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Letters to Biddy

~ a weekly reflection as a letter to Biddy Early, 19th Century Irish healer from Ennis, County Clare

Letters to Biddy

Tag Archives: poetry

Poetry and Policy-Making

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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boardroom, decision-making, Murder in the Cathedral, poetry, policy making, speak truth to power, TS Eliot

Dear Biddy,

I wonder what you would have made of twitter? A quick short messaging exchange that has created its own universe. The number of followers is the currency of the twittersphere, where unlikely celebrities are treasured for their pearls of wisdom and trolls can be found lurking with intent under the cover of either suspicious or overt handles.

Next week I am going to be guest curator for @Wethehumanities and have decided to blend my love of poetry with my professional life in strategic thinking and decision-making. I hope it will be a journey of discover of bards in the boardroom. It has certainly got me thinking about the words you might have used to coax decisions from those in authority. Perhaps a song or a curse held a lyrical line to make sense of the scene and circumstance in which your visitors found themselves in? The great Irish lilt a comfort to a weary travellers ear.

(Back in the twitterspehere, I introduced myself to the twitter community formed around @wethehumanities and the entry on their blog is here.)

My personal favourite line from poetry to guide my decision-making comes from TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral:

The last temptation is the greatest treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason

Many a time I have used this line as my examen and to check in if the dark side was finding its way out of the cracks into the light. It often is the hardest question of all to answer. With clever intellectual gymnastics, it is possible to find an answer to satisfy the soul and the board room and succumb to the temptation.   Beckett’s temptation was for martyrdom and he came to that place in peace. I believe to be at peace with a decision is a sign of alignment between the heart and the head. Having worked in political settings and getting my grounding for that in the church Murder in the Cathedral served as a primer and provided many lessons of church and state. I am eternally grateful for the introduction to this work in my high school years.

Both poetry and policy making distil an idea and amplify the essence to birth new purpose or insight. Both have the power to bring imagination to public view and cut through and generate new outcomes.   Making sense of what was invisible, whether it be big data or a metaphor, poetry and policy-making have the power to stimulate and challenge.  The juxtaposition of light and dark in this quote below poses the question: is policy making the shadow of poetry?

For poetry, the focus is on the transformation of the aesthetic experience through imagination, with all that implies for the emergence of novel, subtle and complex forms of understanding and coherence. In the world of policy-making, it is the transformation of power relationships and the use of collective energy, namely the emergence of novel forms of social coherence in practice. In this sense policy-making may be understood as the shadow of poetry.

Speaking-Truth-to-PowerBeing able to listen to the conversations and hear the stories that get told in the process of decision-making, is often an invitation to hear an epic journey, a quest, a legend of dragon-slayers and unrequited love.

Hearing these stories and being able to synthesise and draw on the great stories that lie in deep time, mirrored in the meta narrative of what it means to be human, is at the heart of my pilgrimage.

And while not a piece of poetry, a wonderful maxim that wells in my throat some days from the Society of Friends: Speak your truth to power holds the space for poetry and policy making to come together.

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Wild Soul

25 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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Biddy Early, David Whyte, John O'Donohue, living large, poetry, Russell Crowe

Dear Biddy,

I think you were a wild soul, someone who knew how to embrace the world and allow the world to embrace you with a wildness that was only tempered by the boundaries of the elements.  To be wild is being able to live free range, in harmony with the environment. This is living large, un-contained by the usual boundaries of fear and anxiety; it is a living in trust and confidence.  Like the birds of the  air and the fish of the sea knowing that your wildness is what enables you to navigate the currents of the air and the ocean.

Once you have had a taste of living wild, it is hard to be domesticated by the rituals of routine and predictability.  The spontaneous moment is suffocated and what is an attempt to gasp a breath is subject to misinterpretation of being oppositional. Sometimes there just isn’t enough room to dance or paint and you need a bigger dance floor or canvas.  Being wild is being alive.

View from Kay Brothers, Mc Laren Vale

View from Kay Brothers, Mc Laren Vale

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
― David Whyte, House of Belonging

I have had a deep drink this past week from the well of wildness.  Giving yourself permission to embrace your own wild soul is a response to the invitation that was always there to be set yourself free from the cages you put around yourself.

It has been poetry and listening to your fellow countryman John O’Donohue that has helped to open the door to the cage this week.  I have been rewarded at many levels and am enjoying affirmation across cyberspace.  And what an unexpected was the synchronicity has come. After being in Russell Crowe fandom last week, a number of fans have read my poem and I even got the courage to tweet it directly to a couple of the people who got a mention in it (including Russell). Who knows if the stars read it, but I do know from some of their fans that it meant something to them and gave them a glimpse of their idol from this untrained eye.

Poetry is a wild craft. Taming the free range words as they find their way to the page is to patiently wait for them to work out which ones can stay and which ones will be given their leave to return another day.

For the wildness of my soul and my poetry coming together in a happy union this week has been a divine intervention. I am enjoying the fruits – it is bliss and a wonderful confirmation of a decision I made a year ago to leave a set of circumstances where I felt caged and imprisoned. I am wild.

Tree in Scrub behind Courthouse, Willunga

Tree in Scrub behind Courthouse, Willunga

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