Issue 31, Instructions for living a life

How I am learning to exit the perfectionist spiral and silence my inner critic

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment
-Rumi

Hello friends,

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to perform some of my work at a Live Canon poetry event. I’ve only just started finding an entry into a community of poets here in London, and an invite like this was not something I thought was achievable in the short term for me. I remember going to one of these events late last year and wondering “I wonder when this will happen for me”. Well, it happened, and I spent the evening before the day setting myself up to fail.

You see, the day before I had gone on a long walk, and been mesmerised by a pair of mute Swans in a wooing ritual in a nearby lake – and I decided that I had to find a way to write a poem about this to perfection, in readiness for the reading the next day.

The other poets reading alongside me were storied people in the community, and I felt like I had to prove to myself that I belonged there. I wrote draft after draft and found myself quickly spiral into a self induced haze of fear. I did eventually write that poem – a few days later, when I was in the space of play and bewilderment rather than trying to be clever and insightful. A good reminder that poetic persistence has nothing to do with the trap we often get into of proving oneself, and everything to do with observing and finding beauty.

I want to share a Mary Oliver poem that I turned to that night when I myself couldn’t write what I wanted to – to remind myself of the purpose of writing and indeed of poetry.

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The Swan

by Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings
Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

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“Instructions for living a life: / Pay attention./ Be astonished./ Tell about it.“ - Mary Oliver

After all this lead up, it would be amiss to not share the moment and the pair of swans that inspired this all. Before I could take out my phone there was a brief moment where both of the swans moved side to side, mirroring each other’s movements, becoming each others reflection. It was over quickly, but I knew then how special the moment was.

I picked up Too Young Too Loud Too Different – an anthology of poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, a collective started by Malika Booker and Roger Robinson decades ago – at the reading I performed at. As someone who has tried to get into the poetry community in London and found myself largely surrounded by white voices – to find this collective of black, brown, working class and women’s voices has been heart expanding. I highly recommend a read.

If all else fails, there are always flowers. Last weekend, short on energy or motivation, I found myself wandering to the Columbia Road Flower Market in East London, one of my favourite places in London and one I hadn’t visited during the pandemic at all. As I approached the abundance of that street I could feel my energy change, more lightness in my steps. I am so grateful to places that astonish.

Best,
Sana