For some time now, I have been a part of an inspiring poets who, though each living in a different part of the world, join regularly to share poems they love, and poems they have written (and would love to receive feedback on), and to engage in writing exercises. The host of this group, Elizabet Boquet, lives in Switzerland on Pernessy Street. We “met” through the NaPoWriMo challenge some Aprils ago. You might recall my mention of her debut collection, Galoshes.
In the early days of this year, Gwendolyn Soper, a US poet based in Utah, brought a prompt to our group which generate some interesting poems and no little excitement, and has resulted in a publication just out today. Here is how Liz Boquet describes it:
The idea for the #ParadiseProject was inspired by Gwendolyn Soper who tweeted a photo of one of the hand-written copies she’d made of Roger Robinson’s iconic poem, “A Portable Paradise,” (which she’d given as gifts to family). Mr. Robinson saw her tweet and replied, “You should write a poem based on it also. Use the framework and add in your own biographical details. Try it!!!”
Gwendolyn took his advice and wrote her own paradise poem. She ultimately guided participants in a Pernessy Poetry workshop through the same prom(pt). This collection is the result of that workshop.
Roger Robinson is an award-winning British writer, musician, and performer who divides his life between the UK and Trinidad. The collection has been shared with Roger Robinson and received his blessing. I am so happy to have been introduced to his poetry and his teaching this year, and also to have my own poem included in the collection.
If you would like to look at this brand-new publication, click HERE.
Wishing you a good start to the sweet month of June!
Sometimes, when you least expect it, you can make a new friend who lives on the other side of the world.
Poet Elizabeth Boquet
This past April, during the flurry of writing and posting a new poem each day for National Poetry Writing Month, I encountered the work of award-winning Elizabeth Boquet, raised in the States and now residing in Lausanne, Switzerland. I was drawn to the light-hearted word play in her work, and she followed my own poetic explorations. (It was delightful to me to learn that someone several time zones away recognized the landscape of Mongegan Island, off the coast of Maine that I explored in a poem called “Crossings” on April 29, 2020. Later on, when I read her poem, “Visiting Parents’ Ashes, Penobscot Bay,” I realized how very well she knows the Maine coast.)
Last summer, I was honored when Elizabeth asked if I might contribute a blurb for the cover of her first collection, Galoshes, which contains insightful, deeply soulful, and playful poems (mostly English and a few in French.) Naturally, I said “Yes!” Not only did I get to read a gallery copy but I now have a paper copy to read–and re-read–at my leisure. Let me tell you, on these grey wintery days of Covid-inflected cabin fever, I have been glad to step into Boquet’s often sunny mindscape. I visit and revisit the good aunt advice in “A Lockdown Sorta Sonnet,” the nostalgia of “Life is Like a Lady Slipper,” and the elegiac tone of “Carrying the Ashes,” among other favorites.
Take a look at Boquet’s website to see some of her work, or, to purchase your own copy of Galoshes (electronic or paper), you can click HERE. (Could make a lovely holiday gift for a word-loving friend!) Below, you can read some mini-reviews, including my own:
Another thing you will find on Boquet’s website are stunning graphic versions of some of the poems in Galoshes. Her dear friend and graphic designer, Sue Niewiarowski, (a specialist in book design) have frequently collaborated to present her poems in visual ways. Here is one of my own favorite examples.
Elizabeth Boquet reading at the Frost PlaceElizabeth Boquet receiving an award for her poetry from the Geneva Writers Group in 2017
In this time of anger and anguish, of pandemic and protest, of stress and unrest, I am still trying to make sense of current events. I have not yet been able to examine my feelings or thoughts by making poems. And yet, poetry is even more important to me right now. But why?
I think it is because poetry–and all art–creates a balance I need between emotion, thought, and order (or form, or structure). This spring, in the new days of quarantine and pandemic, making art each morning in April provided a structure and a sense of forward motion in a time when I might otherwise have felt unmoored.
In the past week, although the surface of my own small life has not been visibly affected by the horrific public murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis or the resultant civic convulsions from it, it is certainly affecting me and probably you, too. Some responses are immediate–disbelief giving way to tears, daily following of news coverage, worry for the safety of protesters and bystanders in the cities of my nation, observing the current curfew in my small town. I can tell that this moment of the age in which I live has drilled deep into my psyche. I know that at some unpredictable time in the future I will find myself looking at this collective trauma through the lens of my own, as-yet-unable-to-be-written poem. Today, though, I am turning to the words of others.
“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. ” Robert Frost, “The Figure a Poem Makes” 1939
When I think of the year 1939–the year of Yeats’s death and of Auden’s elegy for him, a time when (in Auden’s phrase) “all the dogs of Europe bark”, when the whole world was convulsing with what would devolve into unprecedented human violence and the dawn of what we now call the nuclear age–I wonder how I would have been affected or responded to it if I had been living then. There is no way of telling.
I tend to gravitate to the small and the personal, to seeing the bright side and to making–a garden, a pair of socks, a pot of soup, a quilt, a photograph, or a poem. And I think that in times of unrest, the world still needs these small life-affirming gestures. What I know for sure is that I do. I need anchors, stays against confusion, however momentary.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I saw with horror the news coverage of the plane hitting the World Trade Center. It was a Tuesday, a beautiful sunny day in Minnesota. I had a two-year-old who was healthy and laughing and needed breakfast, so I fed her, then read her a story. The doorbell rang. It was my friend, LaNelle, come as she did every week to take Julia for a walk so I could teach my class. After hugging them goodbye, I walked from my house down the hill to the new yoga studio I had opened with my teaching partner, Lynda Grady. I didn’t know if anyone else would show up that morning, but I was glad to have keys to a space dedicated to quiet and peace, at least for myself. It turned out that the class was packed that morning.
I don’t remember much about the flow of postures but I do recall the flow of our breath, especially as we chanted “OM” together at the end after relaxation in the Corpse Pose, after a few moments of letting everything go, of returning to the present moment and each to our own body. I remember an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for this voluntary community. I felt the truth of the phrase, more resonant than ever this spring, “We are all in this together.” We each respond in our own way, yet we truly are all in this together, even when we feel alone.
I see, too, that part of my own response is to mourn and another part is to carry on, with my own work (including this blog) and with helping others as I can. In particular, I see that it is important to speak one’s truth as constructively as possible–even when that voicing can only for the moment be a sob or a howl. That is why I will continue to try to be alert to the poems that want to be written down and the other small gestures, and continue to share words and images here. That is why I appreciate all the editors who continue with their important work of sharing individual voices collectively. And that is why I am turning to the work of other artists now with heightened need for the clarification and solace it offers.
In closing, I would like to share with you this new poem, a double haiku, by Elizabeth Boquet, raised as a New Englander like Frost, now living abroad. I share this link to the short, powerful poem and its stunning graphic with her permission. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you, all.
Leslie
P. S. Each day, I say aloud (at least once!) the ancient Gayatri Mantra. Sometimes I chant it in Sanskrit, sometimes in this favorite English-language translation. Often at dawn. Often in the garden. New words bring freshness of understanding, while time-honored ones offer a different kind of comfort. We need both. And so I thought I would share this one thing more that I did not write but I depend upon.
You, the source of all power, Whose rays illuminate the whole world, Illuminate also my heart, That it may do your work.
