A Poet’s Nanaimo

Sharon Blackie in her wonderful book, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday (Ambrosia/House of Anansi Press, 2018), includes a “Manifesto for An Enchanted Life” at the end of the book. Number 11 on the list is: “Foster meaningful ritual, make each day a ceremony, or make a ceremony in each day.” (You can have a look at the manifesto at www.sharonblackie.net. Look under “Resources” and then click on The Enchanted Life book cover and you can scroll down through the questions offered for each chapter to the manifesto which, even if you haven’t read the book, is relevant to all.)

One of the Spirit of the Island Flower Essences I co-created with Nature is Butterfly Bush. Butterfly Bush supports “a careful and focused approach to celebrating rites of passage and familiar daily occurrences that become sacred in the honouring. Every moment is one in which to give thanks.”

A flower essence can be part of a morning writing practice or taken throughout the day for an intentional pause with a few deep breathes and as Butterfly Bush recommends: to celebrate the sacred familiar.

When I was young and lived with my maternal grandparents, Grandpa had a morning ritual. Perhaps when people do the same things at the same time they are called routines. But when mindfulness, and even love, is attached, they become rituals or ceremonies. I think Grandpa’s morning practices could be considered a ceremony.

Those Winter Mornings

Winter mornings Grandpa got up early
to light kindling in the woodstove,
a snap and change in the air
through the grate on the second floor.

Awake, I would stay in bed, alone in my room,
until he put the kettle on the back lid,
started the porridge in a thin and […]

A Life Made by Hand is a beautiful title for Andrea D’Aquino’s new book about pioneering Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa whose graceful sculptures “as light as air” are collected in major museums around the world.

I first discovered Andrea D’Aquino’s work in Upper Case, the magazine “for the Creative and Curious” published, edited and designed by Janine Vangool in Calgary. That led me to Andrea’s book Once Upon a piece of Paper: A Visual Guide to Collage Making (Quarto Publishing Group, 2016). I started making ice cream cone shapes for cards for my grandchildren and cutting up old calendars into strips of patterns for collages.

The book, Once Upon a piece of Paper, comes with papers to use, enough to share with other collage enthusiasts!

Children’s books are such a treat as you get to learn something new, the stories are engaging and to the point, and the visuals are enticing as they are in the books Andrea has illustrated, including this one. How wonderful to learn about Ruth Asawa, an artist who has been celebrated but not known to all of us, and to do that honouring with another art form, that of collage.

Ruth’s story begins in California where she was born. Her family worked on a farm and “Ruth looked carefully at everything around her.” Those things included plants, snails, butterflies and spiders. And: “Her hands were always busy making things” out of wire or folded paper.

Ruth went to Japanese school on Saturdays where she learned calligraphy and the language and culture of her heritage. When she was older she went to Black Mountain College. That’s where she met: “People like choreographer Merce Cunningham who made shapes in the air with dancers’ bodies.” One of […]

Enter the beauty of the verdant rainforest through Diana Hayes’s full-colour photographs and glorious poems in Labyrinth of Green. It’s the “dwelling place” Diana writes from and where she finds home “following the in-breath / verdant and timeless.” (“All That Quiet, He Says”)

Diana’s new book, Labyrinth of Green (Plumleaf Press, 2019) , is a wonder to behold. “Lost in Cedar, Duck Creek 2019 is the photograph that welcomes the reader into the book (on the cover and inside).

The preface is by Eliane Leslau Silverman, Professor Emeritus of Women’s Studies, University of Calgary, who says of Diana that she “walks calmly and yet boldly with wide-open eyes.” This is such an apt description of the woman I’ve been getting to know through the years through a shared passion for poetry and this place, the West Coast of Canada. Diana does such a respectful honouring in her words and photographs.

In her introduction, Diana says: “There are special places in the world that speak directly to the soul .” The “inner journey” that led to her poems “unfolded in a most circuitous way, in various locations and times . . . “ She has walked labyrinths in the Temple of Good Will in Brasilia, at Glendalough in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, at Meteora and Delphi in Greece, and “at home, in a private labyrinth on Salt Spring Island.” That’s where she has found the sea “is never beyond a good walking distance, and the chorus of trees provides an orchestra of arms that protect the verdant waters of the marsh and wetlands.”

At midlife in a new home, Diana refines the journey, moving deeper, she writes, “into an inner sanctum of belonging, a place where I listen carefully with […]

Part of my morning practice is to read a passage from a book such as A Year with Rilke or A Year with Rumi. Among my other favourites are Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening and Richard Wagamese’s Embers: One Obibway’s Meditations. It’s my own form of mindfulness practice to begin the day as are the various elements in the Writing Life women’s writing circles I lead. We begin with the ringing of the Tibetan ting sha and take three deep breaths: one to let go, one to stay here and one to surrender to what’s next. Although I learned Thich Nhat Hanh’s three breaths with the third breath as surrendering to what’s next, it could be a surrender to “what is” so that through letting go, we let be.

I read a poem following the three breaths and we do a “checking in.” We follow some guidelines so that all the intentions create a sacred container for the vulnerability of writing and sharing.

Lately, I’ve been reading From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness by Mark Coleman (New World Library, 2019). I appreciate that Mark has included poetry throughout the book including references to the poetry of William Blake, Jack Gilbert, Naomi Shihab Nye, Anna Akhmatova, Audre Lorde, Rilke, Hafiz and Kabir.

Simply put, Mark says, mindfulness is “clear awareness. Knowing what’s happening as it’s happening. Present moment attention.” And a longer definition: “A non-reactive awareness of our mental, emotional, physical and environmental experience with an attitude of curiosity and care that develops insight and understanding.”

Mark Coleman has taught mindfulness meditation retreats and trainings worldwide for twenty years. He is the founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute and Awake in the Wild programs. Mark […]