Usually the writing workshops start with a ‘prompt’: a published poem, a picture, an object. Everyone writes about it, or something inspired or suggested by it, in their own way. There are as many different responses as there are people in the room. Last week, Claire suggested writing directly about mental health itself. So we each wrote about what mental health meant to us, in whatever form we chose. As the word ‘hope’ came up in discussion, we closed the session by writing about hope.
https://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/photos/8451d7da-a6b3-4249-a047-c30727dad32d
Claire distilled her response into this acrostic:
Maybe
Everyone is a
Neurotic
Tense
Anxious
Lunatic
Hoping
Eventually, each
Ailment will
Lose its
Tight-
Hold
Blanket of loss
drawing the power of discovery
from the thickened lake
where there is a twisted loss of integrity,
that thread
that ties me together
as a person
in need of power
to be me.
Tonight I will see
the savagery of distress
released and reduced
silenced stifled
set aside
and abandoned
in sincere delight
(JM)