Filling the Well (National Poetry Month)

 

Sid Litke

 

Hello, Friends!

I hope you've been well. I've been keeping busy with a little of this and a little of that—staying out of trouble for the most part. While I haven't been very good about participating in Poetry Friday lately, I have been watching the days draw closer and closer to National Poetry Month. The thought of not participating this year was too sad to contemplate, so I put on my thinking cap and came up with a project that I think will be both fun and manageable. 

 

Like many others during this pandemic, I've been revisiting The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I sort of gave it a mention in my last blog post, but today I'd like to be more direct and introduce a concept from the book Julia Cameron describes as filling the well—

In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond. We've got big fish, little fish, fat fish, skinny fish.... As artists, we must realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem....we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them—to restock the trout pond, so to speak.

I've borrowed that idea for my National Poetry Month project. Instead of celebrating poetry, we'll be filling the well and celebrating the genesis of poetry—the inspiration, the artistic ecosystem, the... trout. Or possibly goldfish.

 

ali mosavi sam px

 

Clownfish, perhaps?

 

Pilar Palmer

Oh, you get the idea.

Yes, there will be some poetry, but mostly I'll be playing with the stuff that inspires poetry—

The language of art is image, symbol. It is a wordless language even when our very art is to chase it with words. The artist's language is a sensual one, a language of felt experience....In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun.

                    – Julia Cameron

I will be playing with quotations—pairing them with art, photography, poems, music, dance... anything that strikes my fancy and gives the words new life. I'm calling them inspirational musings. For those who are familiar with Today's Little Ditty, you will recognize these posts as similar to my Two Line Tuesday and Monday Musing series, with a touch of Poetry in Action to spice things up. The objective is to offer new perspective to the words, enhance our experience of them, and maybe even inspire some poems of our own.

 

I hope you will enjoy diving into the well with me.

Illusion-X

 

aquarium

 

Goldfish

Flash

Gold and silver scales;

They flick and slip away

Under green weed—

But round brown snails

Stick 

To the glass

And stay.

 

from all the small poems and fourteen more, by Valerie Worth

 

You'll find this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Soul Blossom Living, where Susan Bruck is previewing many other ways to participate in National Poetry Month.