Nature never shuts down

 Open Winter 

John Clare (1793-1864) 

Where slanting banks are always with the sun

The daisy is in blossom even now

And where warm patches by the hedges run

The cottager when coming home from plough

Bring home a cowslip root in flower to set;

Thus ere the Christmas goes the spring is met

Setting up little tents about the fields 

In sheltered spots - primroses when they get

Behind the wood’s old roots where ivy shields 

Their crimpled, curdled leaves will shine and hide

- Cart ruts and horse footings scarcely yield 

A slur for boys just crizzled and that’s all.

Frost shoots his needles by the small dyke side 

And snow is scarce a feather’s seen to fall.

* crizzled - crisp, just frozen over

I was searching for this poem online as it's not one of the John Clare favourites but couldn't find it.  So as I revive my blog after a long silence I thought I'd make this one better known.  John Clare is having a well-deserved moment just now and maybe someone will be searching for this poem and find it here. Just what we all need right now - little symbols of hope. 

Weeds, wilderness and water voles.

Inversnaid (1881)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

I was very excited to re-discover this poem last week thanks  to Scottish/Icelandic writer Sally Magnusson who mentioned it on Radio 3.
What a tour de force. 

This foaming, roiling, celebratory poem shows a side of Gerard Manley Hopkins (GMH) that we don't see enough of.

When I was studying Hopkins at school it was all about the "Terrible Sonnets" and his depressions. The language is so startling and rich that it makes me despair of ever writing a decent poem.  And look at the date it was written!

GMH was way ahead of his time in every way. 

Inversnaid could well be a poster poem for the current environmental movement.  We do need the wildness and wet, the weeds and the wilderness. I live in a part of Scotland where there are no water-shortages and one is never far from the sound of water. Such a privilege.  Many parts of Britain have lost their wild places.

Yorkshire was getting a bit short of water voles

so it released about 100 back into the wild in 2016 and many other wildlife trusts are working hard to restore habitat and increase populations again. 

I was inspired by news coverage this week of the re-introduction of water voles. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045644w
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/02/26/ratty-begins-fightback-water-voles-still-desperate-need-help/

Apparently Scotland has some rather exotic black water voles. I am still on the look-out for one. 

Why this passion for the water vole? Well apart from its need for wilderness and wet that is a characteristic we share, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is one of my favourite novels. Who could forget Urk and his perverted love of  Elfine and the wee beasties?  'I put a cross in water-vole's blood on her feedin' bottle when she was an hour old, to mark her for mine...'

I love this novel because, apart from the fact that it makes me laugh, it taught me that it was OK to mock Great Literature. Mostly a parody and de-bunking of Precious Bane by Mary Webb (1924) that even won a literary prize in its day,  it also reminds me of the humourless and bleak qualities of D.H. Lawrence at his worst and Thomas Hardy ditto.  Both writers have their sublime moments but they also plumbed the depths of joyless pretension as far as I am concerned. 

So water-voles are a part of our culture in every sense of the word and I am thrilled that their numbers are recovering. 

We need another poem at this point 

Sadly I can't find one worth printing about water voles but let's return to the superb Gerard Manley Hopkins.  (He did have a sense of humour and one of my favourite anecdotes about him comes from the time when he was a trainee priest and wanted to get into a room where a long meeting of his seniors was being held. It was claimed that he blew pepper through the keyhole to break up the meeting.)

The Windhover

To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Words for wellbeing. Hopkins thought this one of his best and I agree with that. My favourite line has to be, 'My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird...'.  This is a man familiar with the black dog of depression and natural beauty was for him a huge healing force.  

I hope you are able to take a walk on the wild side when you need solace. 

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Arts & Health - Words for Wellbeing

This post is a signpost. 

I want to try and offer directions to things that relate to the growing "Words for Wellbeing" movement.

Many people believe, and much research has shown, that expressive writing helps us to heal.

Arts and Health is a rich and varied territory and practitioners work creatively in many ways. We use art, music, dance, drama, literature and just about anything else in the vast range of human creativity. Our aim is to help others to express themselves more freely, reach a better understanding of their problems, re-connect with themselves and others and start to feel a greater sense of wellbeing. 

I am a poetry specialist so I use words as my medium, along with other communication essentials such as active listening and kindness. One can never overestimate the value of kindness.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/kindness

Kindness is the name of a remarkable poem by Naomi Shihab Nye and you can follow the link above and take a look.  This is typical of the sort of poem that can be a powerful springboard for discussion and creative writing. It begins: 

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

Powerful emotions such as anger are often seen as dangerous (which of course they can be) but we are rarely encouraged to express them safely before they become dangerous.  Women in particular are discouraged by social conditioning in the U.K from expressing even the most justifiable anger. 

You may have come across this poem before:

I was angry with my friend

I told my wrath, my wrath did end

I was angry with my foe;

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

Blake's poem talks about the destructive power of unexpressed anger.  It can turn poisonous. 

Anger can turn inwards and lead to depression. Or it can be mis-directed. We shout at our loved ones because we dare not shout at the boss. We suddenly explode at a totally inappropriate moment. 

Poetry at its best is a compressed and richly rewarding form of language that can offer people a way out of the dark wood and back into the light.  When I was going through the Dark Wood I found Seamus Heaney's remarkable translation of the opening of Dante's Inferno to be strangely consoling and cathartic. 

Dante's Inferno Canto I

Translated by Seamus Heaney

In the middle of the journey of our life

I found myself astray in a dark wood

where the straight road had been lost sight of.

How hard it is to say what it was like

in the thick of thickets, in a wood so dense

and gnarled

the very thought of it renews my panic.

It is bitter almost as death itself is bitter.

But to rehearse the good it also brought me

I will speak about the other things I saw there.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinnova la paura!

Tant’è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ ho scorte. 

Again I am drawn to the Blake illustration


I especially like the line, "But to rehearse the good it also brought me I will speak about the other things I saw there".

By reliving, processing and sharing (even if it's just with our private notebook) a distressing experience we somehow begin to feel its pain less sharply.  Pain such as grief may never fully go away, we don't "get over it" but the wound heals and we can find our way out of the Dark Wood.



If you are looking for poetry there are many wonderful resources available thanks to the internet.
poets.org is a US site.  https://www.poets.org

In the UK we have https://www.poetryarchive.org 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org

and there are many others. 

There are many outstanding organisations that support practitioners and help to develop research in this area. 

One of the best is Lapidus International.

https://lapidus.org.uk

 

Lapidus is a membership organisation supporting practitioners, offering professional development and conducting or assisting with research. 

Much of the content is for members only but some information is accessible to all. 

I am also including a few links to articles or threads that have taken my attention in the last few weeks.  Mental health services (and lack of them) and the benefits of the arts for greater wellbeing are very much in the spotlight just now. 

'It's time to recognise the contribution arts can make to health and wellbeing' | Healthcare Professionals Network | The Guardian

https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/art-boosts-long-term-mental-health-new-study/

http://www.researchintorecovery.com/what-is-recovery-and-wellbeing
https://www.rachel-kelly.net
Rachel Kelly is a writer and campaigner for better understanding and treatment of mental illness. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/n
ov/01/fairy-stories-folk-tales-climate-change-refugees?CMP=share_btn_fb
The Guardian frequently features the subject of arts and health. 

https://www.brainpickings.org/about/ 
Maria Popova's award-winning blog - a rich source of ideas and references to some of our greatest thinkers, artists and scientists. I find it invaluable. 


MOOC  (Massive Online Open Course):

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/literature
Recommended course on Literature and Mental Health

This is supposed to be a Scottish Poetry Blog - hence ScotPot so I finish with some words that have united complete strangers all around the world at a special moment in time.  

Robert Burns took and polished this traditional song and it has become a universal anthem of good-fellowship. Definitely words for wellbeing.

I'd love to hear any comments/corrections. 

Poems on Stone

Maybe I've spent too long on the beach but I've begun to wonder about stones... 

It's good to know I'm not alone, here's an extract from a fascinating Mary Oliver poem challenging us to think differently about the world around us.

Do Stones Feel?

Mary Oliver

Do stones feel?

Do they love their life?

Or does their patience drown out everything else?

When I walk on the beach I gather a few

      white ones, dark ones, the multiple colors.

Don’t worry, I say, I’ll bring you back, and I do.

I won't print the whole poem for copyright reasons but you can find it in her collection "Blue Horses".

Another provocative poem about stones is this one by Charles Simic and again I give you a taster

Stone

Charles Simic

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From Selected Early Poems by Charles Simic. Copyright © 1999, 2012 by Charles Simic.

 Naturally I have begun to write my own stone poems and will add a few here as they emerge. 

Set in Stone

Sally Givertz

Look!

These stones fit as if they were meant

The way that one is bent into the other’s curve

Sure, one’s much bigger than the other

And it’s not an obvious match

But when you see them leant together

It’s as if a patch of sky had found its perfect cloud

They don’t declare undying love aloud

They’re not just a load of hot air

Because they’re actually stones

It would be fair to say that -

At least in time-strapped human terms

Their love is here to stay

©sallygivertz 2017

It's the little things now

The last blog post was titled for my dad - "Be of good cheer" was one of his favourite expressions. He died quite a while ago but November 4th was his birthday and I will have a dram later and drink to "absent friends".  His generation lived or died through the war and got by on cups of tea and cigarettes it seems.  We are luckier. 

Just now many of us are talking about the surreal nature of the impending US election, the enormity of the refugee crisis and the confusion over Brexit - to B or not to B? Maybe it's because I am getting older (just a little) but some days it seems as if the world really is going to hell in a handcart. Rarely has the global picture looked more sombre. 

Somehow we go on with our lives.  We even enjoy them. This poem came to me during a sleepless night and I think it's about this phenomenon. An awareness of our precarious hold on the world combined with a need to "keep calm and carry on".  What's your solace?

It’s the little things now

Sally Givertz

Wandering over this troubled globe

There are – the UN tells us -

more than three million

refugees

And in the States the average mind

has sunk so low, they want to elect

a Primitive Life Form as their

leader

As for our crowded little island

We are become a disunited kingdom

Don’t know whether we are coming or

going.

So today we took a low-key trip

The ordinary stuff – the groceries

A charity shop or

two

Then stopped, this dreich day

to look at the sea, watch the grey waves

and the windscreen grow dappled with

rain.

As the inside gently misted over

we shared a Thermos of coffee

(the real thing, not instant)

and

A fresh, perfect, almond croissant.

Here suddenly, out of almost

nothing, the taste of

happiness

   

3.11.16

Have a good day in a small way. 

Be of good cheer

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, 
I am as good as dead. 

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. 

Mary Oliver

These lines are from a poem called "Landscape" and I think it offers a good reminder that we need to keep our hearts open. The poem ends with an image of crows.

The wonderful Norman MacCaig uses a "stoned crow" metaphor for this poem that I also love:

A writer

Norman MacCaig   (1910-1996)

Events got him in a corner

and gave him a bad time of it –

poverty, people, ill-health

battered at him from all sides.

So far from being silenced,

he wrote more poems than ever

and all of them different –

just as a stoned crow

invents new ways of flying

it had never thought of before.

No wonder now he sometimes

suddenly lurches, stalls, twirls sideways,

before continuing his effortless level flight

so high over the heads of people

their stones can’t reach him.

 

I enjoy the idea that criticism or bad luck can just make us more creative and determined to do our own thing regardless. Strangely cheering. 

                                               Bruce Monro  -  Field of Light 

I've been finding cheer in all sorts of places and with winter approaching we seek as much light as possible. 

You’ll Never Walk alone

Sally Givertz

How are you?

Well my body has let me down a couple of times lately

I’m sure there were faults on both sides

Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough attention

Did stuff I shouldn’t have done

Until she flat refused to carry me any further

Just lay down and refused all food or comfort

I was totally out of it for a while, I was steaming!

I flew off and wandered in strange lands

Didn’t know where I was half the time

Until I got scared and came back to her

We called for mediation

The doc gave us stern instructions

Told us to pull ourselves back together

So we made a pledge

She’ll do as I ask if I treat her right

So I give her more of my time

I take her to the gym

Lift the damn weights

She lets me lounge on the bed reading lyric poetry

In return I eat right and drink green tea -

Whatever it takes

We’re still an item her and me

Thanks for asking

The Day the Music Revived

Sally Givertz

Feeling like a glad Lazarus

Raised up by antibiotics

I started last night with Bach – what else?

And today the gold of Mozart 

Fell on me like a blessing

After four days of radio silence – 

all gone dark 

Locked in the box of my brain

I can switch on, re-tune
Receive and be glad

Finally I include this poem by Charlie Rossiter that actually uses the word bliss - well he even makes it into a verb. Such a sane way to approach the arrival of winter.  Celebrate and embrace it.  Enjoy! 

Blissing on the Season's First Snowfall

Charlie Rossiter

I light a morning candle

and lift my cup of espresso

the hiss of the old radiator

purrs to me like a friendly cat

I lift my cup of espresso

and wish a silent wish

blissing on the season's first snowfall

listening to the hiss of the old radiator

the kiss of morning espresso steam

rising to disappear in pearly air

outside, snow falls silent as a stalking cat

the candle flickers in columns of warm

air rising, I lift my cup of espresso

to the single silent wish, to always

and forever to this much love my life.