Monday, June 10, 2013

The Calling of Directions



image source

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

3 comments:

Merche Pallarés said...

Very interesting exercise... Loved your choice of words and the resulting poems :) Hugs, M.

northshorewoman said...

have you been doing any writing, MP? You were such a busy blogger!

Merche Pallarés said...

No, Taina, I'm afraid I've quit writing in my blog. I'm now more active in Facebook. Are you in FB??? If you are, we should become friends :) Hugs, M.