Writing With Place

Joyous creativity in motion.

These northern winds are cold, but the sky is piercing blue and the sun is hot when the air is still. It’s layers weather— and my body just wants to walk and walk and walk and walk around outside, shedding layers until this long sick winter has been stripped from my bones.

I think my best thoughts when I’m out there. Ideas fly in like birds from Texas. Things come together, singing.

two swans flying over cornfields

The benefits of walking for problem solving and creativity are well documented by first-person practitioners and Stanford studies alike—

It’s impossible not to think a million interesting things when you’re out there noticing the world, getting out of your own way. The trick, I think, is capturing your ideas while you’re on the move.

My Notes app takes the brunt of my revelations-in-motion. This is an imperfect system, but it works.

The key for me is to preload a fresh Note before I walk out the door— “3/14/24 walk up the hill”. This assumes what I already know to be true, which is that in about three blocks the ideas are going to start rushing in & meaning is going to start arising from chaos.

[The second important part of this equation is to actually organize and apply all the captured wisdom trapped in my Notes. Otherwise, the business revelation I had during mile 1 is easily forgotten after the murmuration of birds I stopped to witness at mile 3. After a week, I have no idea what kind of magic is recorded in there.]

[Anyone know of any hot apps that make note-taking-voice-recording-picture-stashing-and-exporting-and-organizing easier??]

Activating my senses this way is a great antidote to life online. Sitting inside, writing newsletters and responding to emails, for example, holds my gaze inward for hours or days at a time... But if I can manage to put some shoes on and just step into the back alley with the expectation that I’m going to be noticing the poetry of the world, all my senses come back online.

Woodsmoke, train song, favorite graffiti is gone.

New birds, trash-water-mud, barren trees with tiny buds…

I love writing poetry with place when I’m out at the lake, or hiking through the woods, but sadly that’s not my everyday experience of life right now…

So I’ve started pausing mid-way through my regular walks downtown to sit for just a minute and intentionally write a little poem-in-place.

It’s fun! And this practice has drawn me much closer into relationship with this adopted city I still find surprising to call “home”. But it’s easy to fall in love with what engrosses your senses.

Here’s some poetry-in-place from March:

look at the back of the statue
if you really wanna see what's going on--

westward ho!
down you go
someone ran away with you.

three bright futures
blue sky
gun

the four of us
all have different language for the sun.

[3/15 - written from the steps at the statehouse, behind this 1890 Karl Gerhardt sculpture fetishizing the murderous white western expansion across the prairie…]

A creative prompt for you…

Go write a poem with place.

Can you do this today?

This doesn’t have to be a beautiful backwoods hike. (Though I WANT THIS FOR YOU! But, it doesn’t have to be.) Poetic noticing manages to wake up all the patches of apartment dog piss-grass and overflowing dumpsters on my regular route!

Queue up a fresh note, date it, put on your walking shoes¹ and set the intention to notice some poetry out there in the world.

Activate your senses & make notes about what captures your attention as you walk: What’s the quality of light and clouds, what’s the air smell like, what’s the most distant thing you hear, what’s the smallest thing you can notice, what’re the textures and materials that surround you, where are the juxtapositions, what surprises you, what’s hidden, what’s been forgotten, what’s changed, what’s living and breathing around you, where’s the art, where’s the real story unfolding?

After a good wander, can you pause somewhere and coax even three lyrical lines into being? And after those three, what else arises?

Capture your thoughts without too much fussing around with form, then have a nice stretch & make your way back to the rest of your day.

Enjoy the feeling of creative aliveness that follows you around on your next wander!

xoxoxoxo,

1. -or- move through space in whatever way works for your body. I want to share that I definitely don’t take walkin’ for granted. I can do it now, but there have been times in my life when I could not. (Swimming and floating were extra healing for me then.) However you’re able to move and engage your senses: have fun with this. love you. xoxo