Poetry Circle- A Radical Salon for our Time?

 You can listen to this post here too: The circle of the year is turning. As the leaves fall back home to the earth, and the evenings begin to turn in on themselves, there is a signalling to gather. Inwards.The fire is lit. The poetry books are scattered around a low coffee table. The invite had been sent a few weeks previously. The season of the poetry salon is upon us. Now, all there is left to do is light some candles, and wait. ‘Whoever comes are the right people’, ‘Whenever it starts is the right time’. I reiterate some gathering guidelines I learned through the Art of Hosting community. They remind me that once an intention is set, once the foundations have been laid with beauty, beauty can only be braided deeper, whatever form it takes. This is not about numbers, after all, but about the act of gathering, and listening, and leaning into the space between friends and strangers, with poetry as the gateway and the salon as the template.Lady Wilde, or ‘Speranza’ was a woman who lived up to her name, or so the accounts of the 1860s would have us believe. Oscar Wilde’s mother, a poet, Irish nationalist, folklorist and passionate women’s rights advocate, was a gatherer and host of one of the most notorious and flamboyant Dublin salons. Number One Merrion Square, grand and elegant, opened its doors to the literati, musicians, artists, social commentators, medics, law makers and perhaps law breakers, of the time. Under candlelight they gathered to discuss a gamut of affairs and culture. W.B Yeats, Ruskin and suffragist Millicent Fawcett, were all said to have crossed the door, with a young Oscar Wilde listening in from the alcoves. Lady Wilde’s salon was not in isolation. Across Europe, from Italy to France in the 17th and 18th centuries, salons were places for the circulation of ideas, knowledge and conversation. Often hosted by women, the salon was a ground for the development of an active civic and public life. We can assume these gathering places were not always sober, and not necessarily always civil, but they did create public places for the gathering of difference, for dialogue and debate outside the formal realms of either church or state. They brought together the intersections of disciplines and sectors, where the rules of one did not outweigh the rules of another. Put a woman in the centre of things, especially in those times, especially in Ireland, and here are the ingredients for ripe and radical activism. Here was a way to do things differently.We have Twitter now of course. And we have digital discussion rooms. But here we also have the digital infrastructure for polarisation and fraction to escalate. We have fear, and worse still, fear mongering. The institutions which one held the power and prestige are crumbling around us and in many cases, rightly so. But I question the spaces in which ‘conversations’ are happening. I watched the recent Presidential debates in Ireland for instance, and I wondered, ‘Where is the room for genuine listening? Where is the room for robust debate, unpinned with respect, and dare I say it, perhaps the most radical word of all, love. There was a poet in the midst too, running for re-election, now under attack for caring to too much about things that do not have a direct economic value. Things like poetry, and things like dignity. Would we, as a nation, dare to listen?You find the respect in pockets of course, and the digital world can amplify those pockets. I find it with writers, like the environmentalist Terry Tempest WilIiams and Robert McFarlane, with social commentators like Rebecca Solnit, and I find it in online watering holes like BrainPickings and On Being, the latter offering us guidelines for convening with their ‘Grounding Virtues’. I love how words like ’Generous Listening’, ‘Adventurous Civility’, and ‘Humility’, are now active and explicit participants in this online space, values which I know spill over and enliven their public events. Here too: a template.Right out at the edge of Europe on the west coast of Ireland, my little home goes by the name of ‘Wren Cottage’. It’s no Number One Merrion Square, but it’s cozy and if there are not enough chairs there are always cushions and floor space. Knock on the door by knock on the door, a little flock gathers. Some have come before, some are new. Tea is made, more logs on the fire, and we make our way naturally into a circle. I mention briefly the history of the salons, thinking of Lady Wilde, and I make reference to On Being’s ‘Grounding Virtues’. There is not much need for small talk and soon the poetry takes over. By way of tradition, Mary Oliver opens, then Rilke joins the chorus. There are sighs of awe, and sighs of not knowing what to say because the poem is just beyond words. The poems leave trails around the room. Another participant picks up a scent and offers fresh language into the circle.Then we laugh and marvel at Sharon Olds’ poem about breasts, and we delight in the spaciousness in the language of the Chinese poet Zhao Lihong, a poet new to most of us. Convulsions of laughter ripple outwards in thinking about Rumi on a modern dating site. The laughter builds a deeper bond. The circle tightens.As the salon continues, I am aware of a friend of mine, attending an environmental conference in the US on the same weekend. It is a place for bringing together activists and changemakers. But he speaks of the fear in the room, and an intense anger too. He speaks of the deep deep grief for these times we are in, and a sense of paralysed frenzy. It makes us wonder, ‘What room for joy amidst such times? What room for beauty? And definitely, what room for poetry?’ A while later he sends me some words from another role model in our midst, the scholar and activist, Joanna Macy, on this thing called ‘Active Hope’;‘Active Hope is not wishful thinking. Active Hope is not waiting to be rescued by some saviour. Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act.. a readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts, our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose, our own authority, our love of life, the liveliness of our curiosity, the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence, the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead. None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk’. Around the circle the fire crackles and the flames spark. More tea is made. In my Celtic tradition, like so many indigenous traditions around the world, the circle was the primary shape of things. Stone circles. Fairy rings. In the shape of the circle is the container for the whole; fear and grief, joy and beauty. The circle holds both yin and yang, the masculine and the feminine, the light and the dark. It’s not a place for blind optimism, wishful thinking, nor deepest despair. Instead is a place to return those things back to their wholeness with a singular message: we are in this together.I am interested in the intersections of things: ‘Where do you end and I begin?; Where does fear become courage?; Where do the arts become activism?; Where does beauty simply beget beauty and joy beget joy? In dark and challenging times, I’m with Joanna Macy on this: there is a radicalism in insisting on beauty and joy, for the very amplification of those things. Yes: Active Hope.With that we get to ask questions like this: What if we didn’t need more platforms for opinions, but more platforms for presence and connection instead? What if our presidential candidates were seated in a circle, grounded in virtues and invited first to listen, then to speak. What if instead of defending a position, they were asked to defend their values? Then read a poem.Last week, the Irish nation took to the polls. The poet was re-elected. Our president speaks of the power of words, and values. ‘We are in a time of transformation and there is a momentum for empathy, compassion, inclusion and solidarity which must be recognised and celebrated’, Michael D Higgins said at this acceptance speech, ‘Words matter. Words can hurt. Words can heal. Words can empower. Words can divide’.The thing is this: people got up from their armchairs. They voted. They dared. Not all of us, not enough of us, but enough to #keepthepoet . Enough to insist on words mattering, and dignity too.Back around the fire our poems circled and circled. Towards the end of the evening, my friend Orlagh suggested we each write a question on a post-it note. Any question, any question at all. Then we’d gather those questions to see how they converge. A few minutes later there is a shriek at the back of the kitchen where Orlagh is curating the post-it’s as an archivist would, or an archeologist. Two of us have written the exact same question. ‘Where does poetry come from and where does it go to?’ And the other questions? Well this is what emerged; a poem, written by the whole, from our wren circle:

Where do poems live when the book is closed?Why does the light on the sea always stretch towards you,following, following?Why do the stars stare?Where does poetry come from and where does it go?If the news showed poems instead of the tragic, what would the world become?When is the Tao not the Tao?Only in the forgetting of love.Do I dare?

Around the circle, awe rolls out into the night with hints of laughter and impossible delight. I can feel Lady Wilde smiling from the great beyond, and Oscar Wilde listening in from the alcoves. This thing we are in together? We think it might be magic. If only we can get out of our way long enough to get out of our armchairs and hear the poetry of the world rising. I think the circle might just be our ears. And the salon? Well that’s up to you. Now you have a template. Go. 

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For the ones...

In my work as a writer and photographer, I have been blessed to meet the most remarkable of women, each who carry their own light, each to have a gift to bring to this world. I have met them in the best of times and in the most challenging of times. I have witnessed their deep pain and experienced their enduring joy. The strength of these women and girls is the backbone of the world. Their stories are the life-giving source of healing and hope. Today, on International Women’s day, I remember and honour them, for whether man or women,they are us, and we are them. This is for you. For the ones who love. For the ones who carry us onwards. For the mothers in us. And the lovers.For the ones who endure. For the ones who sacrifice.For the ones who give birth;  to children, dreams, desires, pain and progress.For the ones who grieve for us all. For the ones who don’t give up.For the ones whose voices are never heard. Them. Always for them.For the womb which was your first home in the world, and the woman who held you.For the ones who resist. And persist.For the music makers. For the artists. For the schemers.For the activists and the changemakers. For the homemakers and the breadwinners.For the ones who trust in another way.For the fighters. For the jokers. For the paradigm shifters.For the learners and the educators, the teachers and the students. For the guides, leading from the heart.For the one who plant and the ones who tend. For the carers and the givers.For the ones whose voices are never heard. Them. Always for them.For the ones leading the way and the ones laying the paths. For the bridgemakers, the weavers, the dancers. For those who are catalysing a new level of conversation and therefore connection.For the ones whose voices are never heard. Them. Always for them.For my great-grandmother, who was silenced and shut away, for being the woman that she was.For my grandmother, who worked until her bones bore the weight of her caring.For my mother, who gave birth to all this, and more.With love.

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Creativity as Presencing

 When I was 22 I moved to China for a year, teaching English language and literature at Peking University. It was one of the hardest times of my life. I was in at the deep end, alone, and felt like I was swimming against a very large crowd. I found Beijing to be over populated, over polluted and overwhelming. I did not speak Mandarin and I was teaching about 250 undergraduate and graduate students at the top university in China with no curriculum and no idea what I had got myself in for.Looking back now it was art that helped me get through it all. Art- namely writing and photography- gave me a window out and offered me vital breathing space to make sense of it all. And when I say vital I don’t just mean that it was important, I mean it was a way to breathe in new life and connect me to my own vitality. Not only that but it also helped me to find beauty in the broken bits. Art was grace. This was in the days before I could afford a digital camera (they were expensive things back then!), so I got myself a whole pile of simple disposable cameras. They were a saviour. Through all the noise, commotion and craziness I started to look for things that pleased me and started to take photographs: the unusual shape of ginko leaves; the way the rushes in the lakes bent and froze; the interweaving patterns the thousands of bicycles made in the snow; the steam from a bowl of street noodles; the ping pong bats used to reserve tables in the canteen. I started to notice the little details, and in the little details I found solace and belonging. That was during the day. At night, I wrote. In fact, I couldn’t stop writing. The simple act of writing helped to connect me to my body. I wrote by hand, page after page, each page allowing me room to find myself. I wrote my first novel in a couple of months (a book that will gladly stay in my drawer), a whole series of poems, a collection of short stories including one little children’s book (which I still love) and an English language learning textbook, which was even published!Through the taking of images I was able to stand on solid ground and through the writing process I was able to connect with my inner world. Together they brought me back home to myself and to a quality of presence which for a while I had lost.‘Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed’- Mary Oliver.Presence really is the key.Creativity, I have come to realize, is not so much a series of technical skills as a way of being present, and a way of capturing the quality of that presence. Now, as a photographer, when I feel present at an event or in good relationship with the object or person I intend to photograph I know it makes a massive difference to the type of photograph I am able to take. When I do not feel that my photographs are good enough or I have not learned from the experience, it is usually a sign that I was not fully engaged with the creative process to begin with, and certainly not with the moment when the image was taken. However, when I can plug into that presence, everything changes.Learning how to be present is a skill set which we can acquire and practice over time. The mindfulness revolution, yoga techniques and centuries of meditative practice have a huge amount to offer this process, as too the simple act of noticing.So here is a little practice for you... Next time you are feeling a little ungrounded, start to notice what is around you right now. The little details, the way the light falls or the curvature of shadow. Take a pen and write about it for 5 mins- no need to edit or review, just write. Or pick up your camera (maybe the one on your phone) and photograph just for a sake of seeing, and being.In the noticing is the act of presencing, and in the presencing is lies the seeds of transformation. Looking back now I am so grateful to that time in Beijing. It has helped to make me who I am. It helped me to shed old layers of myself and it forever brings me back to the page and my camera, to notice, connect, and at times, transform.

Art & Auction : Badger & Robin

If you have been following along my blog this year, you will have see that I have been back painting again- with lots of little creatures and birds making an appearance. Many of these original paintings are available for purchase over on my Etsy shop, alongside an original limited edition print.I also want to offer something back and have decided to auction two of my paintings for two organisations which I admire and which are very worthy causes.SO...Mr. Robin is going to fly the flag for the Capuchin Day Care Centre for the Homeless in Dublin, which I have come to know a little better through the amazing work of my friend Brother Richard Hendrick who I first met through Trailblaze (you can see his talks here and here). There is a massive housing crisis in Ireland right now, and the centre is flat out serving the needs of those most in need. Their dedication is outstanding.Mr. Robin is beautifully mounted and framed and measures 16 x 20 inches.  He is an original pen, ink and watercolour painting with gold acrylic and heavy, acid free watercolour paper.Next up...Mr. Badger is going to try to raise some money for the second organisation is Gatoto Community Primary School in Nairobi, Kenya.  My connection with Gatoto goes back over 10 years now, to when we were sending volunteers there with the Suas Volunteer Programme. It was a wonderful school, working in very tough conditions, and run by one of the most resilient and tenacious women I have every met, Betty Nyagoha. It is a very special place offering a lot of hope and real educational benefits to children.Mr Badger also comes beautifully mounted and framed, measuring 16.5 x 23 inches. He is an original pen, ink and watercolour on heavy, acid free watercolour paper.

How the auction will work. 

Bids will be taken on my blog and directly via email.Please let me know what painting you are bidding for (Badger or Robin)Submit bids via email to clare@claremulvany.ie or over leave a comment below with your bid, what painting you are bidding on and a way for me to contact you. If I receive a bid via email, I will put a comment in the blog with the amount, the time the bid was received and the initials of the bidder.Starting bids at €100 (please note that my direct sale price for these is €275)Deadline for bids is 12 noon on Wed 16th December.....Shipping: If you are Dublin based, I can meet with you to deliver the image. If you are outside Dublin we can arrange shipping/ delivery. Depending on your location there may be an additional shipping fee- but we can chat about this...I am really excited about this and hope Mr. Robin and Mr. Badger will do some good work for some very good causes.  

Shop Update! New Original Drawings

 A year ago I would have not believed you if you had told me that I’d have my own little online shop and be sharing my paintings with the world. Really. A lot can happen in a year.Roll on a few seasons, and some late night encounters with creativity, and out popped a series of creatures whose spirits and personalities somehow spoke to me. I have enjoyed creating them so much and I am also enjoying sharing them. So if you would like give one a home, and in time for Christmas, I have updated my Etsy shop with a series of these original paintings. Like this little Robin or this little Fox

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Alongside the originals there is also a limited edition print of a little red squirrel (only 25 will ever be made), printed in The Copper House Gallery. The paper and quality of the print is just amazingly gorgeous, and the colours so vivid and fresh. Size 15.5 inches x 11.5 inches. The original is also available. See below.I also have a series of beautifully frames paintings - if you are interested in purchasing one of these, please get in touch directly to arrange delivery/ pick-up. Prices of these range from €225 to €275 euro each (delivery will be additional).They'll make lovely gifts, for yourself or a loved one...

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 Thank you all!