The Poetry of Clouds

and the art of paying attention

October 6, 2024

Hello You,

The evening light changed this week in my corner of the world, washing everything around me — the sky, the landscape, the sea — in a magical golden glow. To my mind, it’s the stuff of poetry and dreams — both of which I’ve embraced in a BIG way as of late, and that’s been really good medicine.

The benefits of seeing the world with a poet’s eye.

Finding a path to story

In the memoir workshop I taught last week, I offered a series of exercises that I hoped might bring the participants closer to finding the heart of their personal stories. Far too often, when you give yourself the task of putting complex memories into words, you instantly lose sight of why you want to get them down in the first place. Why are you telling anyone this? the blank page mocks. What is this even about? Paralyzed by fear, it becomes nearly impossible to know where to start.

To help remove some of that anxiety, I began the workshop with a round of erasure poetry. Everyone was given a copy of the same page from an old book, and then asked to create an erasure poem by choosing words and phrases that spoke to them, then blotting out the rest of the text with a black marker. The result was an amazing collection of honest, unique, and personal poems that absolutely dazzled. What a fabulous start!

I’m kicking myself now for not taking photos of those poems, but hey, we were living in the moment. Here are a couple examples from past workshops, as well as one odd one of my own, inspired by a tale in a very strange storybook where a mother teaches her daughter a “lesson” by dishing out a bit of bad behaviour to show her “how it feels.” Yikes.

Two samples of erasure poetry

Try to remember peace.

The art of paying attention.

Our hearts as well as poetry are best nurtured by paying attention. The world is overflowing with senseless, anxiety-producing distractions that keep us from truly engaging with each other and with what really matters. We jump at the ding of notifications on our phone 24/7. We curate select moments from our daily lives on social media that we hope will be “like” worthy. In the end, we’ve whittled ourselves down to shadows of our whole selves rather than living life, warts and all. And it makes me worry. I feel as if there’s a world full of humans out there, sleep walking through their days, longing to be truly seen. I’ve been trying my best to be eyes up, face-front whenever I’m out and about these days —present, attentive, and as Susan Sontag would say, “eager.”

The Awe Report

So, I guess this past week for me has been all about looking for and finding light — in the landscape around me, in others, and in myself — and I have to say, the search was totally worth it. Here are three images I collected (two from my backyard, and one from the brilliant IG feed of the Emily Dickinson Museum) that kind of say it all.

Gathering light.

Closing thoughts

Thanks as always for taking the time to read my words, and for having a bit of a think over them. I’d love to know where you’ve been finding poetry and light in your world these days, so please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Until next time, may you find plenty of magic along your way.

My medicine cabinet.