New Blog: FireWired

New year, new job, new city, new blog! I've begun work on FireWired, a blog about education, technology, and social justice. Readers and suggestions welcome.

Becoming the Sun

Giving a poetry workshop on the weather at first seemed like a tall order. But once I started poking around, the poetic possibilities seemed endless. For a start, there are all the different words for "wind" around the world - xlokk, sirocco, hamseen, simoom, sundowner, williwaw...

Then, think about climate change and biodiversity - two things intimately related to the weather. In each London classroom I've visited, biodiversity is on riotous display. Children with names as beautiful and diverse as the wind: Fatimah, Ashok, Timothy, Aliya, Matthias, Natalie, Binah, Princess...

I asked them to use their imaginations and invent new weather patterns to rival 'It's raining cats and dogs'. Plant a seed in children's minds, and the gardens that sprout are either paradisiacal or nightmarish, depending on what they've experienced. 

A little boy from Bangladesh told me about a monsoon he had seen - and its devastating affects. Others drew rainbows of black, gold and red. Storms of coloured snow that stain you blue or pink when the flakes touch your skin. One boy imagined swords and demons raining from the sky, while others preferred blizzards of chocolate and cash.

But the best part was creating poetry with 30 children - all together - about sun, wind, and rain. It gave new meaning to the word 'brainstorm'...

Here's one of my favourites:

Year 3 and the Sun

Last Tuesday in the park,

Under the flaming trees,

We had tea with the Sun.

Our eyes turned to stars

And we saw new worlds.

The trees turned to metal and fire.

The Sun gave us a magic book

And strong armour.

We turned into sunflowers, butterflies

And lions.

We reached out to touch the Sun,

But the Sun disappeared...

We became the Sun!

Imagine standing in front of thirty 7 year-olds, all of them shouting that last line at the top of their lungs: "WE BECAME THE SUN!" In that moment, London must have experienced an electric surge. I know I did.

The Blessing of Writer's Block

“We have fallen into the place 

where everything is music.” ~ Rumi

A few weeks ago I used this line from Rumi to prompt some amazing poetry from British youth. And I moved to London because that’s how it feels, like I’ve fallen straight into the bruising heart of a symphony. Outside my window, trains pass. Construction workers whistle as they crack cement. A dog growls like a stomach that’s never full. Kurdish hymns drift up through the floorboards. Pop music pulses through the walls.

I came here, in part, to find my voice as a writer, my music as a poet. But finding your voice in a world full of voices is a bit like listening for your name at a party that everyone’s been invited to. We’re all talking at once, shouting over each other. Yet I think each of us wishes for a brief lull - a moment when all the sounds and stories can be ordered and absorbed. And then, with love, forgotten.

In Greek mythology, Lethe (forgetfulness) is one of the five rivers running from the underworld. Virgil writes that only when the dead have their memories washed away by the Lethe can they be reborn again.

Perhaps the voice must go on a similar journey. First, there’s the business of living to be done. The voice needs plenty of grist. And London is full of it. The city is constantly metamorphing. New cities spurt up each day, carrying their old bones with them.

Blitzed churches become gardens butting up against glass-and-steel bulwarks. London Bridge may fall but it will be replaced overnight - doubtless by something bold and controversial. The smell of curry mixes with car exhaust and the stale perfume of Victorian pubs.

Then, amid all this music, there’s a pause. A moment, not of death, but of silence. Writer’s block. When, despite the overabundance of material, your hands hover over the keyboard, or the blank pages of a journal. When you take long walks, and wage hot war on wordlessness.

As much as I dislike these pauses (and I do), part of me knows they are good. Necessary even. For how else can the voice be born except by forgetting all that’s come before? All the voices it has heard and mimicked over the years?

Emily Dickinson called Nothing “the force that renovates the World.” I think something similar can be said of silence. Silence is the force that renovates the Word. Yet with the 24-hour news cycle and the constant pressure to publish, writers seldom allow themselves a good dose of guilt-free silence.

Of course, true silence is more than just the absence of noise. 'Renovation' comes from a Latin word meaning 'to make new' and was originally used to indicate spiritual rebirth. When faced with writer’s block, sometimes it’s the soul that needs reviving more than anything. So put down your pen, and putter in the garden. Visit a new city. Teach a child to ice-skate. Do something that gives your word-smithing a rest and at the same time replenishes your wonder and engagement with the world.

Or take singing lessons, where learning to breathe is just as important as the notes produced. Then next time you find yourself lost for words, or wondering where your muse has flitted off to, you’ll just think of it as the big, deep breath we all must take before plunging headfirst into song.