A Poem Is a Made Thing
Often, I only discover what I’m feeling when what I write tells it back to me ...
Dear friends,
For those who were able to make the book launch on Tuesday (for which, thank you) you’ll have heard the magnificent Lorna Goodison speak about an object lesson that her mother gave her. Her mother was a seamstress, an educator, a businesswoman. She ran an industry of making and repairing from a room in their house that functioned on many more levels than just employment and income. It was a community, a refuge, a bank, a passport out of violence, a protection, a joy, a haven.
Lorna mentioned that a poem is something made. The word poem itself comes from a Greek word meaning “a made/created thing” and the title for the National Poet of Scotland is Makkar, echoing that Greek word’s meaning into English. Her mother made things: dresses, lessons, a scrunched up map to show the contours of Jamaica’s geography.
As I think of poems as a made thing, I wonder, who is making whom? Often, I only discover what I’m feeling when what I write tells it back to me. The made thing makes me back.
I know that others are the same: artists of all kinds are made back by the art they make.
And by artists, I mean us all. Who isn’t an artist? The human impulse is to create: a society, a friendship, a family, a sculpture, a meal, a container, a gallery, an experience, a sound, a song … Over lockdown I began to knit (badly) and I found such joy in making hats for my (patient) friends. What was I making? Something to hold in warmth. What was being made back? A man who needed to hold things together.
So, with that, here’s this week’s invitation: what’s something you made? What did you make? What did it make back in you?
As always, I’ll see you in the comments. And I’ll see you next week, possibly with recipes for soup!
Friends, thank you for this lovely connection through this letter.
Pádraig
PS: If you were unable to join us on Tuesday, here’s the recording of this joyful hour — hear my full conversation with Lorna, a chat with our producer and composer Gautam Srikishan on the role of music in the show, and a warm hello from the Poetry Unbound team.
A note on your book orders
If you’re ordering the book for your holiday gifting, you may be finding it temporarily out-of-stock if attempting to place an online order. We’re sorry about that, and hope you’ll still put in your order before the end of the year (we’ve checked with our publishers, and learned it’ll be back in stock early 2023). You may have luck in your local brick-and-mortar bookshop. Otherwise, we’d love to offer you this excerpt from one of the book poems to include in your “gift on the way!” note, as a glimpse of what is soon to arrive:
... I pray for this to be my way: sweet
work alluded to in the body's position to its paper:
left hand, right hand
like an open eye, an eye closed:
one hand flat against the trapdoor,
the other hand knocking, knocking.
from "Consider the Hands that Write this Letter" by Aracelis Girmay
in Teeth (Evanston: Curbstone Press/Northwestern University Press, 2007)
Events
I’m giving a talk on “Managing Your Life With Poetry” on Sunday, December 11th at 2pm (EST) online via the Rowe Centre. Register for free here.
This is a taster session for a five-session series on “Practicing The Inner Life” that I’m doing every Sunday from Jan 29-Feb 26 2023. Information about that here.
Poetry Podcast Recommendation
Emily Dickinson’s birthday is this weekend. She turned 192 on Saturday (10th Dec 1830 - 15th May 1886). Celebrate her magnificence by tuning in to the brilliant “The Slave is Gone” — a podcast that “celebrates what works and breaks down what doesn’t in the risk-taking, award-winning, and popular AppleTV+ series ‘Dickinson.’ Sex and consent, queerness and desire, ambition and repression, race and cultural appropriation — and poems that inspire” presented by Jericho Brown, Brionne Janae, and Aífe Murray.
I made a quilt for my newborn infant at a time when I realized my mother was never going to invest in a relationship with me. What I also inadvertently made for myself is a community of women who have mothered me in a way that I had never known. I treasure these quilters for how they helped me redefine who I am as a child, parent, and maker.
I made a bad decision many years ago. It’s made me wander.