Tag: poetry

Can poetry help us resolve social issues?

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!, Writer's creative bites

hirschfeild

When I first started this blog, my intention was to explore the benefits that poetry can bring to the world of business; how can we become better in what we do, by improving our creativity, leadership skills, cognitive and strategic thinking, communication, tacit knowledge and ext. With time, blog evolved into something much more and deeper and on a few occasions I’ve also wrote about the transformative power of poetry.

Recently, I came a cross an article, an interview with poet Jane Hirshfield where she shares her view on how poetry can help us move forward in dealing with even bigger social problems:

I think we know the world needs changing. Things are going awry left and right. I firmly believe that in our very practical, technological, and scientific age, the values of all the arts, but of poetry in particular, are necessary for moving the world forward. I’m talking about things like compassion, empathy, permeability, interconnection, and the recognition of how important it is to allow uncertainty in our lives.

One of the current great problems in the world is fundamentalism of every kind – political, spiritual — and poetry is an antidote to fundamentalism. Poetry is about the clarities that you find when you don’t simplify. They’re about complexity, nuance, subtlety. Poems also create larger fields of possibilities. The imagination is limitless, so even when a person is confronted with an unchangeable outer circumstance, one thing poems give you is there is always a changeability, a malleability, of inner circumstance. That’s the beginning of freedom.

With these beautiful words, I think she captured the true essence of poetry; its purpose and reason for existence: every poem is like taking a journey to a different world where everything is possible and we can truly chose our experiences and taste liberation in every sense.

In her wonderful book “Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.” Jane Hirshfield, further explores hidden strength that poetry holds and especially focuses on the beauty of uncertainty, not knowing everything – just enjoying to be.

And today, I invite you when you write, at least for a minute stop asking yourself questions on how, where, why – liberate yourself from any false predicaments and just be present, sink into your own being and feel your inner world; connect with your own subtle energies, where self-acceptance and self-trust takes place – you might be surprised how your reality change.

By allowing ourselves to transform our inner world, we are transforming the world around us as well.

Some stories last many centuries,
others only a moment.
All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,
grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree
and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,
ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket
gives off – 
the immeasurable’s continuous singing,
before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.
Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,
to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:
an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.
To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,
and then keep walking, unimaginably further. 

Jane Hirshfield

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Death as we know it

by Maja Todorovic, posted in My personal rhyme - from time to time

You decided to leave,

over the cliff of promise

where the verve takes calm.

Disintegrated I walk through your flesh.

Limbs linger in ambiguity:

Why and How?

I don’t have any questions.

As I drown in memories

I pretend cold marble stone is your chest.

I press my cheeks, needing to hear that heart beat,

you whisper in my ear:”I exist in you, that’s the moment I live”.

Just listen (creativity exercise)

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Write, create, innovate: exercises

eric-clapton

What triggers and inspires creativity in one person is quite individually. There are a lot of factors influencing this process, but usually it is something that catches our attention, (like curiosity) and initiates that idea from which everything else begins. So today I want to invite you to pay attention to your surroundings. We all tend to sink into our own minds, thoughts drifting on their own…But focusing and paying attention to our surrounding is of great importance since it reflects our abilities to spot opportunities, and act upon them; turn that inspirational thought into something viable and move forward with our creativity.

I propose two exercises:

  1. Listen to everything and everywhere. ‘Blend and tune in’ with your environment and listen to the sounds, conversations (I’m not suggesting you spy on anyone!) and notice what randomly catches your attention: a word, song, laughter, baby cry.. and write a poem about it. Let that be the initial spark of something you absorbed from your environment and you are creating further. Don’t censure yourself, just write your poem and what ever comes – let it surface.
  1. Hear what you don’t like listen to. I particularly don’t like the news and don’t listen/read them but for the sake of this exercise give it a try: pick one news headline and that can be something you really dislike; now write your own news that are quite the opposite, news you would like to hear or read in the newspaper, news in the form of poem. I know, it can feel a bit strange – first writing news (and you are probably not a news reporter, just like I’m not) and second – making a poem out of it. But that’s the purpose of this exercise: to stretch our minds and look for solutions and possibilities where we are unlikely to find them.

By following the steps and doing the exercises I propose here on the blog, you may find your creativity increase dramatically. We create and develop opportunities, but we also need to be able to recognize something that might work for us – we can train our minds to get better at this; to be more responsive to an external stimulant. It’s a sort of getting into habit to cultivate inspiration and is a sure way towards leading an inspirational life.

‘T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
One music with a thousand cadences.

Amy Lowell
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You are never too late to get creative and fully enjoy it

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Write, create, innovate!

dylan_profile

Most people think that time is our most valuable asset – and in a sense it is. Once is gone, it is irreversible. We can’t make for a lost time, if something so vague and abstract can be lost at all.

Recently I turned 40. When I entered my thirties I felt excited, invigorated about the things that were ahead of me, what I can and will do. But of course not everything always goes the way we plan it and wish. Something similar happened to me in the last couple of years which I described in this post. My life was somehow always on the rush until my health warned me to slow down and pay attention to things I probably have neglected – which also meant that I needed to rearrange my plans and re-prioritize. My 40th birthday made me think about those things again. It felt overwhelming like being stuck ‘in the middle’: you are not old, but hey you entered your 5th decade and that must be something 🙂 So thoughts about how I spent my last couple of years, have I missed something, am I too late for something … began to creep in my mind again. And I must admit I was never fond of birthdays. Especially mine. As born on 31st December is like..how to describe it..it never felt like my day or special day, particularly in my childhood years. Everyone was always too busy with preparation for New Year’s Eve, my friends were busy and I with my birthday was just “lingering” there, not feeling like it belonged to me.

So this birthday turned out too be a little bit heavy too, but then I decided to write a poem about it. It’s something that my subconsciousness just expelled out of my mind and is interesting in what it resulted: You can read it bellow:

I dreaded my 40th birthday.

That was the day I truly wished there was a time machine

to reverse this number or at least

erase that rounded chubby space

behind the wall of four.

 

To undo all those wasted tears,

not even spilled, just dried in the corner of my eyes;

to count not years, but smiles that flooded my face

each time his touch, in slow pace traveled across my spine.

 

to collect less of strange, signed and approved confessions

that I can, may, want and know

and to dance more wrapped in the smoke

of my momentary desires

and just swing from one digit to another.

 

to admit I am good enough,

to accept this short breathing experience is only mine,

that what ever I do it will be fine.

 

to decide just to live, in spite of all

imposed societal thrills…

 

That was the day – time,

conveniently invented unit of remorse

stopped to weigh my loss

stopped to count

stopped.

After writing and reading it, I felt amazingly better. It’s like passing through a gate or reaching some sort of threshold realization that can be summarized in 4 little words:  It’s never too late … to get creative, to do what you love, in a way you want to do it. You can be sidetracked, have obstacles, but unless you say it’s late, it isn’t. You can count your time the way you like it and you are old the way you feel inside – not by the numbers in your birth certificate.

With this post I want to encourage you that in what ever phase of your life you are, you can start with what ever your heart desires: to learn, to write, to teach, to play sports, to travel, to get creative…Your phase of life might influence how and where you do it, but the essence is still there, you can do it if you wish for it. You are never late and never old.

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