Finding Your Creative Voice in Challenging Times or in Times of Possibility

Approaching poetry and poem-making with a commitment to nourish and encourage healing When we approach poetry and poem-making with a commitment to nourish and encourage healing—that includes bringing our attention to the whole person as much as we do the whole poem. Simone Weil said, “Pure attention is prayer.” The prayer of pure attention doesn’t mean religiosity; rather, it is an awareness that with deep listening & presence, it is possible to experience person and poem as an expression of the sacred. Carl Jung said, “Please remember, it is what you are that heals, not what you know.” After 41 years of sharing poetry-as-healer, I know the making of a poem, joined with attention and deep listening, is a way to discover and show people who I am and to learn who other people are. In “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” William Stafford captures what this means. This is the first stanza of that poem: If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. Our day of poem making will happen on November 15th—just 12 days after the November 3rd National Election. We could be faced with that difficult time—or we could also, as individuals and as a country, welcome great possibility. Either way, let’s not “miss our star.” Let’s affirm that our creative voices matter! Note: This will be a poetry writing session. Bring writing materials. Bio: John Fox, Practitioner of Poetic Medicine, is a poet, educator, and author. His books include Finding What You Didn’t Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making (1995) and Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making (1997). He is the founder of The Institute for Poetic Medicine (2005), a nonprofit that brings poetry-as-healer to people considered by our culture to live at the margins.