The opposite of depression is expression
I love this quote from holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eva Eger:
The opposite of depression is expression.
What comes out of your body will never make you ill.
What stays in there will.
Remember, there is no right or wrong feeling, there is only YOU feeling.
Last night I went to ‘Dorking is Talking’, our local poetry night and shared a couple of poems, but the highlight was listening to everyone else. To hear people expressing all kinds of views on love, Trump, relationships, living alone, grief, shopping, it fills my heart with hope. For here was a place where, through mutual respect poets were
‘Carrying what’s heavy on the wings of a melody
That is sweeter to the ear
In the hope that it helps someone to listen,
And not just hear.’
Self expression helps us to feel validated, less alone. As I was chatting to one other poet, we both shared how actually, it didn’t even matter if anyone else heard or read what we had to say. The act of sitting down to write your feelings and thoughts into poetic form is, of itself, validation enough at times.
I think that this is where people can go a little askew when writing poetry. Of course, there are laureates who are paid to express a collective sentiment, but we don’t have such grand a job. Our job is to listen closely to our hearts and to translate its longings and loves into words so that we can put shape around them.
I’m taken by comedian Jimmy Carr’s view on religion, using the metaphor that religion is a way to "put a blanket over mystery to give it shape,". I think that when we write poetry, the first job that it is doing is helping us give shape to feelings and experiences that in some way are a mystery to us until we do that.
Tonight, I am off to another poetry evening, to hear Gaza Poets Society’s Mohammed Moussa read from his newest poetry collection. Last year I worked with Mohammed on editing one of his poetry collections. Reading his collection made me realise just how much I can take the ability to find words to share about my experience for granted. As he writes:
’The desire to write or read poetry comes from the urgency and fragmentation of our reality. As Palestinians, we must respond to contain the anger that burns within us. Poetry, with its own sense of urgency and fragmentation, encapsulates that anger, frustration, loss, hesitation, silence, and scream. A poem can serve as a silent scream to this world, a whispered prayer to it.’
There is a commonality that we can share within poetry, because poetry is about translating the human experience. Sometimes that is interpreted as political, but only, I think, when the reality of someone’s humanity is being questioned or denied. That’s the thing with poetry - it is an expression of our humanity - whether we are writing about struggle or joy, there is a poem, a poet, something that we can each relate to, because we are human.
So, your prompt for today:
