Poetry has been a big part of my artistic expression since I was around 16. Working words into sounds, sentences and stanzas feels intensely musical to me and I am enjoying weaving it into my life more.
NATURAL
Reverence for the natural world influences my life as an artist and deepens my sense of belonging. I find it difficult to express the ways that nature makes me feel, but I know it to be a mystery, a miracle and something with immense power for healing.
Raincloud retrograde
The falling hits me. It comes in
Waves, the strength, the rattle of
Piercing ground, dry enough I enjoy this fall
How can green be gentle yet strong
Undeterred by dying clouds they droop
But washed, the leaves bask in heavy moisture
The earth stills to the stopping, my slow
Breaths worship the damp trees I don’t
Know the names of
Sabbaoth
Beauty lands sound and wrestles
With the ground to show her sleep
Standing beside me on a morning walk
She’s veiled as I force myself to pray
Sundays are too difficult. Beauty, she
Gives Sunday a strange flavour of tomato
Juice because it is disappointing as hell
EMOTIONAL
Transmuting my emotional experiences into words has always been one of the greatest healers. I am pretty horrendous at journalling, but being open about the intensity of a specific moment through poetry has enabled me to endure some extremely painful states of mind.
Writer’s block
Creative nothing
Flat powers, blue light hours
They’re full when this blank
Page gives nothing, humble
A sweet absence as thoughts
Cascade and frustration waxes
For the powerless writers’ block
Is the emptiness I missed
The Moments In-Between
Space. I catch this moment
Deeper than most, my consciousness
Breathes it’s relief- I barely notice
Freedom from thought a split second
Still blinded but now aware
A wave of true life to prove it lives
Peace is maybe a lot to ask
I resent my now, painful punching
Reality- still I notice it moves and stops
It cries and laughs and takes
Strange roads to a resting place
But it gets there
Even if I feel it only lightly
My presence I know is strong
My strength to trust, to be and no more
This love for life lives on
SPIRITUAL
Faith is a lifelong journey and one that I frequently feel lost within. So much of scripture is poetry and can evoke so many experiences within us. My religious and spiritual poems are often reflections of religious text, as well as reflecting my faith journey
Approaching your passion I am far off-
Idle I gaze, so distant, holiness in
Deficit. I am not ready to cry at you
Feet- to watch, to mourn, to light you
Easter morning with awesome fire.
I grieve my unbecoming, fake and lacking
Even with your fidelity to the world
I desire to kindle your flame, to
Witness the agony and know it in me
Your human homicide, utterly forsaken
Darkness, it’s power no more than ash in you
I delight that you accept my lack, my
Unending relapse, my false desire
I can bear none of it without you Lord
Your cross is my path, a holy
Friendship I possess without needing even
To ask
Hattie Butterworth 