Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Word Lovers, Unite!

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Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is in her Bakersfield, California living room wishing you word-love. She invites you to participate in this week of creative writing and joy. A full book shelf is behind her and she holds a notebook in her hands.

Word-love! Two words I blended together a few years ago to express how much I love words, love their sounds, their meanings and the deep connection they create between us and among us. I write prose, most often non-fiction essays and how-to’s along with the occasional advice. I have written plays and less often I write fiction.

Many people know me as a writing teacher and a writing coach.

Julie JordanScott writing poetry at a downtown Bakersfield flower shop.

One of my favorite and most active form of writing is poetry.

I am a poet who loves to surround herself in poetry.

April is National Poetry Month.  As I often do, I find new ways to share poetry. This year I am livestreaming poetry almost daily via periscope and more often than not on Instagram Live. Usually the poems are picked in the moment as my time to broadcast arrives and I grab a poetry collection and turn to a page and read.

I have found some incredible rich poems this way from poets known and unknown to me that somehow seem to blend into an array of words that addresses exactly with what we are going through.

Yesterday I visited the Poetry Foundation website and found six different poems for next week. I decided I wanted to highlight the online home of Poetry Magazine, where people may read every single issue published since its founding in 1912.

This is poetry abundance at its best, isn’t it?

Again, the poems selected were a mix of synchronistic finds and others very intentional. Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” was a definite yes. I tried to pick a poem that refused to be copied so I went deeper and discovered a new-to-me poets, Emily Jungmin Yoon and Joanne Klink.

This week in my blog I will take a line from each poem I share that day and write an essay from it. I will post prompts for you to use to write, make or share in creative conversations with your friends or family or with yourself in your journal.

A pink circle surrounded by starts contains the words of Emily Dickinson, "The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."

My hope is you may fall in love or deeper in love with words. If you have not been a poetry fan, maybe you will open yourself to the beauty and love of poetry – it isn’t something to be misunderstood or understood like one of your teachers might have told you.

It is something to be loved, to be enjoyed, to be experienced like a fine glass of wine or a sunset or a long remembered and cherished birthday party.

Whether or not you visit here in the coming week, I invite you to experience this coming week as a time of joy, regardless of what is swirling around you.

A notebook on a table with an art journal with a variety of small paper works of art. One is a queenly figure, another is a triangle with a square that reads, "You are essential joy" from a poem by Hildegard de Bingen

As Hildegard de Bingen told us in a poem hundreds of years ago, “You are essential joy.” It is our choice to live those words even when we may not feel them initially.

Thank you for reading.

Julie JordanScott creates content to inspire creative people to lead more satisfying lives even during this pandemic. Walking and sitting at the Panorama Bluffs helps her feel centered.

Julie JordanScott is the Creative Life Midwife. She inspires people to live their life as an artform and take action towards their best results. During the 2020 Pandemic she is also leading daily Virtual Coffee Dates, Facilitating Intentional Conversation so people will feel less isolated during this time of social and physical distancing. Join the conversation by registering for free by clicking this link.

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Note to Self (and to YOU, reading.) Continue: When All Else is…..

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Note to self and to you: when all else feels like it is failing, all I need to do is this:

Right now, as a vibrant member of the human community I choose to….continue. To grow, to feel, to express, to love, to seek understanding and compassion. Reminding oneself, daily, of wonder right in front of us.

Here is what happened when I reviewed a line of Diane Ackerman’s poem, SCHOOL PRAYER and used it as a writing prompt. The actual visual prompt is beneath my writing for YOU to use. Also below is a video I created as a result of this writing.

I offer myself as a messenger of wonder –

How do I do this?

I open my mouth.

I open my mouth and I speak what is in front of me.

I open my mouth and I speak the details of what is in front of me – the lines, the light, the way the lines and light reach back to me and fill my hand with energy that ignites my muse and makes my fingers push the keys that become these words and further the process in an infinite loop de loop when someone else lifts her or his or their chin and sees… oh, the plug.. oh the chord into the plug that makes the light turn on. The switch. I hear the click, I see the light turn on and suddenly I notice…

And the a-ha’s flow because people say “I never saw it like that, I never thought of it like that, I never… until now and suddenly the plug becomes an object of wonder and curiosity and we appreciate those who created the plug and the lamp and our heartbeat joins their heartbeat and the collective heartbeat and….

In what ways am I currently a messenger of wonder?

Here. Now. This. You. Look. Listen. Translate. Taste. Touch. Cry when you feel it, laugh when you feel it. Feel free and stand with it, allow yourself to hold onto that fearful moment with the same gentle tenderness as you hold onto a first kiss or a first bite of the most incredible taste ever (pesto, dark chocolate, pear brandy come to mind) and then….. recognize the divinity of that moment and….

How would I like to further my message of wonder in the world?

Increase the people I interact with and who appreciate what I am up to… invite them in. Cherish their them-ness. Reflect this beauty of humanity so the static will be silence and the pure breath and tone and light and harmony and dissonance and choking and relaxing back into presence flows….

Right now, as a message of wonder in my world I choose to….continue.

And now it is your turn: write about being a messenger of wonder in your unique way. Splash words and images freely on the page. Ready? Here’s your prompt:

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Poetry: Love it, Hate it, Bored by It? Let’s play a free association game now —

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When you see or hear “poetry”: what springs to your mind first? Read this essay to relate to poetry in a useful, reflective way.

I subscribe to a variety of writing websites, read writing instructional books regularly and attempt, always, to be at the forefront of thought around writing so that I may serve my students and workshop participants and coaching clients as well as I possibly can.

I also make it no secret that I am a poet and an actor.

Today I was reading one of my subscriptions, saw this and literally gasped aloud:

“Reading poetry often bothers people. Sometimes poetry feels lofty and pretentious and seems to say, “I know something you don’t know,” which is obnoxious, like an older sister taunting us.”

I was mortified.

“Reading poetry BOTHERS people? How can that be?!” I found myself taking this assertion personally. “How dare they think such a thing! They are missing the fabulousness that is poetry and anyone knows…” and then I thought back to the years when I wrote poetry and neglected to read poetry.

It is sort of like being a selfish-all-about-me person who enjoys other people’s company as long as the focus is solely on what they like and what they want and the conversation revolves around them.

Poetry isn’t like that. At. All. If poetry is a one way “I just write poetry” or “I abstain from all poetry” you are missing out on a huge area of growth as not only a writer or creative, you are shutting yourself off from the sheer pleasure of word play that comes with it.

What if a poem was an invitation?

My father was one of those who didn’t like poetry because he couldn’t “figure it out” and then I wrote a sonnet about hearing my grandather’s voice in a train whistle.

Suddenly poetry – according to my father especially poetry written by me – was enjoyable and easy to understand.

Let’s take a moment to free associatie – I will share three lines of poetry, one at a time.

When you read a line, jot notes of how you connect with those words.

“We have the town we call home wakening for dawn which isn’t here yet but is promised.”

Philip Levine

Make associations – what words do you connect with here? What do you see in your mind’s eye from this one line of poetry?

“The grass never sleeps”

Mary Oliver

Associations, please.

“I saw you in a dream last night –

Quiet and pale, but still my handsome cousin.”

Dana Gioia

Associate (Do you have a handsome cousin?)

“Time for gardening again; for poetry”

Margaret Atwood

More associations – play!

I just pulled random collections of poetry from my shelves, opened them, and wrote the first lines I saw. I didn’t have to hunt for inviting word sections or the easier to understand lines or the ‘dumbed down” versions.

See, what I love about poetry is the simplicity I find there, the purity and the relationship between me and the words and by association the poet. Three of  the poets I chose are currently living, breathing this same air I breathe, standing on the same ground I stand upon albeit in different spaces. Phillip Levine died in 2015 in Fresno, California not far from where I live in Bakersfield. Have you been to Fresno? The most unpretentious people you have ever met live there.

Dana Gioia and I had a conversation in December but I doubt he remembers me. I became a fourteen-year-old girl holding a copy of a fan magazine when I spoke to him. Giddy, with rapid speech, nervous about my choice of outfit and wishing I had taken more time with my appearance when we spoke. He is the current poety laureate of the state of California and the word craft in his poetry makes me swoon.

There is a new television show starting based on one of Margaret Atwood’s books.

Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Philip Levine is also a Pultizer Prize Winner who chose to focus on the working class in his poetry and the place of his birth, Detroit, was one of his central inspirations.

I went back to the article that started this train of thought and discovered a shift there, as well.

“If we keep reading, poetry often moves us in ways a paragraph can’t. It requires a compression of language and meaning, tucked inside precise words that create concrete images. Poets, with a wink and a wry smile, trust us to read well.” Joe Bunting, TheWritePractice.com

Share in the comments what words you free associate with POETRY. Whatever you think or feel, let it drip onto the comments here. This is going to be fun. Let’s read your thoughts now – 

Coming Up: 30 Days of Writing Passionately

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links in the margins above to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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