TaleCatcher - Tracy Kenny's blog

Something to say

I've found a new favourite voice. I don't say favourite poet because I like him more than just for his poetry, and actually I'm only just starting to explore his works, but poking around his website I just like him.  (Also although I find I have blogged poems several times, it still feels a bit pretentious to be talking about poetry. When you drop the presumptions and just enjoy the words, they can be hugely powerful and great fun.) 

I love what he stands for, and I love the playfulness of the anagrams menu on his website - if you scroll over 'the link poems online', the words change to 'lonesome pin' - and I love that he is passionate about teaching and making people better. My kind of guy.

He says his poems are there to share, and that he's happy for people to perform them, as long as they give him credit. So I'm grateful to Ronnie Bruce for introducing me to Mali, but whilst the visuals were just stunning, the voice treatment didn't hit the mark for me.

If you don't like reading poetry, look at the video. Actually look at the video either way. And listen out for me using passages of this stuff in conversation, and in future blogs, because it is absolutely in the space of story: that is, be somebody, have something to say, use it to reach out to someone, and create something meaningful.

Enjoy. It's my pleasure to introduce you :-)

Totally like whatever, you know?

By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Freedom within structure

I have been enjoying a certain and paradoxical level of freedom over the last year and a bit. Having been liberated from a set job with a set of pre-ordained objectives, I've been able to take risks, discover, create, and spread my learning. It's been a pleasure, and an adventure.

Along this journey I've been buying people copies of Linchpin, as a gift. In this new book Seth argues that if we can't step outside of ordinary expectations and offer our own unique gift to the world, the gift of ourselves and our ideas and our emotional energy, then we will become a commodity and be less valuable. As I have been saying on my travels, there is plenty of 'same' in the world. The company's got floors full of 'same.' Seth and I agree: the best way to hang on, in the end, is to do different. It is a risk. As a strategy it may eventually let me down. But since sticking by my values got me into this adventure, then it's sticking by my values I'll keep doing. It's the only way to be true to myself.

I understand the other side, though. It is soooo much easier to just come in to work, do the work that comes across your desk, and push it back out. I had a bit of nostalgia for that clear direction this morning. Because yesterday I went to a wonderful writing course run by The Writer, and I wrote.

When I say I wrote, I mean it deeply. How do I capture the deep groaning and emotion I mean when I say that I wrote? Really writing is a wringing out, a wrenching and relinquishing process. During a break a colleague asked me if I was 'out of sorts.' She meant angry. But I probably was indeed 'out of sort.' I was just out by that point. Of everything.

So I'm left wondering, why was I able to write in that room? I spend fair bits of my holiday allowance in this same chair I sit in now, with days booked off to just write and put myself through that creative experience, but I don't do it. It's just tapping on keys...feeling not much better than monkeys with typewriters.

I think it's to do with that 'instruction' idea, of someone telling me what to do, instead of being left just to create anything out of nothing. You see, parameters are great things. It's exactly like another bit of advice I go around spreading: if you want to build muscles, you don't punch bags of jelly. You punch hard sand bags. You don't develop leg muscles from running on feather duvets. You run on solid track. It's good to have things to constrain us, so that we confine and focus our energy. Whether that's in writing, creating change, or relationships.

I've blogged Marianne Moore's 'Poetry' before. It's fitting to return to it.

Just read it

I recently tweeted a quote from Adrian Mitchell: "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

 

Poetry can be intimidating. I took a course in it while I was doing my MA work because I wanted to finally get my head around it and understand it. It's a little bit like learning about astronomy: the more you learn, the more you find you don't know.

 

Since having children I've learned to love it. We had a few children's poetry books lying around, and we read a poem to the girls every night Eventually I realised I was enjoying the sounds and rhythms and just how the words rolled off my tongue - and atually some of these were the same poems I was asked to dissect and pull to pieces for my course.

 

Reading poetry beside cartoons liberates you from the pressure of being intellectual about it. Same as 'just enjoy the stars,' you can appreciate poetry with the guidance 'just read the words.'

 

I used this one in a focus group I ran today, to say how we can't tell customers what their experiences are - and we can't tell the focus group how they see the world, either.

 

Enjoy - just read it. :-)

 

The Painting Lesson

Trevor Harvey

'What's THAT, dear?'
asked the new teacher.

'It's Mummy,' I replied.

'But mums aren't green and orange

You really haven't TRIED.

You don't just paint in SPLODGES

- You're old enough to know

You need to THINK before you work.......

Now - have another go.'

 

She helped me draw two arms and legs,

A face with sickly smile,

A rounded body, dark brown hair,

A hat - and, in a while,

She stood back (with her face bright pink):

'That's SO much better - don't you think?'

 

But she turned white

At ten to three

When an orange-green blob

Collected me.

 

'Hi, Mum!'

Happy the Man

Happy the Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
John Dryden

Poetry

I'm co-facilitating an away day tomorrow with a tough audience: the governance guys. They carry big expecations, and heavy authority, and serious penalties for non-compliance. It will be a stretch to see what all this positivity can do.

All I can do is what I do, and be who I am. And that will be the point of my talk, that they will engage more when they are themselves, rather than just being the one who holds the stick.

Their boss is excited about the kind of stuff I'm doing. Fingers crossed they will be too.

The challenge really boils down to one the whole company faces, that of doing a job, but of being free within those constraints.

It's a tension that's fascinated me ever since I discovered Marianne Moore' poem 'Poetry.' More simply, it's like me putting Adele in her cot isn't putting her in prison, it's putting her in a place where she knows she is absolutley safe, and she can thrash and roll around and do whatever she wants with no fear. Our regulations should be the same. Be yourself, within these guides.

I've been collecting these stories, like the one where the girl absolutely pushed the customer through the process of sending someone out to investigate her drainage claim, but in a way that made the customer feel like it was a personal favour that she'd arranged just because she wanted the customer to get an informed opinion. She said it was if it was the first time we'd ever done it, we saved money and made sure it was a valid claim, and the customer was delighted.

So build your sticks, but find the white spaces within them, and be free to be yourself.

I plan to take 'The Dot' in with me.

Be like the bird

Be like the bird, who

Resting in her flight

On a twig too slight

Feels it bend beneath her,

Yet sings

Knowing she has wings

- Victor Hugo