle continued via email. It was a practice that sustained us through the toughest days and continues to do so. While we acknowledge and honour losses of people and ways of life, we also honour the emotions surrounding those losses.
In the spring of 2020, a Nanaimo circle of women as well as women in a circle “from away,” thirteen in all, wrote on their own at home and shared their writing with the group via email. I responded to all of them and felt busier than usual.
“Calling Your Spirit Back” was the theme of the Writing Life circle based on a poem of Joy Harjo’s entitled “Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet” (from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, W. W. Norton, 2015).
On Facebook I saw someone post a message that was something like “Hey you introverts, put down that book and tell we extroverts what to do . . .” It felt that even though my connections were via email, it was an extroverted sort of activity to connect to the women in that way. I would send them notes that included poems, resources and writing practice prompts. The mandala to the left by Sarah Clark is entitled “Come to Centre.” I use it in the notes to denote each writing practice prompt.
Last spring, was a time of quiet when some people began working from home and continue to do so, shops were closed and streets were empty. For some, work got busier putting protocols in place such as at the grocery store. (Thank you for being there and all that sanitizing inside and out!) Frontline workers including my daughter who is a nurse and my son-in-law who is a police officer in Ontario were more at risk in their daily work. Some people’s livelihoods ceased to support them and they found new ways to share their products, skills and talents.
It seemed a good time to approach the writing circle “from away” with the theme of writing as a practice of self-compassion. For the April to May circle, I used the phrases “A House in the Rain, An Umbrella in the Sun” from another Joy Harjo poem. The phrases are from “Perhaps the World Ends Here” which is about a kitchen table. Here is an excerpt:
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
(included in The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1994)
In the summer, when it was okay to meet outside, there were a few small gatherings of the writing circle women. When the Writing Life circle began again in September we met in one of women’s large living room. (Thank you Diana!) Our theme was “Inside the Treasure House” as I had been thinking of various museums with their unique approaches to specific collections. I realized each person is a treasure house.
There is a gift inside you
Do not let it gather dust in a far closet
Tanya Evanson wrote in “Blood and Honey” (included in Nouveau Griot, Frontenac House, 2018). (Tanya is now known as Tawhida Tanya Evanson.)
When we set out to write, we don’t know where we’re headed. That’s why it’s good to have some rituals in place to ease the anxiety whether in the writing circle or writing on ones’ own. The November circle, “Destination Unknown: Ritual as Road Map,” acknowledged that unknown destination as well as the importance of ritual and ceremony. The circle started in person for one week and then we switched to email and Zoom. One of the writing circle members, Carol, suggested “ritual as road map” one day and I wanted to explore that theme. We had a look at various rituals and ceremonies including one’s own “tea house practice” and the hours of a monastery day.
I very much appreciate what the late Richard Wagamese had to say in about ritual and ceremony in his book One Drum: Stories and Ceremonies for a Planet (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019:
Ceremony is a way to allow our emotional energy to encounter the wonder, the awe and the reverence that comes from an encounter with the divine, the sacred. It is a road to the true nature of our selves.
In the circle, we tried our hand at writing a glosa as each week I like to look at a different poetic or creative nonfiction form. The glosa is a way of having a conversation with another poet’s poem. This is the first stanza of Patrick Lane’s “The Garden Temple” which is a glosa in which each of the poem’s stanzas ends with a line from P. K. Page’s “The Answer” (which is also a glosa):
No one comes to this garden. The dawn
moves through the bamboo beside the bridge.
It’s quiet here and I’m alone. The small nun
who led me has drifted behind the screen
and I’m quiet as I watch a slender mallard
drift on the pond into first light. She is two birds,
one above and one below. Night and day,
and night was long again. You are far away.
Tell me every detail of your day.
(included in In Fine Form 2nd edition, edited by Kate Braid & Sandy Shreve, Caitlin Press, 2016)
During the early days of the pandemic, I wrote some poems and two of them were published in anthologies of “pandemic poetry.” I wasn’t paid for the poems as is often the case with anthologies and there’s other writing I do that is not paid or pays very little for the amount of work done. I realized that I write for the love of it. There are explorations and discoveries made. I am continuing with my writing as a spiritual practice. I am part of a community of poets and writers when I correspond with them and share my work.
With one essay I wrote for a literary journal, I had the expertise of an editor who helped me improve the essay. While I won’t be paid a large amount, the editor volunteered her time making suggestions and that was a huge gift to me. There are many gifts to writing and tuning into one’s self and something larger than ourselves.
All of those musings and acknowledgements led to the theme of the circle now taking place which is ‘Writing for the Love of It.” I made a couple of collages on the theme as I like to see what the images have to tell me. I came up with some aspirations from those images such as:
May I seek direction and solace from the moon, my ancestors and muses.
May I become bold and brave in a circle of wise witnesses.
May I honour ceremony.
May I consider what complements my writing such as symbols, games, photographs, the garden.
May I embrace peace, pleasure and delightful harmony.
I’ve appreciated being able to stay connected to the women of the writing circle whether through email and Zoom. It’s good to see one another’s faces and to share our writing in this way. To some it is a lifeline. I still create a ceremony with the ringing of the ting sha and having us all take three deep breaths with thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh: one to let go, one to stay here and one to surrender to what’s next. I read an opening poem. We pass the talking piece so each woman has an opportunity to “check in” and let us know how they’re doing. In terms of Zoom, when the yellow border lights up we know it’s time for that woman to speak and the rest of us will listen without interruption. After reading and writing together, we do a “checking out” followed by a closing poem. We attempt to sing together or say the words:
The circle is open
but unbroken
merry meet
and merry part
and merry meet again
