The Calling of Directions

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In April, which is poetry month, I attended a poetry workshop with Marilyn Dumont, one of my favourite poets. To prepare for the workshop, she asked us to collect words that are part of a history, or that someone at a specific time would use. Naturally, and because I had recently attended a Finno-Ugric drum workshop with Dalva Lamminmaki, I turned to my Finnish heritage. Also, I had been thinking of words that can call up beauty, so I had been scribbling words of pleasing sounds into my scribbler. In the end, I wrote up 10 lists of words. 

Here are two lists: 

bells

reindeer skin

drum

protection

help

susurring

shushing

swishing

journey

antlers

birch bark headdress

keyhole 

spirit animal

dived

descended

climbed

slept

dreamt

marveled

encircled

trembled

honoured

scattered  

rained

At the workshop, Marilyn asked us to play with the word cache we had collected and let the words lead us to new patterns and sounds. We were to convey something palpable through juxtapositions, through sound synchronicities. Dwell in disorder, she said. Pay attention to images, textures, colours. Commit to unfolding language, following sound to discover meaning. Above all, we were not to think about product, but to enjoy playing with language. In my playing, I combined some of the words I had collected and, eventually, playing with space too, I shaped the poem below. I added a title and fiddled with a few words and phrases.

The Calling of Directions

 

Itään: to the East

As stars slept

rocks journeyed

Deep blue dreamt of dancing

Gifts scattered, flying from

the rumble of reindeer,

the utterance unnameable.

Etelään: to the South

On the mountain carved with syllabics

in the forest of illusions

Whispers dreamt red ochre

Rattle rained flying antlers

in a shaman language

          old, drunk, ancestral.

Länteen: to the West

Rattle scattered blue sound,

echoing soft inscriptions

Small bells dreamt cold water pearls,

falling forever forward

River rained moon-eyed fish,

          silver-skinned delicious.

Pohjoiseen: to the North

A shape-shifting old woman,

skiing overhead, on the horizon

a surprise of animal gifts

Lime green sky laughing

Snow-maiden follows Drum across

the upper branches of the Great Tree