How to be with a poem

How do you meditate with a poem?

How do you begin to embody a poem, verse or a sutra?

This is fun! Let’s begin.

I’ll tell you a story that might comfort you if you are new to this kind of work.

I remember vividly the beginning of my understanding of how to meditate or work with a poem. I’d enrolled in a 30 hour meditation course on a yoga book that I loved called The Radiance Sutras, and yes, its every bit as divine as the title suggests.

I really loved that book, but I didnt know to embody its wisdom or be with it. I sat with it, before it, underlined parts of it, loved alot of it. But I felt a barrier between it and me.

Soon the opportunity came up to study with the author, I clicked “enrol now” and held my breath. Time came and I found myself in a room with about 40 other like minded folk. It was a wondrous 5 day training and I finally learned how to be with a poem or verse.

This training combined with my extensive yogic study gave me the gift of how to sit with a poem.

Here’s an example:

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

WHO made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

I take a line that I feel really drawn to, in this case its the last one. I love this particular line as it asks me to contemplate and really consider, what is it I’m doing with this life I’ve been born into? It feels inspiring and makes me really contemplate my plans for this life.

• Handwrite the sentence out, let it be beautiful.

• Place this card in a place where you will see it often eg beside your bed, on your dresser or an altar if you have one.

• Write out in a journal or notebook, what is it in the poem that you feel drawn to? How does this sentence or poem make me feel?

• Find the key words or phrase that you love. For example in the poem above I feel drawn to: 'plan to do’ ‘wild and precious’.

• Then take the key words a little further, how do they look in your life? What plans are you making? Are they aligned with who you want to become? What feels wild and precious in your life?

• Create a ritual around reading the poem. Do you feel more contemplative in the morning, noon or evening? Could you place your writings alongside a candle and just be with them? A ritual signifies a moment that is special, you could create your own time for reflection.

• Ask yourself: how can I take this into my life? What would it look like to live into this verse/poem? What would a day look like that embodies this? It gives your mind something to stretch itself towards. What do you want to create?

Once you’ve done the above, just notice as the poem starts to emerge in all sorts of ways. Things begin to be drawn to you, pay attention, you’ll see.

If you’d like a New Years Ritual, start here. Perhaps with this very poem. Take a blank piece of paper, write 2024 across the top. Under it write the last line from this poem and write how 2024 will look if let this line be the header for 2024.

More to come, but here's a place to start for working with poems and verses.