Once Again Around the Bardic Circle

Once upon a time I was a part of a Bardic Circle (referred to as Bardic), that met every week to share the bardic arts with one another. It could be something we created, or not. It could be any format or genre, including prose, poetry, song, music, visual arts, crafts, etc. Technically speaking the crafts and visual arts are not bardic arts, but whatever. We met for over two years, and then circumstances changed and we petered out and quit meeting. There has been a lot of debate and discussion about why it petered out, everyone has their pet theory, but the reality is, it did and we all moved on to other creative projects, many of them very close to our hearts.

Now another community member (who was not a part of Bardic), has reopened the discussion of reestablishing the circle (it goes in cycles). This is where it gets interesting. Pet theories have been trotted back out about what went "wrong" or why we quit, and there is an email thread of various conditions and needs of various potential participants.

Bardic worked because the energy for it worked. We had one person who was unfailingly passionate about it and so did the poking about scheduling and venue each week. We had a default venue at that person's house, although if someone else wanted to host they were always welcome to, and we did change venues around. We had an informal food convention whereby there was food, sometimes dinner, sometimes more snacky. And when it was bedtime, the host would holler, "Get Out Of My House!" But really, it worked because it fed something in us, and so we kept coming back week after week.

I don't know if that hunger is still there, or, assuming it was satiated, if it has been reborn. The community is changing and has changed. Bardic was a big part of my seeing my peers about twice a week--once at Bardic and once or twice on the weekend. Now I see people maybe once a month. Some people I see three or four times a year. We are drifting apart, and the passion that has bound us seems to be fading.

Maybe it could be resurrected. Maybe it should be. Or maybe it is time for something new, instead of a rehash of something old. Something to ponder, anyway.

A Family of Children and Trees

I went to hear Joy Harjo perform and read her poetry Friday night. My friend Thandiwe Shiprah has been dreaming of bringing her to Nashville for years, and finally managed to get the art grant money to get it done. I did have a moment of disorientation when I walked in and found out it wasn't free like a Facebook friend had said, but since I was already there in the beautiful new space of the W. O Smith Community Music School, I decided to spring for it. 

Some of the lines of her poetry struck me like blows to the chest or hammers suddenly released from their moorings to ping inside my skull. One line in particular that stuck with me talked about drops of blood falling to the earth and springing up into daughters, sons, and trees. As someone on the cusp of making babies and obsessed with getting to the woods, it really resonated with me. That is exactly how I feel about life. The trees are as close to me as children, and the longing I have for them in my life is very similar to the longing I have for kids. I have also seen my partner mourn a beloved shade tree that fell in a storm, and I understood completely. 

What I long for, really, is to be in full intimacy with the lives of my children and the land. I yearn to be in long term relationships with trees, to get to know kids and trees and earth as they grow ever closer to being their fullest selves, to protect the womb, the soil, from whence they come, and to nourish them with nutrients and love even as they enrich my life. 

It is the same hunger, the same bone-deep longing, but until I heard that line in that poem, I had not realized. I had not seen that my yearning for land and my yearning for children are at their heart the same yearning for family of my own.   

Poetry is like Gravity

A couple weeks ago I went to the tail end of a poetry workshop that was a part of a larger weekend event. It was there that I realized that I had lost my poetic voice. When I was in school, I used to write the kind of poetry all teens write. I remember I had a whole set of poems about the joys of driving, and another running theme was definitively, often rhythmically, sexual. But more than that, I was deeply involved with the Literary Arts Magazine in high school and received acknowledgment from teachers and peers as a poet. 

That changed when I got to college. I submitted to the LitMag there and was rejected except for two lines taken out of context. I read my work at an open mic and an older woman came up to me and said, "You think a lot, don't you," which sounded critical to my ears. I lost confidence, and even though I have continued to write prose and a lot of my creative prose blends into the poetic, I have really stopped looking for poems or playing with the poetic form. I decided at the recent workshop that I would like to reclaim and rediscover my poetic voice.

Since I am such a lover of NaNoWriMo, I thought I would do a NaPoWriMo for myself (this does exist independently of my project here.) I decided that since NaNo is 50,000 words, I would do 50 poems in one month. And since I didn't want to wait for the 1st, I decided I would go Dark Moon to Dark Moon and wrap up on March 15th. 


Poetry seems to be like gravity. As soon as I relaxed my muscles, so to speak, I fell right into it. I have been prolific. I could easily write 100 poems this month, or more. I sit quietly and the poems are like many colored ends of yarn poking out at me from all directions. All I have to do is grasp their first lines and tug, and voila! out pops a poem. 


I cannot claim that all my poetry is good, because of course it isn't. And at one point about a week into the project, I wrote a poem about how much I dislike my poetic voice for over-dramatizing everything, but then I just kept on going. A project like this is more about quantity than quality, and the experiment over the perfect. I have written some awful poems. But I have also written some very decent ones, and a lot that I would deem good enough. 


Perhaps after the 15th I will begin studying poetry again, looking for what it is that sets good poetry apart from the bad or indifferent. I suspect it is the quality of the poem to inspire, surprise, and create empathy through its use of imagery, sensuality, and comparison. 


This has been and continues to be a very interesting project. I am glad.