Dear friends,
I am in Texas this week, at the Round Top poetry festival. I heard the magnificent Danusha Laméris and Naomi Shihab Nye read last night, and their words were like the hearth of a fire casting light on the room.
I have been to the Country of Texas a few times: San Antonio, where I used to be an adjunct at St. Mary’s University; Waco, for a week of talks at Baylor with Pete Rollins many years ago; near Houston, for various retreats; and now here.
I’d heard of the Texas wildflowers before. But until yesterday, I hadn’t seen them. On the hour-long drive from Austin to Round Top with Michelle, a volunteer from the festival, the wildflowers were everywhere — on the roadside, in meadows, in the fields where cattle grazed.
This morning, I woke early, sat outside with tea (of course, I made my own; Texas might be good at many things, but tea isn’t one of them), listened to the birdsong, and looked up the names for these gorgeous flowers. Rainlilly. White Pricklypoppy, Black-eyed Susan, Blackfoot Daisy, Winecup, Horsemint, and Fire Wheel were among my favourites.
Last night, Naomi read a poem that began with the image of strawberries growing in Gaza. On a lecture tour in Korea six years ago, I was near the DMZ and saw blackberry lilies in fields of horror. When Krista and the On Being team came to Ireland in 2016, she interviewed the brilliant Belfast poet Michael Longley. He spoke of the ice-cream man who ran the shop that his daughter liked to frequent on a Saturday morning; she knew the names of all the flavours. Awfully, the poor man was murdered in the ongoing British-Irish conflict of the latter part of the 20th century, and Michael wrote a poem honouring that man, naming a wildflower name for each of the flavours of ice-cream that the kind man had sold.
Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach: You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop. I named for you all the wild flowers of the Burren I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife, Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica, Herb robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch, Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort, Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bindweed, bog pimpernel.
“The Ice Cream Man” from Collected Poems by Michael Longley. Copyright © 2007 by Michael Longley. Published by Wake Forest University Press. Used with permission of the poet.
A poem is just a poem, mostly lasting a little (but not much) longer than a flower. What will convince us to move away from murder toward life? I have become convinced that many of those who perpetuate violence have a crisis of beauty — taking a sense of life from stopping it. For some, it’s easier to destroy than create. I spent years in conflict resolution wondering what would convince someone to make the courageous change, to turn away from sustaining violence towards sustaining life.
Sometimes, it is hard-nosed negotiation that works; other times, compromise; other times, pride; other times, they have a crisis of their own and this changes them, or some experience of love; still other times, it is a moment of beauty in the world such as a field, a flower, a painting.
I wish it were more straightforward.
I, like you, am another ignorable voice crying and crying out — with all the flowers of Texas — for the madness of murderous threats to stop. Looking at Iran and Israel this week, seeing the news about loyalty move towards who you think deserves it more. With blame assigned in whatever way blame needs to be assigned: fine, fine, fine. Still: stop, stop, stop.
People are not listening to reason. They’re not listening to poets, or cactuses, or morning glories, or tulips, orchids or roses; pheasant’s eye, ground pine, or hollyhock. I hope they listen to whatever works, whether for self-glorification or because they’re stricken with shock themselves. I praise any diplomat or colleague who is employing whatever language, idea, tactic, or threat they can to cease what is a consuming fire.
So, a question of naivety (but isn’t everything small when it is born?) for you this week: When have you been convinced to change your mind? How did it happen? By negotiation? By beauty? By lament? By shock or threat? By what?
PS: Special thanks today to editor and Substack builder Daryl Chen, for catering to my terrible lateness on this week’s letter. She, and you, will be glad to know that the first draft of the next Poetry Unbound book has been submitted, with all systems go for it to come out in early 2025.
Poetry in the World
April 25 at 6-7:30pm, NYC, New York, US
I’ll be exploring conflict and change through poetry at an in-person event in partnership with the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University. You can register for free here. It is currently sold out, but we are working to find a new venue that can take more participants.
April 27 at 7-9pm, Little Rock, Arkansas, US
I’ll be speaking at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The event is free, and you can go here to RSVP.
May 8 at 9am (Pacific Time), online
I’m giving a talk at the Spiritual Directors Online Conference. Get $50 off the price of access to the entire conference (it runs from May 8–10) if you use the code Conf50, or $25 off the price of a day pass with the code SDI25; find details and registration here.
May 9 at 3am (Eastern Time), online
I’ll be participating in an online webinar about the art of civic dialogue, hosted by Australia’s Small Giants Academy. Go here to register to attend.
May 14, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
For you theologically interested folks, I’ll be speaking at the Festival of Homiletics. Info here.
May 17 at 2–4pm, Camden, Maine, US
I’ll be talking about the word “you” in poetry at the Camden Public Library. You can attend in person or over Zoom. The entire two-day festival is free; information here.
May 24–26, Boone, North Carolina, US
I’m leading a a 48-hour Poetry Unbound retreat, where there will be poetry readings, responding to prompts, and sharing. Information and registration here.
June 27–July 7, Patmos, Greece
I’m one of the speakers at the 10-night “Journeying into Common Good” salon, together with Krista Tippett, Allison Russell, JT Nero, and Joe Henry. More details here.
August 7 at 6-7:30pm ET, online
I’ll be exploring conflict and change through poetry at an online event in partnership with the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University. You can register for free here.
August 23–25, Northamptonshire, England
I’ll be at the Greenbelt Festival, and, among other events, I will be interviewing the brilliant Jenny Mitchell whose poem “A Man in Love with Plants” we featured on a Season 7 episode of Poetry Unbound. You can go here to learn about the festival.
October 6–11, Rhinebeck, New York, US
I’m back for a week at Omega (just two hours north of NYC) for a week of reflection on poetry, poetry prompts, and group discussions. Expect lovely people, gorgeous surroundings and food, and conversations about how poetry opens your world. Learn more here.
Sometimes Life offers an opportunity that was not foreseen, and when seen, perhaps not wanted. This happened to me when I realized that I needed to approach my feelings about someone as a spiritual challenge, rather than alienate and distance them from my life. The person in question wasn’t someone with whom I’d be in frequent contact, but they were in daily contact with another - the one with whom I planned a lifelong, deep connection. And so, I began to look at the ‘despised’ as a person who needed loving. If I couldn’t love them, I could have compassion for them. If I couldn’t embrace them, I could allow for some sort of closeness. I could soften myself, knowing that their ability to soften was compromised by something that I couldn’t see or know. It’s been more than a decade now. It’s good to have a challenge like this. It helps me to try hard to be more humble, more forgiving, more able to look at the qualities in myself that aren’t so pretty. Is this what changing your mind is? Or is this about doing the deep work of connecting mind and heart? I guess it’s all the same thing. Thank you for the opportunity each week to read your incredible words, Padraig.
This may be my favorite post you've ever written, Pádraig. Longley's episode of On Being struck a deep chord when it aired and I've carried his inventory of flavorful flowers alongside the savage end of the ice-cream man with me for years. I'm sure a part of me understood that joy and pain could occupy the same space, but the concrete articulation felt revelatory. All this to say, thank you for your beautiful words this morning.
More often than not, I change my mind in hindsight. It's an agonizing reality, because (spoiler alert) the past can't be altered. When I began my social work career in my early 20's I compensated for my inexperience with misguided confidence. Daily, I made decisions that impacted the course of other people's lives—should a foster child attend the funeral of his abusive mother? is a 12-year old boy, conflicted over his sexual orientation, better off with his homophobic, violent grandmother or in a religious home for teens? will a 48-hour psychiatric hold truly help a suicidal 19-year old or make things worse?
I had no business making these decisions and often look back, certain I made the wrong one. But like many social service agencies, we were understaffed and overworked--forced daily to check off this inventory of ache like a grocery list. Your message reminds me that alongside those agonizing moments that felt so black-and-white, countless wildflowers grew.
In obsessing over my perceived missteps, I discount the drawings I made quietly with the children, the rare laughter they released in the safety of my small office, the letter I received from the 19-year old boy, thanking me for saving his life. I suppose the true change has been in recognizing that there is space for all of it. I can hold a bright and wild bouquet in one hand and a broken heart in the other.