Psycholingualgeography is definitely the most pretentious title I ever gave a poem. I tried to change it on numerous occasions but the poem wouldn’t shift so it had to stay. It means ‘the language of the land’. An obsession over the years has been trying to reflect or share the myriad ways in which the land speaks to us, and I use the shape of the words on the page to mirror internal landscapes, but I can never explain it…
Sat on a 30hr ferry north, taking it slow, putting less miles on the van, less stress on our hearts. Remembering these words written on an overnight train across India a few years ago, & thinking that we are so much more than the one-dimension of work, or the narrow confines of our Instagram account, or even the family/community roles designated to us. We are kaleidoscopic, with infinite combinations of ourselves to share with the world. We try things, then…
Some years ago I read an article where a scientist had written the name of the universe. It had something like 30+ syllables in it, each one denoting a different element or component. I thought about this for months and months because it just didn’t feel right. The naming of something is so important: it can be prophetic and expansive, or limiting and prejudicial. This poem probably took about a year to write in the end because whenever I walked…
homecoming: I am done with narrowing potential / gifting ‘I should’ to the water I watch the bubbles leave her mouth as she is swallowed / when the sun is liquid in the sky I am sanddunes, granular / when rainclouds enfold, I expand into the water-cycle / this is what prevents grief from hardening into arrogance // shape-shifting I lay claim to no form (I am every form) / this is how I return / as the sun sets…
When my mental landscape shifted dramatically some years ago I had to be outside as much as possible, immersing in nature. This was the strangest experience because I wasn’t brought up with the outdoors. My family cannot name all the birds and trees, I had no concept of the cycles of the moon and felt no great desire to spend long periods of time alone in nature. When that changed and the natural world exploded into life I felt compelled…
Thinking today about gratitude. About truly looking at what is around me and showing appreciation for these things. The guy who lives in this van pictured came here with his elderly dog so that she’d have somewhere beautiful to see out her final days. She died recently and we were all devastated. Life is such a transient, ephemeral thing – as beautiful as we make her. If you’d have said ten years ago (when first taking the plunge into being…
Writing a lot of political poems at the moment. At least the current situation offers plenty of creative fodder – depressingly huge amounts of it. conflicted: you offered purpose when I was lost / taught me to dream as cloud formations / enduring incessant rain, I grew tall in the form of pine & when harsh / words & arid ground gripped at feet I became an olive branch // together we mapped landscapes / unfolded across mountains that shifted…
Been thinking a lot about what it means to be an artist these days. What is expected of us, how we are supposed to be in the world, and maybe it could be said that being creative is freedom, but this can sometimes manifest in people thinking they have a right to decide how or what you should create. I had some early lessons in this, as I’ve said in a previous post, when I found the courage to evolve…
I haven’t seen many dandelions on Crete yet. They are one of my favourite plants – such tenacity! And every part of her can be used as food or medicine. I have some dried dandelion tea though so that will suffice. But I woke thinking of dandelion today; remembering why I love her strength in the face of such adversity, even when whole TV ad campaigns are built around eradicating this most beautiful, useful, giving plant from people’s lives. My…
Integrity: the supermoon tugs at your womb / self-loathing needles out through the pores of gossamer skin to blossom then / wither in silvered light // in dreams you are visited by foxes that coax the yowling night cats of self-doubt from the holes in your threadbare heart / they exit your soul with joyful abandon but still / you are bereft & hollow without that exquisite gnawing at your belly / without their fussing & clawing behind deadened eyes…