Poetry, the middle years, and all the unknowns

Wolverine Farm

Hello friends,

I'm the writer-in-residence at the lovely Wolverine Farm in Fort Collins for the month of October, and I'm hosting an event there next week. I've been exploring and studying teachings on middle age, vocation, and the unknown, and I'll be sharing poems from some of my favorite poets on these topics as well as a couple of my own poems. If you’re local, I'd love for you to join me this coming Monday, November 4th at 7 pm at Wolverine Farm.

Hope to see you there!
Brianna

Welcome!

I thought I would start out by sharing the quotes that I keep at the top of my writing page—I return to these each time I sit down to write. I hope they are helpful to you! And if you haven’t read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, you are in for a treat.

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“What you seek is seeking you.” —Rumi

“If you are faithful to your practice, your practice will be faithful to you.” —James Finley

“But in order to let go of the addiction to creative suffering, you must reject the way of the martyr and embrace the way of the trickster…we all have both in us, but you can nourish one over the other. Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid. Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal and endlessly shape-shifting…..Creativity was born out of trickster energy—creativity flips the world upside down. The most wonderful thing about a good trickster is that she trusts. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest this, because she can seem so slippery and shady, but the trickster is full of trust. She trusts herself, obviously. She trusts her own cunning, her own right to be here, her own ability to land on her feet in any situation. To a certain extent, of course, she also trusts other people. But mostly, the trickster trusts the universe. She trusts in its chaotic, lawless, ever-fascinating ways—and for this reason, she does not suffer from undue anxiety. She trusts that the universe is in constant play and specifically, that it wants to play with her!” —Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic