To write we need an absence of interference, of noise of the intrusive kind and of demands on our time . We need the kind of peace a garden can provide.
Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching…A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again. Mary Oliver
This morning as I sit to write at the table in my garden which so often provides me with a ‘place apart,’ a neighbour starts up a viscious strimmer with a motor sounding so rough it might be about to die – I can only hope – and wonder what happened to shears or rough edges.
But before long peace is restored and the blackbird sings. The silence returns and with it solace – particularly sought today after a difficult week or two: the movement of the wind through leaf, the play of shadows on the tablecloth and the page, the colour, scent; all part of our connection with the natural world. A connection capable of bringing us back from the flashes of a darker past to now, to our place in the family of things, (Mary Oliver, Wild Geese.)
When we plant, when we walk or sit among plants we nurture our soul. It is the same when we write or spend time with poetry. Gardens and poetry can save us ( what saves us being a theme I see emerging just now in my writing).
This week I’ve been reading Neil Astley’s anthology: Staying Alive, where the first poem is Wild Geese. Coming back to it unexpectedly has been important and life affirming. Perhaps not surprising from the poet who in her own words says ‘it was a very dark and broken house I came from.’
You do not have to be good
You do not need to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love
What it loves
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine…
For exquisite writing about a garden and prose that reads like poetry – read Wendy Robertson’s The Garden Cure for Writers
