I am taking lessons from my favourite teacher, Judyth Hill.  Look her up.  Buy her books.  Know that she is a wonderful teacher of poetry.  Don’t ask me how she does it, but she’s got it.  One of the techniques she taught us yesterday was this idea of opening your eyes and in the first moment of consciousness writing whatever comes.  People scoff at this …” I have to go pee…..I need my coffee…..I can’t think at that moment.”  One of the most important ideas in this technique is that, yes, you are not ” thinking” in your everyday, logical way.  That’s the soul of poetry though.  To blend the real and the dreamlike state makes a poem and I would say, good fiction too.

Things have to be set up.  You need a clean page in your journal, a pen that writes well, maybe a lamp if you don’t have natural light and a bit of a prompt to set you off.  Ours was the scent of any flower we liked.  I chose daffodil because even though it is not sweet like a rose or jasmine, I love its sappy promise of spring.  We also were given some excerpts from a poet called Mirabai, a 15 th century writer….oh well you can look her up. We had to chose one line, write it on the top of the page and then…off to sleep.  The journal is right on the night table beside you.

Trust me, after a day of writing workshop, I was wiped and fell asleep like a stone thrown down the well.  Early in the still-dark morning a church bell clanged and woke me up.  Roll over and write, I thought.  I did, in spite of not being able to find my glasses ( they were later found in the tangle of the bed-clothes. ) I wrote in large messy letters and I have not even read what I wrote but I know it was something about a garden.

More surprises from Judyth today.  Daffodil kisses…sort of soft and cool and smelling that spring smell…you know…..to you who read this.