Poetic Update - February 2023
Teaching & Learning
Hello old friends and new! Welcome to my first Poetic Update on Substack.
Poetic Updates are monthly newsletters that I send out in order to keep you up to date on my musings and offerings. I’m grateful to everyone who continues to read these rambles and I’m interested in this new format. I’m slow to learn, but maybe Substack will inspire me to share more? Maybe I’ll start a podcast? Maybe I’ll stick to this tried and true simple rhythm of monthly exploration? It’s all a grand experiment of poetry news and personal ideas and I won’t pretend it’s anything but! At some point, maybe I’ll transition into creating content for paid subscribers. Maybe soon. For now, it’s a free ride and I hope you enjoy it.
February has been a bit of an energetic roller-coaster for me. I really enjoyed my Abstract Conversation series and felt so inspired by the tools and concepts we shared each weekend discussing capacity, practice, and presence. I look forward to doing something similar in April for National Poetry Month.
I’m also really excited about starting my work as a poetry teacher here in Detroit. I successfully wrote an 8-week nature poetry curriculum for 5th graders and yesterday was my first full day in the classroom. In one day these kids came up with such amazing poems! I hope to not only teach students about writing, but also about earth connection, and maybe we’ll get to plant some trees together. I can’t believe how quickly the dream came together! As I step into this new role, working four days a week, of course my nervous system has some questions. Will I have enough capacity for this? What if I get sick and everything falls apart? Will I be good at teaching 5th graders? Am I really ready for this project? I know the answer is yes, but again, I acknowledge that it’s an experiment. Everything is! We never really know what the outcome will be as we push onward, trying our best, taking risks, building and rebuilding. That lack of clarity actually gives me peace. It’s like a release valve that says we know nothing, so just try your best.
Naturally, I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept of being a “teacher.” This week I started reading Sophie Strand’s “The Flowering Wand.” The introduction alone brought up inspiring and challenging conversations in my house. Can a mushroom be a teacher? We don’t actually know everything a mushroom is capable of or where it falls on the mysterious scale of consciousness. So maybe, maybe a mushroom can be a teacher. It’s unclear! Is an author a teacher? Certainly not every author is a teacher, but if someone collects data and weaves together a big, glorious lesson, publishing it in a book for anyone to learn, are they not my teacher? I’m comforted by the many teachers I’ve encountered in my life, the ones I’ve met in person, and the ones who so generously crafted their lessons on the accessible page. Really, these questions and answers circle around the meaning of the word “teacher.”
As a writer, I’m very interested in semantics, but when semantics shut down a conversation I find myself annoyed. We can allow our words to expand and grow! Definitions can shift from literary to colloquial. Language is not rigid! It’s an ongoing experiment. It’s always changing. I don’t need science or logic to back everything I think and feel. A lot of my information is psychic, intuitive, and spiritual. I do love to connect these things to logic and I also love bringing those connections into conversations with skeptics. I’m a bit of a skeptic myself sometimes, mainly because I think it’s fun and important to dig deeper, to learn more, to see truths from various angles. But for the most part, I’m inclined to believe almost anything is possible.
Can a rock be my teacher?
Can a tree be my teacher?
Can a bird be my teacher?
Can the river be my teacher?
Can someone I never met be my teacher?
I say, yes. Science might say, no. Traditional Indigenous knowledge might say, yes. The dictionary definition of teacher even uses the word “person” to describe who teachers are. This brings me to my earthly considerations of agency. Why don’t we give non-human animals agency? Are we so certain trees don’t have a voice? What makes us so sure that we understand consciousness to the extent that we can definitively accept a mushroom doesn’t have an agenda that it’s offering us? I’ve definitely experienced a mushroom’s agenda!
(Here I am, dressed like a weirdo, loving on some gorgeous King Boletes that my friend Max shared with me. I’m celebrating their magical message of bounty. Later I cut them into thick slabs and sauteed them in butter. They are like bacon, but better.)
I want to be exposed to language that pushes at the edges of possibility. I want to write poetry that asks us to question what lessons we might be missing if we don’t lean in to the potential that exists in non-human teachers. I’m looking forward to sharing this with my new students. I’m also looking forward to learning from them. I want to be a teacher who is taught by everything. I guess this is kind of like saying I’m fully committed to the school of life. Life itself is my constant teacher and I’m open to its infinite forms. I’m always ready for science to show up and surprise me in this exploration as it supports hypotheses about the natural world and proves them to be true. Imagine what we’ve yet to uncover! Equally, I’m here for the magic as well, the beautiful, blooming mystery that keeps showing us where to go, what to do, how to mend, and how to grow.
In the coming months I’ll have a lot to report. Being with 5th graders is sure to blow my mind and heart wide open and I can’t wait to share those experiences. Until then, and always, I’ll do my best to learn, to receive lessons from whatever, or whomever, brings them to the table. As I learn, I’ll try to translate those gifts of insight and share them with you all. I’m infinitely grateful to be in this continual classroom together!
If you’d like to further support my work, please buy my books and read them! Or order a poem for a friend. Or hire me for a creative consultation for the project you’re bravely attempting to start. I’ll continue to figure out my best way of being here in newsletter form and I’m happy to follow your lead as well. Tell me what you’d like to read about! Show me what you need! I’m here for us, for our delightful exchange. May it continue building as it has for all these years.
With love and gratitude,
Jacqueline
“Earth, I Thank You” by Anne Spencer
Earth, I thank you
for the pleasure of your language
You’ve had a hard time
bringing it to me
from the ground
to grunt thru the noun
To all the way
feeling seeing smelling touching
—awareness
I am here!
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