 BREAKING
OUT OF
SOLITARY............
Katherine
L.
Gordon
|
Katherine L. Gordon is the author of "An Impact of Butterflies," "Saving Camelot,"
2 full collections, and many chap-books. Her most recent is "A Conjunction of Hearts, A Renga" with Joan McGuire. This Renga is being studied in Israel, where a group of Israeli poets hope to produce one
of their own. She has edited 7 anthologies and published articles and essays on the value and unifying force of poetry. Katherine's work is published in India, Cuba, the U.K. and North America. She is an editor, author, publisher, judge and reviewer, working for many poetry organizations to promote poetry as a vital part of culture and an antidote to an impersonal world. She writes from a secluded river valley where she blends in well with the birds and beasties. |
Poets often write in monk-mode, enclosed in a cell of thought, hoping to send a spark of image and emotion, sometimes even a revelation of truth or beauty,
out of the darkness into the world. It is both lonely and exhilarating to catch a thought-particle of inspiration and weave it into a work of poetry.
I worked this way for a long time, until Joan McGuire, one of my favourite gifted
contemporary poets, invited me to create a Renga with her. This sonnet form
of iambic pentameter stanzas with alternating verses from each poet, was quite a challenge. To create a poem with dual impact that was to flow into a harmonious whole, seemed almost impossible at first. It required one to toss
out solitary ego and get inside the thoughts of another poet, to blend with their vision and speak in unison. What a mind-stretching exercise!
It became an exciting project, where one stepped out of solitary and became a part of someone else. Once you experience this exchange you have changed irrevocably, you are more attuned to the complicated "otherness" of your fellows.
The product of this extraordinary experience was our little book: "A Conjunction of Hearts, A Renga" by Joan McGuire and Katherine L. Gordon. As though to prove that a stone cast into the pond of creativity makes far-reaching waves, the book found its way to Israel where Tom Berman, with a group of Israeli poets, is
studying the form and will attempt to produce a group Renga. He promised to
get back to me with the results.
Other doors opened into the single cell: Canadian Poetry Association's Nigerian
chapter chair, Dennis Hyginus, asked me to do a co-operative poem with him.
It was great fun. Andreas Gripp of London joined me in yet another co-operative poem.
Try such a venture and expand your technique. You will not be alone once you have made such a connection, it could improve your work or simply offer an
exciting change. Find someone compatible to your thought processes and create a joint work. The outcome might surprise you and alter the "time in solitary".
Read: A Conjunction
of
Hearts: A Renga—a review
by
Conrad DiDiodato with excerpts
return to top of
page
|
