The World Needs Your Poems

Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum

“A word after a word after a word is power.” ~ Margaret Atwood

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It’s hard to think about writing or creativity or even grocery shopping in the midst of a genuine coup d’état, with a leader who has just declared his intention to commit genocide. But here we are: writers and artists and human beings who have creative work to do, and we can’t give up on it. You know why? Because that’s what they want.

There’s a reason authoritarian regimes burn books and put poets in front of firing squads. Because writers and poets and artists have the power to touch the human heart, elevate the human spirit, and shine a bright light on truth; authoritarians have only the power to grind us down. The Nazis looted the great art works of Europe, but they created none of their own.

If you’re having a hard time keeping up with the constant barrage of news or if you feel like your usual news outlets are not giving current events the weight they deserve, may I recommend Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter? It’s a thoroughly researched and cited daily digest of the most pressing news, and by reading it I feel both well informed and a little better equipped to set down my phone and stop doomscrolling.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on disengaging from the broligarchy—meaning I’ve either deleted my accounts or am powering down my use of technology owned or run by the companies and men most obviously involved in and responsible for the overthrow of democracy. It feels a bit (okay a lot) like closing the barn door after the horse got out, but I don’t want to continue to line their pockets. (I wrote about this disentanglement in my January Reads blog post.)

I’ve also attended two protests, signed about 2 million petitions and automatically generated letters, and worn out my fingers writing to my senators. It doesn’t feel like much, but it’s something.

INSIDE

I believe there are two kinds of people the world: those who create goodness and beauty and those who destroy goodness and beauty. Though the destroyers are ransacking the halls of political power, we can’t let them stop us from creating beauty and goodness in our personal lives and local communities. Yes, do the work of fighting back with whatever tools you have, but also keep doing your work of creating beauty and goodness, whether that’s writing or painting, tending the sick or teaching the young, planting trees or studying the earth’s mysteries.

But how to keep going, keep being creative and generative and a force for good when you feel under attack? Especially if your creative work is not your job, you’re not getting paid for it, and no one asked you to do it?

Eight years ago, after the first Tr*mp election, I went into a tailspin. I had just completed the transcription of my journal notes from hiking the Colorado Trail and was about to embark on the real work of researching and writing my book. But I couldn’t focus. It felt so pointless—why would anyone care about hiking when all of the hateful, racist, and misogynistic things he’d promised on the campaign trail went into effect? For two months I doom scrolled and wrote daily letters to my useless senator. But I barely worked on my book.

Then at the end of the year, I bought a copy of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and on January 1, I started her 12-week “creative recovery” program: daily morning pages, weekly artist dates, and exercises to exorcise inner demons and introduce more fun into creativity. Weeks went by, and I didn’t experience what she calls synchronicity—gifts from the universe (like a neighbor gifting a desk for a writer’s shack). But something even better happened: at random times I’d be hit with the urge to write, and I’d pull out a spiral notebook and write three pages long hand, synthesizing whatever ideas I’d gleaned from books I’d read in an attempt to research background for my book. At the end of each of these sessions, I’d give myself a sticker of a footprint (because it was a book about hiking, get it?). And although only a handful of words or sentences from the notebook ended up in the actual book, I was writing again, and by September I had enough of a draft to do a full review during a week at an artist colony. The following June I had a draft worthy of sending to beta readers, and after another two years of revising and submitting, I signed with a publisher, and year and a half later, I held a copy of the book, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail, in my hands.

Writing my book didn’t stop any of the awfulness of the last four years with this clown in office, but neither would have not writing it. And writing it helped preserve my own mental health and well being during a time of humanitarian horrors and literal plague.

By coincidence, long before this fateful (and hateful) election, my creativity group decided to spend 2025 working through The Artist’s Way, doing one chapter per month, rather than per week. We started on January 1: daily morning pages, weekly artist dates, and exercises to identify, understand, and remove creative blocks. Once a month, we’ll meet to discuss our experiences, starting tonight. This practice couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been able to process some of my anxiety in the morning pages; and in going to museums to look at art, or going to a bookstore to buy a book of poetry, or visiting a greenhouse and buying a few tiny plants and arranging them in a terrarium (these are examples of my artist dates), I’ve been able to connect with what’s really important in life: beauty and goodness.

I’m working on another book, one incredibly close to my heart, which I’ve been thinking about writing for two decades. I’m going to keep doing what I can to fight fascism, but I’m also going to keep writing my book. Because even if the book doesn’t change the world, not writing it isn’t going to change anything either. So I’d urge you to take time away from the steady stream of horrors and feed your creative soul—write the book or opera you’ve been meaning to write; learn to paint or cross-stitch or throw pottery or play the violin; teach a workshop on making pie crust or building a shed; take photographs of everyday beautiful things; build a greenhouse or start seeds or make a terrarium. If focusing on a project seems too much right now, try Julia Cameron’s creative recovery program. Don’t let despair stamp out your creative spirit.

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OUTSIDE

With the stress of a coup d’état taking place before our very eyes, my nervous system is frazzled. Something that usually helps calm my nerves is a walk in the woods—exercise and nature being two surefire antidotes to anxiety. But lately I’ve found my brain hamster-wheeling through all the atrocities taking place in Washington even as I walk through a magical snowy forest. So I’ve started a practice to derail that mental litany of horrors. It’s similar to one I use in my nature journaling workshops, but instead of focusing on words to put into poems, I concentrate on the sensory experience and try to leave words out of it. If you want to try using this practice to calm your own nervous system, here’s what I do:

1. Go for a slow walk in a park, forest, or as natural a setting as you have access to. Allow your shoulders to un-shrug, your jaw to un-clench, your eyebrows to un-furrow as you walk.

2. Open your eyes wide and look all around you—up, down, and to the sides. Note colors and shades, light and shadow, textures and shapes, movement and stillness. But don’t try to name any of these things; just let the images pass through you. Pretend you are an alien, newly arrived on the earth and without language to describe what you’re seeing.

3. When you reach a place where you’d be comfortable sitting or standing for a few minutes, pause and close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Do the same exercise as above, with your other senses: touch; hearing; smell. Maybe taste if you’re brave enough to lick a tree branch or press your tongue into a patch of (clean) snow. Again, don’t name, just experience. If other thoughts intrude into your mind, treat them like the images and sensations, letting them drift out of your consciousness.

4. After a few minutes, walk on. Notice if you feel different in your mind or body. Do you detect any changes in your perception of or openness to what’s around you? If your mind returns to the hamster wheel, repeat the exercises, as often as you need to until you reach the end of your walk.

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WRITING NEWS

Uphill Both Ways appeared in a list of best hiking and walking books in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies.

If you missed it last month, my essay “Joyful Noise” about the songs of frogs in the Maine spring appeared in Issue 11 of Spelt Magazine.

Stargazing has been fantastic this month, with clear, cold nights. If you want to learn more about skywatching, check out my article about Exploring Maine’s Winter Wilds after Dark at Green & Healthy Maine.

Check out my reading list for January (plus my list of ways I’ve disentangled from the broligarchy).

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS

If you want to spend some time engaging in analog/in-real-life creative activities in the company of other humans and nature, please consider joining me in one of the following nature writing or journaling workshops:

• Writing the Weather, Hidden Valley Nature Center, Jefferson, ME, February 15, 2025

• Journaling Backyard Birds, Viles Arboretum, Augusta, ME, April 1, 8, 15, and 22

• Poetry is for the Birds, Hidden Valley Nature Center, Jefferson, ME, April 5, 2025

Visit my website here for class descriptions and for future opportunities.

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Hang in there, dear friends. Do what you can to fight back, and keep your creative fires burning. The world needs your poems.

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