“We are all poets to our lives in a general sense, but we each have a form that feels comfortable and right.”


Writing feels comfortable to me, when I write I am totally absorbed. Time disappears or stands still. I feel happy messing around with words. We use words every day. The English language is constantly evolving and yet sometimes words are inadequate and meaning is found in the silence around the words.


Today there is a special field called poetry therapy based on the recognition that words carefully chosen words, can be healing, cathartic. Words create images that can clarify emotions, memories and events. We can connect the past, the present with the future; it helps you to understand what you are going through. Poetic language, more so than medical or psychological language requires expression of feeling that is deep and genuine. It can make the human experience and suffering livable, no cure or explanation is necessary. The process is part of the healing., with insights and self discovery.


"Good art makes its way to the soul and does its job of healing”



















Saturday, June 19, 2010

Leunig Girl

© Copyright Elizabeth Routledge 2009

Leunig girl chasing clouds and curlicues
Steeped in silence, feelings well in her eyes
But no matter how hard she tries
They stay deep inside.

She falls in love with dead poets and mystics
She won’t throw her flowers at rock n’ roll pretenders
She won’t congregate at girly nights or cat fights
She’s falling in her own imagination.

Her whimsical gait and faraway gaze
Seduce the dreamers and the schemers
Looking for gods and goddesses
in a suburban, sentimental reality
a confectionary of the next big thing.

Others get her wrong, but I can hear the words
she doesn’t say, I’ll protect her from the maddening crowd
Shield her from the trauma of shopping malls
Epileptic lights and pancake make believe.

Take her to a quiet place to resurrect her mission
Where I will read her zodiac first, give her the bigger half
and save the last bite, for her, because I think she is nice
and kind of lovely, in a fragile, quirky way.

Also because I understand the ache of songs unwritten
songs unsung and songs forgotten
One day I will sing her out of her condition
I will sing her free of inhibition and sing her into love.

Hold her when she can no longer stand, alone.
Because she is a leunig girl, chasing clouds and curlicues.
Swinging her legs and whistling in her head.

2010.
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