In the Book of Alchemy, Suleika Jaouad provides ten themes for journalling, with each thematic chapter prefaced by her own essay on the focal topic. Each chapter, in turn, has ten authors who contribute to the chapter theme by providing a short essay and related writing prompts. The book thus provides an excellent source of inspiration for journalling for creativity as well as practical hints on how to overcome writer’s block when attempting creative writing. The sub-title of the book, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, highlights the intent of the book to stimulate creativity and provide inspiration.
One of the many contributions that had a profound impact on me is that of Natalie Warther who wrote about “Poetry by Erasure”. Natalie was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her essay in the Book of Alchemy, in the chapter “On Seeing”, explains the process of writing poetry by erasure and states that she started this practice in the early months of quarantine during the pandemic. Natalie found that the erasure practice helped her to overcome overwhelm as it provided a way to be creative without having “to start from scratch”.
The process involves starting with a piece of text – a poem, newspaper article, book you have read or a novel you are reading – and progressively whittling away at it until it is transformed into “the thing that needs to be said through you”. Words are lifted from their context and studied as discrete entities with a disembodied meaning. Your “creation through elimination” results in the original text being unrecognisable – the context, sequence and meaning of the employed words have changed. You can give your created poem a new title to communicate the change in focus and meaning. Natalie cites the famous poet Mary Ruefle as saying of her own erasure poetry process that she doesn’t read the page of the original text but rather just the words.
Erasure poetry
I found that starting with an existing poem made it easier for me to come up with an erasure poem. My initial attempts were basically a restating of the theme of the original text while using some of the words employed by the original author. This involved elimination but little in the way of creativity. Here are two examples of my early attempts:
Acts of Kindness
The simple act
sending love
when I was terribly low.
I trust acts of kindness
live in my body.
I am made of them.
(Erasure poem drawn from The Making – a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
The Gift of Solitude
Suddenly a solitude,
an enormity, an empire.
It’s gigantically different!
Thank God.
(Erasure poem drawn from It is Difficult to Speak of the Night– a poem by Jack Gilbert)
As I made further attempts with erasure poetry I started to move away from the theme of the original creator and establish a new focus and meaning. Here are two examples of these transformations:
The Pursuit of Science
Commitment and wonder,
passionate and precise,
no detail too small,
noticing the smallest of things.
(Erasure poem drawn from No Detail Too Small – a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
The Wonder of Stories
Listen to stories
I carry everywhere
for sharing.
Break open the vast ache
that all of us carries
for wonder.
(Erasure poem drawn from The Elephant in the Room – a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer provides a poem-a-day so her poetry is a good source of inspiration for erasure poetry. What I found in reading her daily poems is that the lack of structure seemed to get in the road of my appreciating the full meaning of her poems (I’m used to reading other people’s poems that are more structured although I write “free form poetry” myself). However, by taking out individual words and examining them closely and then putting them back into the context of Rosemerry’s poem, enabled me to really appreciate the meaning of her original poem (I saw her poem in a new way as if the light of understanding illuminated the meaning of the original poem).
The benefits of erasure poetry
Besides helping the reader to see the original poem in a new light, erasure poetry can be (in Natalie’s words) “freeing” and “playful”, even “meditative”. It can free us from writer’s block and get the “creative juices” going. It can be inventive and creative, opening up new insights, perspectives and different ways of looking at things and situations. Natalie suggests that erasure poetry creates a space where we can be a writer without using an original word – thus taking the pressure off to start from scratch, particularly when we are exhausted or overwhelmed through the challenges of daily life and the human condition.
Reflection
Several of the contributors to Suleika’s Book of Alchemy are experiencing (or have experienced) chronic illness, including Suleika herself who has leukemia (diagnosed at age 22). The contributors discuss writing for healing and explain how journalling has helped them through the highs and lows of chronic illness.
Suleika turned to journalling during her periods of treatment including chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants. In her words, “journaling went from a favorite pastime to a lifeline”. Initially she started with the 100-day project, developed by Michael Bierut, which basically involved undertaking a creative act (of your choice) each day for 100 days. Both her parents were supportive and led by example (her mother being creative with ceramics while her father “wrote a daily memory from his childhood”).
Suleika chose journalling for her 100-day project and indicated that instead of giving in to a sense of hopelessness, she was able to “trace the contours of what she was thinking and feeling and gain a sense of agency over it”. However, after “four harrowing years of treatment” she gave up journalling. She was “lost in translation” for a year – having to process her new reality that had negatively impacted her heart and body.
Suleika became fear-driven and stale. So, to break with this downward spiral, she undertook a 15,000 mile solo road trip across country and visited people on-route, capturing their stories in the process. A key journal entry at the time stated, “It is possible to alter the course of my becoming”.
On returning to New York Suleika moved “to a log cabin in Vermont”. There she faced the challenge of writing her memoir – with self-doubts abounding. Her way through was to “set a daily word count” for her memoir writing. However, her inner-critic about writing a memoir overtook her. Suleika then returned to journalling and used the “morning pages” method made popular by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.
When this new method of journalling failed to stimulate her creativity, Suleika turned to the writings of inspirational authors such as the Journals of Sylvia Plath. She also drew on the creative works of women who shared their stories about chronic illness and its effects on mind, heart and body. Suleika concluded that reading, just like journalling, can “alchemize isolation into creative solitude”.
Reading, too, can help us grow in mindfulness and increase our self-awareness, awareness of the world around us and of the people in our inner and outer circles. Suleika’s book not only provides her own story of resilience through the pursuit of creativity, but also gives snippets of the lives, challenges and successes of the 100 contributors through their short essays and writing prompts. The Book of Alchemy offers endless stimulation for our own daily journalling. The benefits that accrue as a result include enriched creativity, heightened gratitude and enhanced equanimity.
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Image by Warren Griffiths from Pixabay
By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)
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