Moonpause Update 2
on retreats and finding a form for your writing
Dear all
Today feels like a momentous day for me - it is the last A Level exam for my 18 year old, exactly 15 years since we moved into this house on the edge of Ashdown Forest and one year since I began writing this Awen newsletter, not knowing whether I’d be able to carry it on past the summer! And while I let all of that sink in, it is time for a Moonpause update….
This is my second Arts Council funded update on my Moonpause project. The first one is here. I am halfway through the year now and I am so thankful for this time to experiment and reimagine the next phase of my writing life. At times, the creative play still feels indulgent, even though friends and family remind me that I have worked hard for this.
The moon has disappeared from my sky this week, so much so that I was feeling very unsettled as I still don’t understand how it moves! My 15 year old said it probably hasn’t risen yet and so I looked up the time of the moonrise - it was 2.30am. No wonder I hadn’t seen it. I was puzzled because the strawberry super moon less than a couple of weeks ago was huge and orangish and visible at sunset at Gills Lap on the forest. Another thing to monitor!
The moon is so elusive at times that I can’t rely on it and so I was wondering about my connection to it - I realised I can’t hold it in my hands or smell it or hear it. Then I went back to the Yoshitoshi paintings of 100 aspects of the moon and realised I don’t need to understand everything about it. That is one of its appeals to poets and artists through out the centuries. And this is what I was drawn to - the human connection in wonder across time and place.
I have been working with this Yoshitoshi painting from 1889, Lady Chiyo and the Broken Water Bucket:
Lady Chiyo was an 18th century Japanese haiku poet who was acclaimed very young but then had to give up her poetry to run the family scroll-making business at age 30. She then returned to it at age 50 and wrote about the beauty and stresses of every day life, which I completely relate to. Natalie Goldberg has written about her here, but what seems to be one of the only books about her: Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi is hard to get hold of. If by any chance, anyone has a copy they wouldn’t mind lending to me, please get in touch!!
I began writing about the painting with freewriting and responding to what was happening. I did a bit of research about Lady Chiyo and added that to my notes. I thought I would write a usual essay about it but it wasn’t quite working, probably because the information I had available wasn’t enough for me to go deeper. I had a few phrases that I liked, but that was about it. I had also given myself a deadline to come up with a draft this lunar cycle (ending with the new moon on Sunday) to send to my mentor, so I couldn’t just leave it as notes!
So then I had the idea to create a story or essay (haven’t quite decided which) in haiku. This is an extract from the work in progress:
Shadows hesitate in the silver blue moonlight rippling on water As skin on your hands cracks from soap and scrubbing, never lose sight, she tells me of the rainbow bubble. As sun sets, let the light raise your gaze to the moon. Is that all? I ask. Is that not enough? She says. Haiku no Michi.
Haiku no Michi translates as the way of the haiku poet, which I take to mean is a particular way of looking at the world. I love the short lines which capture the essence of experience or a moment. And it seems to be an entirely fitting way of responding to a painting about a haiku poet. I am giving a lot of consideration in my work on lyric essays to the form which is most appropriate for the subject and content of the work, experience and feeling I want to convey. The final pieces could all look different in this respect.
Other books using haiku to tell a story:
Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara
Her Fading Henna Tattoo: A collection of haiku poems based on domestic violence against women by Hifsa Ashraf
On Retreats
As part of my Moonpause project, I allocated funding for two self-directed retreats at the time of a full moon in the dark skies reserve of the South Downs which is close to where I live. I took the first one in April in Winchester and have planned the second for October near Birling Gap.
I took a writing retreat for a weekend when my kids were small. I was so determined to make the time count that I wrote 9000 words in two days. I was exhausted afterwards! I did not want to make that mistake again. What I wanted most of all was space to rest and space to think.
I decided to use the time to make an overall plan for my collection of essays so that I’d have a frame to work within. Any excuse to gather some large paper, post-its and coloured markers. But as soon as I started to get those things together before the retreat, I couldn’t wait and continued with the process until the plan was done! This meant that I had even less to do on the retreat. So my one aim was to come up with a new angle for my silver birch essay. I did some close reading of the structure of a couple of lyric essays and then the following morning (without anything else to think about), I woke with the opening paragraph in my head which set the tone for the essay. This was all I needed and it meant I could rewrite it and finish it off when I got back home.
I stayed in this amazing, peaceful annexe 10 minutes outside Winchester. When I booked it, I had no idea where or when the moon would be rising, but I decided to sit outside on the balcony with my notebook for a while after dark to see what happened. And soon the full moon began to rise above the trees. Serendipity at its best.
I returned home calmer and with renewed energy for my creative work. It is this feeling I want to create for you with The Friday Retreat. We enjoyed the first one last Friday. I have got some refining to do on the content of the day but the venue was just as I imagined it would be, and it was brilliant to give ourselves the space of a whole day away from usual responsibilities to spend on creative, restorative activities.
I want to weave this idea of retreat into my life in smaller ways as I can’t afford a whole weekend or a whole day away very often. In her books on reclaiming creativity, Julia Cameron talks about weekly artist dates.
The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play. Since art is about the play of ideas, they feed our creative work by replenishing our inner well of images and inspiration.
It is not something I’ve adopted as readily as morning pages. I think I’ve had this idea that it needs to be somewhere to go and as I live in a village, there aren’t enough different places to go (the forest is for walking, I’ve been telling myself!). But there are a few places and the places we have are excellent for artist dates, for example, last week I popped into our village charity shop, Second Life, which is a carefully curated treasure trove of whimsy. Other places for artist dates - Al Fine Gift Shop, The Bazaar, The Seasons and Tablehurst Farm shop.
But today I realised that the foraging and making I’ve been doing are artist dates, as well as playing with moon oracle cards or drawing a moon mandala as I did in my month of creative activities in February. Now the elderflowers are out, it is the perfect time for making cordial. I have my bottles ready, but it is something that I am in danger of not getting round to and before I know it the flowers will be gone. So I’ve decided that this week, collecting elderflowers in a basket and then making cordial will be my Artist Date. What will be yours?
Workshops still to come before I take a break in August:
Journalling Group - 20 June; 18 July
And I’ve had some new readers for this newsletter sign up recently (welcome!) who do not live in Sussex, so I want to let you know that I’m bringing back Zoom workshops in the autumn. These will be on Tuesday afternoons and focussed on writing memoir and working with autobiographical stories.
Feel free to leave a comment or email me in response to anything I’ve said in this newsletter. I love to hear from you.
Until next time…
Mel
This newsletter was created by Mel Parks, a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator based in Sussex, UK. Mel runs writing workshops locally and on Zoom and researches creativity in midlife as well as her personal connection to nature. She has been widely published and is currently working on a series of moon and plant-inspired essays.