Volume IIII, Issue 19
May 11, 2015
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Dear ,
If you missed our reading last Thursday at Park Road Books (my favorite bookstore), here's a photo of me and my beloved, longtime friend and fellow writer Gilda Morina Syverson. It was a joyful evening of sharing writing from our latest books, which happened to come out the same month—how sweet is that?
We
laughed (a lot) as we told stories and read excerpts, segueing off each other's words. My favorite moment was when Gilda told a story about our mutual friend and writers' group member Katherine McIntyre, who was pushing 80 when she brought me and Gilda together in 1988. Linda Calabrese, another writers' group member, was at Park Road Shopping Center one afternoon and was surprised to walk past Katherine's car, which was rolling slowly backwards—with Katherine still in it! Turns out that Katherine was writing a poem! And when Gilda asked, upon hearing about this incident, "Katherine, you don't write poetry while you're driving, do you?" Katherine's answer was, "Only if I have to."
The bittersweet crept in as well—Gilda lost her father just weeks ago, and you can imagine from her book title, My Father's Daughter, From Rome to Sicily, how close their relationship was. But Gilda, who was such a huge support to me when I lost my mother—and my father—was up to the task of sharing from her trip of a lifetime with us, with grace.
By now you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the word of the week, "enough." And I think the quickest way for me to get to that is to share something that happened at an event I attended a few weeks ago-- "The Life-Giving Benefits of Owning Less" led by Joshua Becker. My favorite moment that evening happened during the Q & A, when someone asked, "Is there anything you regretted getting rid of?"
"Yes," Becker answered, "a car." It turned out that it put too big a burden on their family to manage all the activities of four people when their comings and goings were in such different directions at conflicting times. But Becker went on to say that it was a very valuable experience.
Enough, he told us, was the pivot point between too much and too little. And how can we know what "enough" is if we have never experienced "not enough"? Here in the affluent US, excess
is a much more common experience than need.
That talk gave me pause. I've thought of those words over and over since, including at my reading with Gilda when I was so clear that getting to have such an evening with such a dear friend was enough, that writing—and having people to share the results of those blessed hours with—was enough.
It
reminded me of my poem "Voice Lessons" that I wrote quite a while ago for a friend whose brother had recently died. What was enough, I contemplated, in a situation like this? (You can read my musings in the poem below.)
I thought you might enjoy doing some musing on your own
about what is enough, whether it's how many hours a week you devote to writing or how many cars your family has. Or... but I am getting ahead of myself. That's what this week's prompt is for!
Thanks for being a part of my "enough!"
Love and light,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
EVERY PICTURE HOLDS A STORY Would you enjoy using visual images as writing inspiration? Come learn fun, easy methods to capture treasured family stories and create memorable fiction, memoir, and poetry. A variety of images will be provided; bring your own
photos if you like.
WHERE: Morrison Regional Library. 7015 Morrison
Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28211
WHEN: Tuesday, May 12, from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
TO REGISTER: To register online, please visit the Morrison Regional Library website here. Registration opens April 21st.
----------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMER WRITING RETREAT Renew and delight yourself. The Summer Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you’ll have private time which
can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities. $97 includes lunch and supplies. WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, June 20th, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
TO
REGISTER: To register securely online with your credit card, click here. To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions.
More WordPlay opportunities here.
Are you a North or South
Carolina
poet, artist, and/or photographer?
Then this
message from a Kakalak editor is for you.
My Dear Poet and Visual Artist Friends:
Please share this email!
We 2015 KAKALAK editors—Richard Allen Taylor, Lisa Zerkle, Anne Kaylor, and I—are making a special call for poetry and visual art images from Poets and Visual Artists born in or living in North and/or South Carolina.
It happens every
year. Two weeks to go until the deadline (May 15) for all three KAKALAK contests (poetry, inside art, and cover art), and we editors are fretting about whether we will have enough participation to make it all worthwhile. But, every year we get a big surge of submissions toward the end, and our anxieties are relieved. We're counting on YOU for that big surge again this year. We'd love to hear from you if you have not
already submitted your poems and/or art images.
Thanks to everyone who has already entered. If you haven't, this is a gentle reminder that we need your poems, your inside art (photography or photos of your artwork), and your cover art NOW. Please visit the Main Street Rag web site for guidelines (www.mainstreetrag.com, click on Kakalak 2015).
Limiting contest eligibility to poets and artists born in or living in the Carolinas is, of course, both a weakness and a strength. A weakness because the market, and the pool of possible participants, is small, as compared to a national
publication. However, it's that same exclusivity—the focus on Carolina poets and artists—that makes KAKALAK special. Our joint endeavor with KAKALAK is one positive way of bringing the artistic communities of both Carolina states together in a common cause.
Best wishes to each of you!Featured Writing
Voice Lessons
by Maureen Ryan Griffin
When my griefs sing to me
from the bright throats of thrushes I sing back. ~ Linda Pastan
Is it the smell of hyacinths in the house that makes you notice people falling all around you, falling
for want of words? A boy loses a father, a boy you knew only once on a summer evening catching
fireflies,
and mostly you remember his face was dirty....Still. To lose a father. You want a word.
But you can't find one, so you are silent.
Finally you understand why people turn
their heads away, won't look grief in the eye. Now someone you love is losing a brother and again
the silence
reaches up to strangle the words in your throat. For what do you know? Is it enough
to listen to Rachmaninov while you knead bread for her, pat comfort into the dough? Is it enough
to plant a garden? To teach your son the word pieris as you show him their pendulous blossoms, to hear
him
love the word, make a litany of it, affirm over and over, pieris, pieris, pieris, is is is,
as though he'd been
born to learn how to sing
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay -- so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "enough." PROMPT:
Write about "enough" in any way that serves you and your writing. Maybe that's a poem about what enough means to you. Maybe it's a memory of a father who, when the din of five children grew too loud, said in his sternest voice, "That's enough." Maybe it's a scene in a book you're writing in which a character discovers that what another
character can give her isn't enough.
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MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word
work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn -- and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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