Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
As a teenager, during my impressionable years,
I would often, at the end of each school year,
ask my school friends to write little messages for me
in a little autograph book that I had and cherished.
And most of the time, they happily obliged.
This one: "Your album is a garden in which we all plant seeds.
The seed I plant is forget-me-not; please keep me free from weeds."
Occasionally, messages of mischief:
"Roses are red; violets are blue.
I was born beautiful, what happened to you?"
And the occasional shy poet:
[Just a few lines from a shy poet]
(Laughter)
Allow me, with your help, to conduct a little experiment.
I'm going to share with you the first part of a little rhyme,
and if you know what the rhyme is and how it ends,
I'd like you to finish it off for me.
[Sticks and stones can break my bones ...]
Sticks and stones can break my bones ...
(Audience) But words/names can never hurt me.
But words or names can never hurt me.
If it is some time since you have come across those words,
I would like to ask the following question:
Why is it that we can remember them?
And of all the billions of words that pass us by in life,
how is it that poetry, albeit childish rhymes like this one,
can transcend time in this way?
How does poetry emboss itself on the human heart in such an enduring way?
And what do we, as adults, now make of the lie
that we were instructed to memorize as children,
that names or words can never hurt me?
How exactly do we heal from the trauma brought by words,
intentional and unintentional;
wounds that often run deep,
that erode and destroy self-worth
and that are, sadly, the seeds of lifelong anxiety?
Could the answer lie in creativity?
In community?
In poetry?
Allow me to paint you a picture.
It's a mild July evening, school holidays.
Beside me is a tent
where my 13-year-old daughter and her friend are making chirpy chatter.
I'm seated at a picnic table.
In front of me, a half-finished billycan of hot chocolate,
a cooling camp oven,
and I'm surrounded by candles of all different sizes,
my writing pad, my pen and a well-read book.
A little while earlier,
the [bush stone-curlews] were crying in unison
into the once-starry night sky.
I look up, and I see my neighborhood,
alive by day, now quietly resting,
with only the faint sound of engines revving in the distance
occasionally breaking into my thoughts.
There is peace, and it's gentle.
I inhale the vanilla-scented candle wax,
and I exhale gratitude.
Semester is over, and we are all reveling in relief.
The book beside is me a stark reminder that it was not always so.
"Overwhelmed," its title.
Overwhelmed, my midlife experience.
So much so that after I started to read it - a gift for my 50th -
I started to relieve the nausea and the palpitations
that had become a feature of my daily life.
I had to put it away.
Midlife had hit me two years earlier like a ton of bricks,
and I was reeling with pain and trauma.
I felt worthless;
I felt hopeless;
I felt powerless to reclaim my former self
and rise out of my bed.
My chest was gripped in a vise,
my mind terrorized by emotional insecurity,
my stomach nauseated by this crisis.
My chattering teeth and trembling hands horrified me,
and my emaciated body taunted me in the mirror.
My footsteps, barely a shuffle.
I could no longer sing.
I was unable to teach,
and became convinced that I would never enter the classroom again.
Trauma had set in and had left me shattered
and painfully dependent on loved ones,
on dear friends, on counselors,
on spiritual guides,
on unsuspecting mentors,
regular TED date night on Saturday night
and on medication.
My life was being played out in slow motion,
my mind traveling fast forward.
The anxiety left me feeling like I was suffocating,
so much so that I'd get in the car at night,
late at night at times,
and drive -
windows down, music blaring -
so that I could pump life and hope back into my soul
and vent my panic and confusion.
It felt as if my life was slipping through my fingers
like an ice block melting on my hands on a hot summer's day,
leaving its sticky, uncomfortable stain.
I couldn't go fast enough.
I couldn't go fast enough, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Or so I thought.
Unconsciously, I'd become a voracious bookworm.
As a teacher, my lifelong passion has been reading,
but at this point of my life, it had become obsessive.
It was as if the words themselves
were going to help me put weight and fat onto my 49 kilogram frame.
Beside me, my bedside table, invisible under the books -
dozens of them,
one by one, a little at a time, feeding my soul.
They'd become my friends, my best friends, my wise friends
whispering to me,
listening to my heartbeat
and at other times shouting out to me.
I could hear the author saying,
"I know where you're at. I've been there.
Here's how it was for me."
And at that point, at that point,
I would shed a tear, swallow -
maybe hold back for fear of a flood -
and whisper back,
"You know, don't you? Yes, you know.
You know exactly how I feel, what I think and what it's like."
It was in July 2012 when I started to do something
that was a serious turning point in my recovery.
On that day,
I didn't turn to my many half-waiting, half-finished books.
I actually picked up my iPad, and I started.
I typed and I typed,
and as I typed, I could feel the pain oozing from my heart
down through my fingers onto that keyboard,
and with it, a measure of relief.
I had no joy, so my poem was about looking for joy.
I had no hope, so my poem clung desperately to hope.
I had no peace; my poem painted the battle scene.
I had anger; my poem was full of passion and indignation.
I sensed injustice and despair, and my poem captured that spirit.
How was it,
how was it that I could barely lift myself out of my bed,
and yet I found myself prolifically writing?
I was unable to do the most basic of self-care tasks and daily chores,
and yet I was writing poem after poem,
fictitious letter after fictitious letter.
Anything to be heard, to be understood,
to be validated,
to be valued.
[From darkness to light]
In the beginning, evidently, the poetry was dark and heavy.
It was steeped in confusion and pain,
questions,
yet, ironically, at the same time,
it was deeply imbued with hope,
deep hope and faith.
And it was this hope and faith that kept me from imploding.
As time went by and opportunities to rebuild myself presented themselves,
my poetry started to feel lighter;
it evolved.
It started to reflect a place of greater peace and acceptance.
This left me deepy, deeply curious.
How could that be?
How could I, on the one hand,
have barely the energy to look after myself,
to rise from my bed,
and yet be overwhelmed by the desire to be prolifically writing,
to be creative with my voice and with my pen?
[A chance encounter ...]
By coincidence, or not,
I stumbled, in my local library,
on a book that would set me on an unimaginable new path,
a book that would help me piece together the puzzle
of why it is that poetry, that writing, empowers,
why it is that it heals.
Suddenly, it all fell into place.
And what had been happening around the world for decades,
if not centuries and millennia,
had entered, organically, my own life and brought me healing.
[Back to school ...]
And so, I went back to school,
and I decided to do a little poetry experiment
with my Year 5/6 students.
We ran a couple of sessions, and then they were given their brief:
to write a little poem,
a poem that reflected what they held most precious in life.
Of course, as you can understand,
in schools, anxiety doesn't take long to surface.
So the first question came:
"Miss, do we have to do it?"
"No, but I'd love you to."
"Miss, will it be assessed?"
"No."
And one by one, the poems started coming in.
This anthology would be different.
Their self-worth was not on the line.
One little boy,
after a session where we'd been working with beautiful Japanese paper,
approached me, and he said, "Aw, where'd you get that paper from?
I'd really love to have some to coat my guitar."
He'd connected beauty with his own precious world,
his guitar.
And that was the title of his poem,
one of 48 that I received, voluntarily.
So this begs the question,
can anyone write poetry?
Even someone who doesn't want to?
I encountered similar resistance when I ran a women's workshop last year,
from someone who didn't want to write.
She wasn't creative.
I encouraged her a little bit.
Her poem is called, "You can't see me,"
and she's given me permission to share it with you.
"Inspiring thoughts elude me at this time,
and the thoughts I do have are not seeking expression.
Like a turtle,
they would rather hide today and come out some other time."
Some of the most precious gifts I have received in my entire life
have been words.
These words from my Year 8 history teacher:
"Above all, to thine own self be true."
In the mad rush of daily life,
I had somehow forgotten this timeless mantra.
In my desire to please all those I loved,
all those who needed my help,
all those who wanted my help,
all those who would affirm me -
this I had forgotten.
But Shakespeare, paraphrased, goes on for us -
Above all, to thine own self be true.
And as surely as night follows day,
you therefore cannot be false towards another human being.
15th of November, 2015.
With hope-filled defiance in my heart,
I sat down to write a long-overdue letter:
"Dear Anxiety,
I'm going to beat you with a stick from now on
when I feel you rearing your ugly, ugly head.
I'm no longer interested in your lies and distortions
about my self-worth, about my potential,
about my strength, about my habits, about my values.
I'm no longer interested in your reminders about my weaknesses,
about my procrastination, about my stress levels
and about all those I will let down because of what I haven't finished,
what I haven't yet accomplished.
I'm not interested, because your scales are the not the scales of justice;
they are not the scales of hope;
they are not the scales of love
and they, most definitely, are not the scales of peace.
Keep your lies to yourself and be banished from our planet forever.
We have enough to worry about without your help.
Thank you very much.
Yours no longer."
Some 400 years ago, Shakespeare left us another little reminder:
"We know what we are but know not what we may be."
We have the opportunity to reflect on the healing power of creativity,
of community, of poetry,
of words.
On their potential to dispel loneliness and grief,
on their capacity to transcend time and space
and on their ability to embrace the human spirit.
Is it possible that on this planet of over seven-and-a-half billion people,
we could banish the scourge of isolation,
loneliness, grief, physical deprivation
and the resultant anxiety and depression that they cultivate,
to rebuild our global community,
one little word at a time?
Can you sense my deep, deep hope
in the healing power of creativity
and in its capacity to connect us with the deepest parts of ourselves
and with each other?
Do you have something you could write a poem about?
Thank you.
(Applause)