I am still basking in the glow of our group poem and the shared love for the wild. Do you feel it too? I don’t know about you, but working together with a group of kindred spirits like that feels not only powerful, but empowering. Change making. I feel infinitely less alone, but also so much more connected.
If you missed it, you can read it here:
I have made you a downloadable version of the poem.
It is a simple affair, easy to print, a couple of little illustrations. I hope it makes you happy - it certainly did me!
A few of you have been curious as to how much was actual participant words, and how I wove them together (how much I changed, etc). I thought it could be helpful to give you a peek behind the curtain, as it were.
If you would rather it remain magical and not at all mundane, avert your eyes now!
Ready?
Some stats first:
There were 54 submissions, some just a few words long, some a couple of sentences. Where there were longer submissions I broke them up on occasion, where I thought particular parts worked with different themes I had seen emerging (but that didn’t destroy the meaning of the sentences as they were sent in).
The poem is 1168 words in total - a mere 209 (17%) of those are my words - and 52 of those are “I am” (26 instances!). A few of the remaining words were just a couple of words here or there to thread a thought together and keep the lines cohesive. I wrote the first and last sentences/para’s. So I guess all up less than 10% is my words - the rest are all yours.
In just a few instances I removed or changed the tense of words, in a couple I changed identifying pronouns or a name to either “I” or “they”, but overwhelmingly you sent me sentences that were in the first person. Keeping the work in its entirety in the first person was a very specific choice, I wanted you to feel like this poem was all about you, that you were having the experience, and that it was open to your own participatory interpretation.
I organised it to be presented in 108 rows in total - though 21 of those are I am or a variance of that!
While I looked at each submission as they came in, I did not try and fit them into any themes or think about how the poem might flow until I had all the wild words gathered. I put them into a spreadsheet, the words in one column, the contributors name in the next, and where I received the words (via email, website submission, or through Substack). Initially I thought I might be able to just shift the spreadsheet rows around, but as I alluded to in a Note as I was working on it, I needed the experience to feel more visceral. I needed to get my hands deep in this fertile soil! And so I printed the lines out, cut them out, and then just sat with them for a long while.
I could feel lots of big energy there in that pile of paper strips - grief, awe, empowerment, curiosity, and the desire for a deep reciprocity with the wild.
Two words kept popping into my mind as I started to lay them out - “I am”. You were telling me your stories, your wild words, in an almost universal language - I knew that if I felt like each line was written for me, then so would you. These words felt like an invitation, an invocation, a communion. An act of wild embodiment.
It was about me. It was about you. I am.
The first theme I was very aware of was grief - and it came with tempestuous skies, roiling water, and lots of lashing wind. I don’t think it was just me seeing all my personal grief of this year on paper, I think we are collectively feeling a lot of both acute and chronic grief. There is a very well known quote by Buddhist nun Pema Chodron (who I adore) “You are the sky, everything else is just the weather”. When you are in that grief, in that wild weather, it feels permanent, like you are drowning. Like you are a beautiful tree being thrown asunder in swirls of emotion outside of your control. But, hopefully, it is just like weather - it retreats, there comes peace, calm.
Which led to the second theme - the transition from day to night, retreat, being in awe of our night-time kin, healing through rest/sleep. And the myriad of thoughts and deep feelings that often come just before sleep. Existential, deeply philosophical and introspective thoughts. I did contribute a line here “I lay in the earthy damp between age old roots, swaddled by the wisdom and refuge of the forest.” This is my dream, and something I visualise when times are very tough, being held in the embrace of the wild earth, nestled under a tree. Throw in a little moss blanket and you are describing heaven to me.
Of course, after the tumultuous storm and the embrace of night, a new day dawns. Tentative, gentle, full of possibility. Quiet in a different way. There are new other-than-human kin emerging with us, and we can see the new day for what it fundamentally is - a clean slate, a new beginning. Clarity comes, and with that we can see that we can grow (wild) where we are planted. Barbara sent beautiful lines about her gorgeous wild place, but many of you are planted in urban or suburban areas, and your words reflected that, so I needed to find a way to blend those two. Barbara’s wild place is my dream, and I am sure a dream for many of you. Another line began with “I imagined”, and so the (heart) home up on a hill became one I (we) dreamed of.
sent me a line of walking with his horse-kin O’Hara - this became attached to a line about a moose (though I think you can take it to mean walking beside any other wild being your heart has an attachment to).So we wove between big weather and emotions, the turning of the day into night and into day again. We bathed in floral delights, watched our other-than-human kin live their lives around us, and wondered and awed at tiny plant-kin that surround us (and who we often forget to notice).
More than anything, my last sentences are for you, for me, for us all.
I am not forgotten.
I am unfurling.
I am wild.
I am.
I hope you enjoyed hearing the in’s and out’s of our creation, and if it inspires you to do something similar in the future, please tag me, I would love to play along!
Please do share far and wide. I think we all need to be reminded I am Wild. Often.
Exciting news coming in a couple of days…maybe tomorrow. If I can wait that long.
Thank you so much for the download Natalie, (I have it printed out already...) I loved reading through your method of construction for this poem made by, I’m sure, people from all four corners of the world.
The connections you found in our words, the sadness and the subsequent joy that unfolded when juggled are testament to a wild tribe of kindred spirits .. thank you again, for making this possible in such a breathtakingly beautiful way, for joining us in poetry 🍃xx
Oh my goodness, thank you for sharing this and the poem in downloadable format. It makes the whole process feel complete.
I love everything about this and hope you have more ideas like this in the future. Thank you, Natalie 🙏🏻💕