It’s not often that you get to spend an evening listening to your favorite poet with the one you love. As Megan mentioned, we had the opportunity to listen to David Whyte speak at the Poetry & Medicine Conference last weekend in Durham. He was phenomenal! The way he presents poetry for both his own & others brings anyone listening into an immediate state of presence and contemplation. He is also able to draw out the big questions and use these questions as a mirror for the audience or the reader to examine themselves.
This is interesting to me, both as a poet and as a coach. I’ve always used images, situations, and events to frame and drive my poetry. The result of which is typically visually rich, yet while it may be introspective for me as the author, these poems rarely challenge the reader to delve into themselves and explore what is true for them. Ironically, my work as a coach is the exact opposite in that I abandon all attempts to explore my personal makeup to focus solely on my client in their journey toward deeper growth and understanding.
In having the opportunity to speak with David after his keynote, I asked him when he first began using powerful questions as a means to enter a poem. He pointed out to me that questions are a natural aspect of observance and the life of a poet is driven by observation and curiosity. It crossed my mind then that perhaps my poems are simply driven by different questions and rather than simply bring forth my own discovery in the poem, my new challenge is to call the reader forth into the greatness of the question for themselves as well.
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