Tag: Jenna Butler

Influencer

Isola di Farnese on la Via Francigena, October 2024

I don’t want to to sound out of touch,
but I really am exhausted by the word “influencer”

that word suggests trying to
have control over somebody else

and there is already
too much of that going
in the world already

I don’t like the term
“clout” either

that word is too fickle for me

whenever I desire power it feels like I’m trying to hold a melting ice cube in my hand

I don’t want to
sway anyone

I want to serve them

I don’t want to
blaze a path for you

~ I want to get lost with you ~

to crave authority
would require me
to surrender
my amateur status

and I quite love being
a newbie here with you here

I don’t want to guide you down
this River

I want to enjoy the ride with you
until we reach the great waterfall

don’t follow me
flow with me

and as we go

let’s not influence
each other to be like us

instead

let’s listen to
each other

until our ears become
shaped like our hearts

~ John Roedel from his upcoming poetry collection “wonderache” ~

Called the Facebook poet, John Roedel has developed a reputation for heartfelt writing, often posting photos of his rough drafts hand-scrawled on lined notebook pages. From his website: “Offering a sincere and very relatable look at his faith crisis, mental health, personal struggles, perception of our world, and even his fashion sense, John’s writing has been shared millions of times across social media and lauded by fans and readers worldwide.” 

There’s something touching about this poem for me because it illuminates a tender vulnerability within myself. The shift from having had a career with influence to when, after its abrupt end, I began in earnest to write. Engaging in this mostly solitary endeavour, my sense of community is fragile and self doubt can arise from “the sticky web of personal/with its hurt and its hauntings,” obscuring those occasions when I“become a pure vessel/for what wants to ascend from silence.” (John O’Donohue, “For the Artist at the Start of Day”).

To write as an act of service – not to sway, or blaze a path – is predicated on mutual reciprocity: releasing my poems into the world so that others may read them. Lately, I’ve been caught in the traditional-self publishing dilemma. After working this spring with my wise and thoughtful editor-essayist-poet Jenna Butler, my manuscript sits with three traditional presses whose protocols are precise on prior publications. Hence why I seldom post my own work here or on social media. Recently, I’ve initiated conversations with self-published writers, and with a press who assists, for a fee, writers to publish their own works.

I feel poised on the edge of a “great waterfall.” Vulnerable. Uncertain. But to imagine flowing with, and having my words be read, or heard by others, our eyes and ears becoming “shaped like our hearts,” brings me deep joy. Maybe the nudge to push me over.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The Perfect Place, The Right Time

“And the road is plenty wide and welcoming,
speaking out to all,
This is the perfect place,
this is the right time,
this is where wish becomes possible.”

Susan Frybort, “On the Road of Great Wonder,”
in Hope is a Traveler, 2015

This is the opening quote to a story I wrote about walking my Camino last year. Always intent to write more about that month long experience, one over twenty years in the making, but having felt stuck for months, I enrolled in an eight-week online course beautifully taught by local author and scholar Jenna Butler and hosted by Calgary’s Alexandra Writers’ Centre. I’d reached out to Jenna with hope that by using the sensory explorations and writing prompts in “Chronicling Our Personal Relationship with Place,” I’d be inspired to write. I took as kismet – “the perfect place… the right time… where wish becomes possible” – the course’s starting date as it coincided with the evening before I began walking my Camino a year ago. To deepen into the course’s invitation, I posted on social media a few select Camino photos and salient recollections from each day I had walked last year, May 10-30. Too, I’ve been drawn to learn about some literary forms that I thought would lend themselves to my vision of combining the reworked lyric essays from last year’s Portuguese Coastal Camino blog, my journal entries, and those from the guide book provided by Portugal Green Walks, and my newly emerging poetry.

Half way through the course and my hesitation to begin has persisted. I’ve felt afraid to take the first step, not knowing what I’m getting myself into, or where this is going to take me, despite having reached Santiago a year ago. I’ve wondered if Camino doesn’t want, or isn’t yet ready for me to walk on or with him again. Yes, I am animating Camino, doing so out of reverence and regard for its centuries of history, people and their traditions, cultures and stories, and the more than human elements continuously making for its beauty and its challenges. And yes, I admit, maybe it’s simply me who hasn’t been ready, with it simply being a matter of not yet the right time. Then, after a few hours over the past month preparing – compiling my blog posts into a single document and adding my recent Instagram posts; propping up on my writing table my photo journal with its cover photo of me standing in front of the cathedral the day I arrived; stacking beside me my travel journal, course notes, and Portugal Green Walks’ self guided program notes – this week I finally lifted open my laptop and began. While I’d thought I’d use for incentive the June 30th chapbook submission deadline with a literary journal who recently published one of my poems, given the experimental nature of this undertaking, braiding together from several sources, and wanting to embody in my writing now how I walked then – sauntering to enjoy the vistas – I’ve decided wisely let that go.

Viana do Castelo
view from Villadesuso
Pontevedra

Albeit reluctantly and with regret, I’m using the gift of time received by finally having conceded a week ago that I must step away from playing pickleball. A game I enjoy for its physicality and camaraderie with women, who like me, love being fully engaged in life. A game my chiropractor has suggested I may need to sit out as for the past three months I’ve been nursing an injured metatarsal. Despite regular appointments, taking a few days off from the game here and there, icing, and copious applications of extra strength Volartin, it’s been one healing step forward and several back. Compounding this is the pressure, with worry enough to wake me, of needing to seriously train for another long walk in September. This one not a saunter. This one strenuous with nearly double the daily kilometers over sixteen days, and steady ascents and descents. All a natural consequence of aging, this has brought its own grief as I face such realities. My foot and body as whole are feeling better, and I’m hoping this, too, will become “the perfect place… the right time… where wish becomes possible.”

***

As I’ve written here before, the writerly life is a lonely one, rife with rejection. Just this morning I received two. On the up side, I finally received a print copy of the local poetry anthology featuring both my photo as cover and poem inside, and in the past month, several other photos have been accepted by literary journals making me wonder if I should shift my genre!

As it’s been several weeks since I posted a Monday morning blog, by way of update, our dear Annie dog has had a remarkable recovery from the stroke she suffered the end of April. So much so, I call her our “Lazarus,” as it truly feels she rose from a near death listlessness during those early days. Today, she has returned to all the ways in which she is uniquely Annie to and with us, including interrupting my work at noon by persistently placing her big right front paw on my lap or keyboard. Now I kiss it and her in ever welcome gratitude.

walking with Annie “Bright Eyes”, June 5, 2023

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. May this post find you on roads plenty wide and welcoming.

The Mother’s Prayer

THE MOTHER’S PRAYER

Our Mother
Who is always with us,
Holy is our Being.
Thy Kin-dom is present.
They Desire is felt throughout the Cosmos.
We graciously receive your infinite daily abundance.
May we forgive each other our lack of skill and
insensitivity.
May we understand our inner guidance,
and perceive each other’s needs.
For Thine is the Kin-dom, the Power and the Story,
in never-ending renewal.
Blessed be.

– Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D. –

The week before I departed for Portugal, I listened to Edmonton author, teacher, organic market gardener and beekeeper, Jenna Butler read from her latest book, Revery: A Year with Bees. In response to host Rayanne Haine’s thoughtful questions, Jenna spoke eloquently of the big and deep questions she holds about place, land, environment, interconnectedness and what this means for her life, healing, food production and writing. Evoked for me was farmer-poet-activist Wendell Berry, though Jenna brought an oh-so-vital feminine and BIPOC perspective.

Reflecting on my reasons for making this long, sauntering walk, apparent is my need, as a woman, to reawaken my connections to land and sky, people and place as I walk in gratitude and appreciation within these new perspectives. It is to replenish my inner reservoir of impressions from which I create. It is to renew my commitment to stepping lighter on and in reverence for Mother Earth.

Mother’s Day has recently past, both in North America (May 8), Portugal (May 1), and Spain (May 1). Coming across this wonderful reframing of a classic prayer, I share it today to honour the sacred Feminine, embodied in life. Blessed be.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.