Tapping into your creativity through writing
Do your days seem busier than ever? Are you struggling to find some quiet time to collect your thoughts? Poetry could be the answer to unlocking your creativity.
During the month of August – Poetry Month – we encouraged our Women’s Network Australia members to share their work. Poetry, it seems, is having a revival. That’s not to say it really ever went away. The art of writing, reflecting and reimaging the people, places and world around has long been considered an antidote to the worries of the world. It can be practised in isolation – and we’ve had plenty of that during the pandemic.
Launched in 2021 by Red Room Poetry, Poetry Month celebrates Australian poetry, poets and publishers. It aims to increase access, awareness and visibility of poetry in all its forms and for all audiences.
Gemma White is a poet living in Melbourne. Her first collection of poetry, Furniture is Disappearing, was published in 2014. She shares her knowledge of poetry on her website, where she offers a free five-day email poetry course. Gemma is currently working on a follow-up manuscript.
Here’s one of Gemma’s poems:
The Kitchen Table
It was not a table really
more an ‘island’ in renovator speak
instead of legs it had one singular trunk
into which was built a cupboard
filled with recipe books
of every possible era, nationality.
It was the gathering point for us
to share our day
although it also witnessed:
smouldering silences
face-slapping retorts
stomach-stretching laughter
in the centre of the kitchen
it stood its ground.
The biro braille of its placemats told stories
of maths equations and spelling homework
of sighing fathers
and nagging mothers.
But it really needed further renovation:
an escape hatch perhaps
an SOS drawn in the sand
for the kitchen was so big
and the island so small.
Nicole Cantle has always had a way with words, and a love of horses. She’s been combining both recently as she refines her poetry writing and editing. She joined David Tensen’s Poetry Chapel to find some supportive accountability and to take her work further. Nicole says she found the experience to be a “transformative, encouraging, supportive experience. I rediscovered my voice.”
Nicole’s Instagram feed is dotted with her work, and the work of others, as well as images of her treasured Connemarras.
She shared this poem:
Lantana
I would like to lay my griefs out like a well curated
and ordered garden bed,
the landscape plotted and pierced –
fold, fallow and plough;
Neatly constrained and bordered,
maintained by careful pruning and tended so
(according to ‘Insta’ wellness advice)
they blossom into new growth, bear new fruit –
the reward for neat control.
But,
they refuse to be thus tamed.
Lantana like,
they cling to memory,
weaving sorrow
into love.
