Still Life

Friday evening, joined a ceilidh-zoom for the Geopoetics Society Christmas celebration.  Forgot about all that zoom, ‘you’re-on-mute‘, kafuffle.  Am over the moon zoom is no longer part of my day. What I want more of in my day, is to express my creativity, to just feel it, do it, make!  Not just journalling.  Geopoetics Society is “a network of individuals who share a common interest in developing an understanding of geopoetics as the creative expression of the Earth and applying it in their lives “.  Honestly, I still don’t fully understand what is or is not geopoetics, but Nan Shepherds, The Living Mountain’, is a good start, as she is a great heroine of the geopoeticals, as is Rachel Carson.  Get out in nature, describe it in story, description, poetry (if you must).  Paint it, in situ, make a song about it.  Sing ancients songs of the land and sea, make up some new songs if that’s your talent. 

The best part about last night was the songs.  Two men, one in Canada, singing unaccompanied, old tunes that made me think of Herman Melville’s descriptions at the beginning of Moby Dick.  One sung in Canadian French, that chanting, nasal 18^th century almost Appalachian chant that is so beguiling – and whose roots travelled from Scotland, due to the Clearances, so was viscerally recognisable.

But why do they all want to write and speak poetry?  I don’t know.  I don’t enjoy the way people speak poetry, like a bad preacher’s sing-song liturgy, jarring off-key, or the way young American women’s intonation goes up at the end of every sentence. 

At least the geopoeticals are writing it, speaking it, badly.   

Here is how to speak poetry: Judi Dench Sonnet 29 (From 1.30 timeline).

I want a less still creative life.

Speak poetry badly.

https://www.geopoetics.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Shepherd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMmKv8jJrI