Let’s get started with the poem.
The starting point is the same, no matter whether I’m writing poetry or stitching on a piece of textile art. A small something, seized from my ordinary day, to be held up and really seen, examined, as if with fresh eyes.
You take the small thing and look at, wandering along in daydreams with it, until the transfiguration happens, and you know where to go next.
I keep a notebook for this, full of both words and drawings, ideas for marks to make in thread drawn from the world around me (mostly from me walking my dog, let’s be honest).
Word after word, stitch after stitch
In On Mending, Darning, and Grief, Julie Hester writes:
Writing, with others or alone, is a way to examine the raw edges of our grief, and begin to weave something new across the gap. We get acquainted with the hole—writing about what is lost, torn, flawed—and then someday we find ourselves experimenting with words and stitches that might cross the divide between what we’ve lost, and who we might yet become. Word after word, stitch after stitch, we rebuild.
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See you next week!
Jess