Hello, dear readers.
I’ve been away for a while, dealing with an assortment of ongoing health issues. I haven’t been writing much; coherence has been scant and hard to hold onto. Instead I’ve been squeezing joy out from wherever and whenever I can through singing, learning to play the ukulele, being with friends and catching the sun before it sets. Late summer is a funny time of making the most of the season’s radiant dregs and shoring up for the long dark ahead.
My writing practice has fragmented, more so than usual, since I last wrote to you here. Truthfully, there’s not much to write about when you’re spending hours under a weighted blanket, eye mask on, earplugs in. It doesn’t help that my neighbours have been doing heavy construction for weeks—the last thing anyone wants, anytime, but especially when trying to recover from autistic burnout.
I did, however write my most honest poem to date. That’s a bold claim, and most poems carry within them the multiplicious light of truth anyway. I wrote this one when fatigue—a meagre name for a leviathan—was sucking every ounce of me away from myself. To where, I wonder? My frustration was so bitter I needed to untangle it and spit it out. I didn’t have the wherewithal to embellish, to make language work hard (or let it work me hard), to call forth image and metaphor to surprise, enchant or twist the knife. What emerged was something plain from every angle. I love it, even as I hate the state I was in, and will be in again.
IT EATS YOU UP
I regret to inform you I am a rubber chicken.
Sounds are chalk scratching bone.
My soul wants to crawl
out of its casing. I tell my brain
not to be clever when it can't.
Sleep hides in a dried up well.
I am too tired to seek.
Emotions are boring and ugly
when I can't dress them up.
Discipline is for the lucky.
I played with putting the poem through an Instagram filter, which fragmented it in a way that I enjoyed; turned it into a visual piece, which is something I’ve been toying with and excited to expand into. Not with Instagram filters, but more in terms of vispo (visual poetry) and multidimensional space.
When you think of your most honest piece of writing, what comes to mind?
Pre-burnout—or, more precisely, leading up to it—I had approached a good friend of mine to put together a writing workshop. So far this year, I’ve been facilitating solo—and while I enjoy that, I also relish the sizzle of inspiration that sparks between good collaborators. I met Zibusiso years and years ago at an open mic in the city I call home. Along with another dear friend, we quickly grew close the way kindred spirits often do when we find each other. Despite not living in the same country for six years (who’s counting!?), we’ve stayed in each other’s lives in meaningful ways.
Since I started offering workshops earlier this summer, and with both of us being poets and teachers (them presently, me previously), it made sense to open up this dimension of our relationship. As I imagined it might, designing the workshop has deepened our writing practices and our friendship in delightful, exciting ways. You must be on tenterhooks, dear reader, so I won’t keep it from you a moment longer…
On the 9th and 16th of September, Zibusiso and I are offering ‘First Light: Writing Toward Truth’, a craft workshop we named after something Toni Morrison said about her approach to writing. We’re interested in exploring the complexities of truth within poetry and prose writing; how to prepare ourselves to listen for it, and how to translate what we hear, see and intuit into language.
Register for the workshop here.
The first Saturday will be devoted to getting curious about our own and each other’s writing processes. We’ll ask questions like Where does the poem or story begin? What are the preparations for listening? What challenges do you encounter when you sit down with an idea? We'll collectively resource and scaffold an approach to writing with an ear and eye on truth that can be adapted and returned to over and over again. There will be ample time to discuss, to share ideas, and best of all, to write!
In the time between our two workshops, participants will be encouraged to keep a daily practice of observing and recording the world around them, and to create a piece to share and workshop on the second Saturday. Attendance on the second day is optional. We know it’s hard to have two Saturdays free in a row. But if you can come for both, we enthusiastically encourage it so that you get the most out of what we’ve planned for you! As always, writers/artists across all genres and disciplines welcome.
Before I sign off, I’ll leave you with a song I’ve been singing a lot of recently.