Poetry as Learning and Unlearning

Lucy Jarasius | Monday, 4th May 2015

My experience of poetry involves patterns — thinking patterns, word patterns, moving patterns.

There seems to be a connection and a flow of informative energy as the mental concepts, descriptive word groupings, and somatic sequences take shape. Generally this comes as a fast-flowing process of mental pictures and word combinations that I am not expecting. It is as if the words and phrases arrive in my mind marrying ideas and images not previously consciously acknowledged as “connected”. The metaphor of “joining the dots” expresses something of the process. The usual meanings of words and habitual constructions of concepts are challenged and rearranged, bringing new realisations, fresh understandings and expanded knowledge. This I find an incredibly interesting creative stimulus.

Through the writing of poetry and subsequent performance of it, I have found that I learn new things. Sometimes this involves bypassing or deconstructing previously learned ways of perceiving and doing things, though at other times prior knowledge provides a helpful foundation. Poetry, for me, has become a new avenue through which I can become more intimately and holistically acquainted with things that are important in my experience of spirituality. Poetry has also become a portal of beauty through which I walk my Christian faith, navigating life in the midst of today’s complex and often violent world. Because I choreograph movement to further express and explore the concepts in many of my poems, another dimension comes into my emerging-pattern picture. A deep intensification occurs in the “dot-joining” exercise. Perhaps this is a result of mind and body working together, informing each other through their respective and unique dynamics. At times, I experiment with other artforms in conjunction with poetry, such as music, song, film, visual art etc. Sounds a bit endless, I know, but there is a lot of joy to be experienced through humble beginnings, and most of my performance poetry is just that!

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Some recent traumatic events in my family caused me to ponder perceptions about relationships, about “relatedness” in terms of genetic or “blood” relationships, and about how much easier it is to perform violence in a context where “the other” is objectified, dehumanised, perhaps even “demonised”.

Around the same time I saw the Russell Crowe film, The Water Diviner, a powerful Australian story about family, relatedness, and “embracing the enemy”, set in World War One.

I was a little stunned to hear some very familiar music in the background, as scenes of the gory battlefield unfolded. One example was the track Newton’s Cradle from Ludovico Einaudi’s album In a Time Lapse, which was featured during the battle scene in The Water Diviner. One of my own recent works — a poem exploring narcissism and violence and accompanied by choreography — featured the same track, and it was somewhat surreal, but oddly satisfying, to find a connection between my “creative intercessions” and a movie well worth watching.

At this time, as ANZAC themes are revisited, this year being the centenary of one of the most well-known military campaigns in our history, I invite you to read through the following poem several times whilst listening to Newton's Cradle. [Listen here] I pray some connections are made, some things may be learned — as well as unlearned — some inspiration comes, and some love flows.

Who is my sister? ©Lucy Jarasius 2015

who is my sister?
my brother, my mother, my father?
in law
break the law out of its alien trends
that wends its friends to non-neighbourly hard margins
barging over lines drawn in the sands quick-to-judge
parched, stiff-sniffing
dividing
un-divining refreshment below the surface

there is something thicker than water
it flows
And knows
And grows
…when the trials arrive

bLOod
flows
thin-spilling, yet congealing
knows no bounds to the pain
as it cries up from the ground
grows cold

…thicker than water?
blood?

mayhaps something flows from another stream
sourcing from realm faith-divined
undividing
me-and-’er-ing into the wide estuary of humanity adrift on a sea of despair
body of water
known through bucketing too-many-to-list tears
grown, message unbottled, filling an ocean of spent emotion
when The Trial arrived

something knows
how to quench the pleading thirst in the eyes of the lonely
how to quell the rising tide violent
how to quest heal-bent relentlessly, life-threatened-midst creatively
the best yet to come, believing relatedly
never really too belatedly

something grows
when emptied
when giVEn
when chosen
by the living
no matter the hurt, the pain, the imagined loss gained
when the trials come
…when they don’t

there is something thicker than water!

Lucy Jarasius currently resides in Sydney with her husband, Andrew Park. She works for Salvos Counselling, and is the Asia Pacific Connection for the International Christian Dance Fellowship, which she coordinated for nine years (1997–2006). Lucy also runs sessions/workshops for people to experience and explore arts, faith and culture in relation to peace-building and mission.