Day 1 saw me facilitating a poetry workshop at the Benwisken Centre in Sligo with a few other fools for poetry. Gathered by a fire we had some creative sparks, we fed the flames with shared techniques and thoughts.
My own thoughts were echoed by Poetry Ireland’s logo that arrived in an email on 31st March – Poetry Connects. The older I get the more I find that connection is a kind of cure all for what ails the world. More, poetry has a way of being both. It weds what Eavan Boland calls the ‘I’ and the ‘We.’ Or, another way, the personal and universal.
So after three hours and a shared lunch we set off for landscape, some of which fed W. B. Yeats’ own poetry. Some, which we hoped, would inspire our own poems. We walked the glen around the mill ruins of Gleniff. We drove passed Diarmuid and Grainne’s Cave on the Horseshoe Drive; the fairy door was open. The poets went to the ocean at Streedagh as the tide went out and we picked up fossils and held eons in our hands. We stopped for tea and coffee at Glencar and then walked up to the waterfall that figures in the imaginings of Yeat’s poem Stolen Child.
I found that ‘the line’, the hook, eluded me yesterday. I did write a verse, completely off workshop topic.
There is no shame
in imperfection
Even when the tutor blames herself
for lack of application.
For it is not for want
of inspiration.
Perhaps the brain’s gone lame?
Or am I just a poet dilletante
dabbling in literary shallows.
For many may toil, but
few may be hallowed
scribbling across this blank page floor.
I just picked up Eavan Boland’s book A Woman Without a Country, finally out over here. So I am delighted to see a reference here with you, and thought, of course! Synchronicity. Plus you are writing a poem a day, for NatProWriMo. Which I love. I think surrounding yourself with poets, poetry, nature, is a way of filling the soul so that when whatever is turning over inside you, has refreshment and nourishment and can find its way or through you. Out of which a way is made to deeper poetry. I will be reading and following you here, dear one! Inspiration for both of us, thank you.
Through another 30Days friend I recently was introduced to the Eavan Boland book “A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet.” That’s one of my companions to this 30Day journey.
Deligthed to be here, Bee. Your words always make me happy, inspired, thoughtful. So glad there will be a poem a day to read from you.