Poems hidden in the news
A blackout poetry workshop
Hi everyone,
Lots of new people have signed up recently. That makes me happy, welcome! The main thing to share this week is the ‘blackout poetry workshop’. Some of you were there. It was part of the wabi-sabi month that’s running throughout November.
I’ve been ‘finding’ these poems in my spare time and it’s like looking for hidden treasure. It’s made me think of termas, hidden teachings in the Buddhist tradition that are found by tertöns.
The poems are hidden in the newspaper, or on the page of a book, then revealed as the words jump out at you. But you could also say they are hidden in your own subconscious. If you and I had the same text we’d each ‘find’ a different poem.
The original idea for the workshop was ‘finding poems in the news’, which, given the news at the moment, seemed like a beautiful thing to do. But then I spent the weekend sorting out my bookshelves.
Filling the shelves with all these dharma books, I just started to laugh. Book after dense book about what? Emptiness or awareness. I mean, isn’t it a little ironic? I’m looking at them all lined up and thinking, I’m never going to read these again. Yet, I vividly remember reading some of them.
Certain books were really important. I’d been reading Joanna Macy’s ‘Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory’, when my dad suddenly became ill and died. It had a huge effect on how I experienced his death. I could tell my life story through these books. And yet, I’m 99% sure I’ll never read them again. I guess everything has its time, its place. But what now? Do I keep them lined up there on the shelves? Or let them go?
There were several duplicates, one was Sangharakshita’s ‘Living with Kindness’. I decided to abbreviate his teachings into more pithy ones by making blackout poems from it. I’m not sure he’d approve! I did find this poem about approval and freedom though.
I’ve one shelf of dharma books (below), that feel alive right now, recently or regularly dipped in to. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that things change. Books can come alive again, so I’ll be keeping all of mine for now.
The Red Ladder Studio bookshop
I’ve set up a little bookshop on a site called ‘bookshop.org’, you could set up your own too. I’m always recommending books, so I thought I’d put them all in one place. ‘Bookshop’ is the next best thing to buying your books in real bookshops, as they give most of their profits to real bookshops. In fact, you can nominate your own. I’ve nominated one in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. It was a little cultural refuge for me when I was living in my van. If you buy something from the Red Ladder Studio bookshop, I get a small commission, thank you very much!
Motto of the week.
About books, I told you I’d written to Patricia Ryan Madson, who wrote Improv wisdom. Well, she sent me a card in the post, all the way from the US. It’s been my motto for the week, ‘What if there is nothing wrong?’. '
How much of your time do you spend on the lookout for something wrong? Feeling like you should be doing something about something. But what if there is nothing wrong? Right now, in your immediate experience. I find it a scary thought, if there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing to do! Help.
Hope you enjoy the workshop below. I’d love to see some of your blackout poems. I’ll start a thread for us. Better still, send me one in the post and I’ll send you one of mine!
Love Vajradarshini
