A Heck of a Wend!

Well, where do I even begin to debrief the past week. After looking on from the sidelines for some seventeen years as friends and visiting artists of diverse varieties gathered here for Faith and the Arts summer schools, and for the past few years for the mid year Artists Retreats, my time had finally come. From Friday evening through the next four days, affectionately dubbed our ‘wend’ for want of a better name as it was a longer than long weekend, a bunch of dancers, painters, drawers, poets, writers, singers, musos, weavers, performers brushed up against each other, bounced off each other, embraced each other, encouraged, collaborated, cheered, cried and laughed together.

Seeing what the process had released in others in the past in terms of their inner creative journey, and the expression and output that had produced, the fidgeting on my office chair reached a point where the urge to take the plunge into the creative pool just had to be obeyed. With no specific plan in mind of what I wanted to achieve with my writing, the possibilities were both non existent and limitless.

What I wasn’t expecting, was that the sharing from other artists of their own stories set off something inside me, evoking responses which took on poetic form of a style I hadn’t played with much before. The somewhat misguided desire when writing is to say something big and profound and so meaningful that everyone will hang off your every word and proclaim you to be the genius you always knew you were (slight delusion but we can all dream!). What resonates with me though as I read and is so obvious anyway, the most profound images whether visual, written in prose, poetry or song, are usually the most simple, those drawn from our own everyday experiences.

Taking those everyday images and situations, seeing them from a different angle, presenting them in a way maybe not considered before, highlighting the little details, that’s when they have the potential to take on new meaning and the power to affect us deeply.

One poem produced during the retreat came out of what one artist shared of how we tend to compartmentalise our lives, seeing each part separate and to be dealt with in isolation, rather than allowing all the parts to interact and influence each other in a more holistic way. Entitled Boxed it ended up turning into a 3 metre long poem installation utilizing boxes of various shapes and sizes, something I would never have contemplated before, other than simply presenting poetry in written or spoken form. It's a bit hard to read in picture form, so you'll have to make do with just the verse.

Life of many

disparate parts

each one a part of

each one apart from

the whole.

Separated

Four walls

a top and bottom

neat and tidy.

A box for work

and family

and one that says

I get my way

with home and kids

and TV box

school box, tool box

car and let’s go far box

on our frantic holiday

In that teeny tiny box

left over just for play.

Kick aside the sick box

with its soggy

cardboard sides.

Hide it behind the well box

with the faith box

and the doubt box

and the money box

which empties out

far quicker

than it should.

The reject box

looms large

but the friends box

settles in the midst

to remind us

life is good.

Boxes lined up

row on row

easy to handle

one by one

but hard to carry

stacked one

on one on one on one.

Buried under heavy boxes

cracking under pressure boxes

really isn’t very wise

try not to

Compartmentalise.

Lift the lid

and you might find

your opened boxes

spill their guts

and dare

to even open up

your mind.

Intertwine

Let the parts combine

Let tentacles

reach out

to places where they’ve never been

Let them touch

forbidden territory

Seek out

hidden truths

Discover waiting sights

as yet unseen.

Take apart the boxes

those rigid

separate boxes

and let their

tangled contents

make you whole.