| October 2010 Workshop Information Moderator: Jyoti Wind |
Alchemical Poetry | List of all workshops |
Jyoti read the following from Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making by John Fox: Permission to be wild and magnificent
“Earth offers us powerful images and metaphors with which to tell our stories . . . Infusing your poetry with earth imagery will help you reveal your unique voice and imagination. The stories of earth—and our stories—are interwoven, constantly changing in the cyclic process of birth, growth and death.
“In this stanza from her beautifully outrageous poem “ego tripping,” Nikki Giovanni offers a spirited vision of her ‘limitlessness’ that is glorious with images of earth.
‘I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned gold and was laid
across three continents.’”
Poem-making and the natural world give you permission to be wild and magnificent.
Your poetic musings can take you beyond conventional ways of looking at yourself.
Exercise: Create your own poem using wild metaphors drawn from the natural world to present an outrageous, yet honest, picture of yourself.
Jyoti’s poem (example):
“My voice thunders in the sky,
bringing the rain of ideas into minds.
Stars see me as a conduit
of cosmic luminosity
and lend me their wisdom,
while the earth herself
welcomes my footsteps.
I create deep ravines of beauty
with each footfall.
The pole star shifts as I breathe deeply
and earth applauds my play.”