October Newsletter 2024

“The Bible was my first exposure to poetry. My mother used to keep it open to psalm 23 as a constant reminder of God’s presence. I grew up singing hymns at school and church and was always surrounded by the poetry in music. When my world became rootless and chaotic as a teenager, I started writing poetry voraciously. It was a way to deal with the hard edges of life. Poetry became a conversation between me and God, a way to make sense of the world I lived in and the traumas I was going through. In writing poetry I could speak the unspeakable, try to untangle the webs of my experiences and find a way to rejoice in the miracle of being alive. Without realizing it, writing poems was like praying.

I first began practicing Kundalini yoga when I was in my twenties. It was a natural progression of my interest in mysticism and the occult. I would spend long periods of time doing the asanas, chanting mantras and sitting cross legged in silence – but that was before I had children. Now these meditations have become little moments grabbed between making dinner and washing the dishes to sit quietly and gaze out of the window at the laurel oaks in my garden, or write a few lines about my day that warmed or rattled me. These moments of reflection and contemplation become poems. Sometimes poems come to me in a blast of inspiration like I am channeling a message from above and other times they arise from my subconscious, like whispers from my intuition, or as if the words and images had been plucked from the Akashic records.

As well as writing, reading poetry brings us closer to the divine because like religious scripture, poems that resonate with us have an element of truth and wisdom that reveals our humanity and ignites a self-awareness that broadens our view of ourselves and the world we live in.

…In writing…I must become present enough to distil an emotion or experience in order to create a language that is evocative and true. Without darkness there can be no light and without suffering there can be no salvation and salvation cannot be achieved without self awareness.

…As a writer everything in life becomes a story, a poem. In paying close attention to your life, you are faced with the miraculous cycle of life and death. Like an intuitive response to prayer, poetry speaks to us between the lines with a knowingness that is both personal and universal. When we know ourselves intimately, we have more compassion and understanding for others. Each stanza, or room of words, each line break and metaphor carefully chosen speaks to that part of us we call the soul.”