Clare Mulvany 22/11/2024 Clare Mulvany 22/11/2024

On Listening to the Dream in the Dark.

The sky is a dome of light, tinged peach, tinged purple. Dawn is always forthcoming if we can ride the night out long enough. I wake up early and light a candle. It is the quite hour, before the world has turned and sleep still settles on the hills like an innocent child, dreaming still of a better world.

We all need a place to dream, and to rest. We need a place to make sense, gather resources, build the life, harvest the life. But that is coming. First the space for sleeping, then dreaming. First the dark.

November finds its rhythms in the dark hours. Light hatched only in sketches. It is in the dark where dreams are born, twisting around a body seeking its internal bear. To hibernate in today’s world of always on, always bright, where even the dark has been overshadowed by the commercial bling of Black Friday. How about:

Less Friday

Sleep Friday

A Friday to use up the last throws of the autumnal harvest before the need for more.

Dream Friday

Soon it will be the season of giving, of festivities, but for now still, this is the season for turning inwards, turning to the dream buried in the places only the dark can touch.

You can listen to this piece here:

Less Friday

Sleep Friday

A Friday to use up the last throws of the autumnal harvest before the need for more.

Dream Friday

Soon it will be the season of giving, of festivities, but for now still, this is the season for turning inwards, turning to the dream buried in the places only the dark can touch.

I feel asleep in the afternoon yesterday. A scene I had been working on in the book I am writing got caught and it wasn’t flowing. Nor was I. So I took to my bed with a hot water bottle. As my body dropped into the unconscious territory I slept the ending of that scene. I had my directions. When I woke, there was my character knocking on my page, calling me. It came out in a swoop. The dream is an incubator. The dark is the engine that makes it turn.

I am not sure how dark has got such a bad press. The Dark Arts. The Dark Lord. Black as negated, of skin and mind and humour. The black dog. The black death.

I read an article once by Kasia St Clair about the development of black pigment. I learned that there is a material called Vantablack which is the most light absorbent substance on the planet. So non-reflective it looks like you might never come out. Look it up, but I warn you, you may fall down the rabbit hole.

Black holes. The long dark. But it is the cave that holds the treasure as the mythologist Joseph Campbell speaks of. Dark as incubator. Dark as womb.

I think many of us feel we are looking into a vantablack hole, neither able to see our own reflection or find out way out. Wondering if we ever will. But the strange thing about standing on the edge, looking in, is that we won’t know if we will make it through unless we cross the threshold. We must step across. Take the risk. It is classic hero journey arc. Only. when we get to the other side we must be willing to sit in the unknown until the treasures are caught in the glowing dark, and glisten.

What might the treasures of threshold crossing be? What dreams might have a chance to uncurl themselves, to show up on the page, the podium or the policy. The dark, I am learning, over and over again, isn’t about trying to solve the dark, it’s about embracing the space of the unknown, sitting with, learning into, being open to the dream, being open to the treasure, no matter how dark it gets. Even vantablack levels of dark.

My candle flickers, the purple has given way to sky’s winter expanse. The dark has a dent in it. The dream, it has been knocking. I am listening. I am listening. I am listening.

**Hello. I'm Clare**

I'm a writer, educator and facilitator, living in beautiful West Cork, Ireland. I love to share resources and learning to help harness the regenerative power of words, place and story. I hope my work offers nourishment for mind and soul. Thank you for being here. Clare x

Clare Mulvany 06/11/2024 Clare Mulvany 06/11/2024

On the Work of Grief and Love (and the great mystery in the middle)

Take a deep breath. We have entered The Dark Times. This is a time and place when the already weak systems which hold things together begin not just to crack, but to fall apart. The bridges that united us are visibly failing. Across the ocean, a man so vile and so dangerous will continue to call for the infrastructure of our humanity to be torn apart. He will be tearing down rights: of access to healthcare, to travel, to democratic privileges, to any semblance of balanced judicial process. He will be dismantling freedoms too, of speech, of movement, of choice. It’s called misogyny. Soon it may more widely be called others things like fascism, violence, collapse. On this side of the ocean, I am grateful for the ocean, and that my own vote did not have to be in direct defence against such darkness.

Yet. Yet. For there is always yet.

You can listen to this piece here:

Yet. Yet. For there is always yet.

In times of collapse not everything is lost. But everything is up for grabs and we can take nothing for granted.

I’ll tune into metaphor for scaffold here.

While the bridges may be dismantled, there are still rivers, raging most likely, but moving and stirring and binding us together though the liquid of our being. Water is the great connector. Tears. Breath. The river is contiguous with every living thing, no matter its political agenda, social current or leanings. The river, the water, the ocean reminds us that we are always more connected than we realise. I need that reminder today too, for on this side of the ocean, it’s still the same ocean, swayed by tides, rattled by the moving storms. What happens in Dark Times on one continent can set up templates for others, no matter how fortified we think our bridges are.

On this side of the ocean, there are bridges to mend too, as their are waters to heal. There are old, cranky, inept systems which need to be hospiced well, and new ones which need to be midwifed so they are strong enough to hold not just our governments but our humanity. I purposely use ‘our’ here, knowing ‘our’ includes people who I agree with- who want to build and hospice and midwife well, and those who I don’t agree with; those who vote for the demonic and draconian. The ocean is for everyone. Its so hard. So very hard.

I draw on the work of teachers here, and models as I think about this. The two loop model of systems change, for example, from the Berkana Institute, which many years ago was presented to me by its co-author Deborah Frieze. It is a simple model of how old systems die, and how new ones emerge. Like a simple map, it helps us place navigational pins, and position ourselves too.

Along the loops, there are places of action and orientation, all necessary for change, including with the dying. The role of hospicing, for instance, helping a system to die well, is as important as the trailblazer or pioneer, stepping out of the dominant system to seed new ideas. Other roles include the connector, linking and nurturing the new seeds, then supporting communities of practice, establishing new norms and standards which may even be adopted back into the dominant system. I think of one of my dear friends, Jennifer Dungan, as I write this. A primary school teacher, with a deep passion for nature and education, and with knowledge of the emergent forest school model. For years she worked in a school, prototyping and trialling the methods, until, ten years on, she has helped to establish it as weekly practice. Every Friday is fores t school day. This year however, she felt it was time to leave, and so she has taken a sabbatical and has stepped out, with the view to bringing forest school to more people. She is training more teachers, working on a wider curriculum, and helping to build a community of practice around these nature based models. In Dark Times, it is likely the new is already being seeded somewhere, by humble and powerful people like Jenny. We need to keep our ears and eyes peeled, and place our bets on them.

The other model I am thinking about today is the work of Joanna Macy, with her model known as The Work that Reconnects. Joanna, now in her mid-nineties, has been a pioneer in leading the way for groups to gather and take collaborative action for the planet. Joanna outlines three narratives which are simultaneously at play: Business as Usual- a story of head in the sand, continuous industrial growth economics; The Great Unravelling - a story of the collapse of social and environmental systems; and finally, of The Great Turning- a story which speaks of the interconnectedness of all life, and which is oriented towards regeneration, renewal, connection. While acknowledging that these three layers are operative at any one time, within them, we have a choice; to bury our heads, to destroy, or to construct. Crucially, the latter, moving us towards the Great Turning, can only happen when we bring the change to both our inner lives, and our outer actions, which is why I am thinking of it today. Because that inner work begins with grief.

Grief may be a thing with feathers, but it may also come with hammers. There is an energy, sometimes rage, knocking and gnawing- an energy replete with so much pain that, at times, we might feel like it will break us. But the thing with grief, we must let it break us; that is, in the kind of cracking open kind of way.

I think too of a line from a Thomas Kinsella poem, where is speaks of heavily pruned trees, ‘hacked clean for better bearing’ having suffered their ‘brute necessities’. Hacking is a violent process, it can feel brutal and overbearing, but if we don’t fall into grief, into its allowance to mould us, we risk being held in shells- fragile, and in fear of breaking itself, which is exactly what we need to do. Grief is fluid as a river. Grief is a threshold which we are changed through.

From my own experience, of loosing loved ones and loosing identities, I have learned that until I experience the grief, until I let it crack me open, cry so many tears of me, rattle my world, nothing shifts. But when I literally turn to grief and say, ‘bring it on’, the pain immediately feels less acute and shifts into something less brittle. I am then enabled to move beyond reactionary territory and amazingly, into creative territory with grief as a resource, or reservoir of tenderness. There is still tendrils of the pain tethering me to the loss, but the kind of pain that is a reminder of so much love. Grief, in that sense, becomes a companion or ally, accompanying me on my creative path.

When my dear friend and mentor, another Jennifer, died last year, the grief consumed me, and I let it. I danced with it, cried so much I thought I would dry out. I moved with yoga. I swam, swam, swam. Then I painted. Feathers, ironically, at first, then scribbles, and colours, and creatures. And only then was I ready to write. Now, my creative practice includes Jennifer. I have a little altar for her in my home, with memories, gifts she gave to me, images. And when I sit down to write, I light her a candle too, inviting the creative exchange that was so alive between us to guide me onwards, forwards. Today, as we enter the Dark Times Deeper, after much plotting and planning, I begin writing book two of a trilogy I’ve working on. I’ve no idea when or how I will get it out into the world yet, but I do know it is my own small contribution to The Great Turning, for it is a story about how change can happen, and new vision, and the big mystery in the middle. It is a story written with grief, and with love.

So, grieve. Let the fury in. And the rage. Dance with it. Sing with it. Love it. Hold it. Swim with it. Let it move you, literally. And when it feels time, create. In the Dark Times, our creativity is our tool of choice. And creativity is your own gift, whatever that is to claim, and to offer.

Mine: I’ll claim mine, as a gift I seek to use wisely. So I’ll write, and teach and gather people, for I know these are mine to do. Maybe they are yours too - to write a story which is also part of the grief, or the seeds, or the buds. Or maybe it is to grow, literally, and your gift is tending to the seeds, and the saplings, then forests. Or maybe your gift is spreadsheets (bless your precious soul!), and you have a way with numbers with can procure resources and finance and data. Or maybe your gift, your creativity, is being on the streets with banner and voice. Or you are that primary school teacher, opening young hearts to wonder and delight. Or you may even be in a government office, so riddled with bureaucracy that it feels intractable, but you have a gift of finding a way, finding the cracks in the system, where yes, the light gets in.

This work is hard. But it is possible. And no matter how dark it is, we have our tears and our bones and our rage and our love. We have this thing call creativity. And we have the ocean, which right now, I am about to swim in. As I plunge into the cold waters, I will be thinking of the other side of the ocean, and of my fellow humans in Palestine and beyond , and of all the creatures, big, small, vertebrates and invertebrates, who don’t have a voice. And the trees, and the fabric of life which connects us.

In Dark Times, work is what we have. Work, that is, of love and grief, and the great mystery in the middle.

Coming up this Month

**Poetry Salon- 10 November**

A hour to gather around poetry and reflect on its meaning and wisdom. Donation based tickets here.

**Writing Sanctuary- 17 Nov**

An hour of journal prompts, sharing and connection around the power of words and the ritual of creativity. Tickets here

Clare Mulvany 06/11/2024 Clare Mulvany 06/11/2024

Samhain Salon Spellbook

Samhain Salon spell book by participants of Clare Mulvany’s poetry salon.

Approaching Samhain, we gathered.

The zoom squares are in rows, but if I could re-arrange them I’d put them in a circle, full of candles, and in the very centre, on this occasion, I’d place a cauldron. Instead, I carry my large computer monitor downstairs so I can be around my own fire and candles and books, and I place a metaphorical ‘cauldron’ in the centre. It’s where we’ll concoct some spells later.

We are calling in from Ireland, France, US, UK, Switzerland, Scotland, Spain. Not a huge group, 15 perhaps, and every person feels to me like a guest who has come with gifts, of their time, their attention, and openness.

In most poetry salons, the guests bring poems with them to share, sometimes their own, but mostly from poets whose work they admire, or poems which have stirred or provoked them in some way. We read the poems together, twice. The first reading is like a greeting, and the second is for it to really arrive- a duel entry into our minds and our hearts

The Samhain salon is a little different. I curate the poems based on themes, then offer journalling prompts, weaving in seasonal reflection, from which, so often, insight arrives.

As Samhain is a time for thinking about thresholds and liminality, poems from Leanne O’Sullivan and Paula Meehan brought us to thresholds into the otherworlds at Autumn’s end and at at holy well. A poem from Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin had us encounter the Cailleach herself, the hag, ‘the essence of weather’, ‘tearing violently at the roof’, helping us tap into the fierceness inside us, and our own capacity for change. Annie Finch’s poem, ‘Samhain’, led us through Samhain night like a ‘seam stitching darkness like a name’. And then there were the spells, Finch's again, and from Doireann Ní Ghriofa, both which offered templates for our own incantations which were were about to create.

As the salon spun, I invited guests to write down words from the poems which caught them, these were to be our ingredients into which we’d place, or fling, our own words into the metaphorical cauldron, to see what spells might emerge. Transformed in our own imaginations and forged with our own ink, as the night drew to a close, we read our spells, our poems, from the Samhain night of encounter, and thresholds and the energy of liminal times. It was simply beautiful.

Afterwards, I gathered the spells, and made our own little spell book, which I share, with blessing.

After reading, you may even want to write your own ‘spell’, which I would love to read if you care to send along. (send to clare@claremulvany.ie)

In these dark times, may these spells offer wisdom and wonder for your own path ahead, into the night.

Onwards,

Clare. x

Coming up this Month

Clare Mulvany 28/10/2024 Clare Mulvany 28/10/2024

Samhain and the Gift of Descent

Samhain, Puca Parade, Schull, West Cork

(You can listen to this piece here - 8 mins) Please forgive the croaky voice as I recover from a bad cough. But perhaps it adds to the liminality!

For weeks the villagers gathered. One brought old boxes, another brought fresh, pliable willow. One gathered clam shells, another brought washed up fishing nets. As evenings began to dim, the making commenced. Schull’s Puca Festival theme this year was ‘The Raising of the Lady Charlotte’, a fishing boat which sank off the West Coast of Cork in 1839. Nine sailors lost their lives and as the sails of the 2024 Lady Charlotte were hoisted over main street, it was as if the ghosts of their story are still haunting the shore.

The Samhain parade was a resurrection in many forms —of the Lady Charlotte story, but also of tradition, keeping up the playful mythic marking of the threshold into the dark cycle of the year, a time of liminality, which access to the otherworld is cracked open and souls are said to pass through. The underworld in the Celtic imagination is always just below the surface; veiled thin and pressing, and particularly so at Samhain. Masked or veiled, cloaked or covered, who is from the living realm and who is from the dead are questions which still invite mystery and mischief; questions which the Puca parade carried so well.

I had been away for a few weeks, so sadly my creative contributions to the event were limited to cutting out a few boat shapes and making circles from the willow, which would go on to be fashioned into fish. But every hand that helped made the street come alive in myth. A class of school children were transformed into a school of fish. There was a shoal of techno jellyfish (made from umbrellas!), a compass, a telescope, a ship of drunken sailors, a silver angelfish made from an old tent, huge skeletons rising and me, in the parade mix, holding a giant blue octopus tentacle, primely positioned for tiggling under the chins of onlookers, or even better, scaring young children, not to fright but to wonder and delight.

Samhain. The ritual is reviving, at least here in West Cork, where the following night, the next village over were having their own celebrations. And later in the week, a few villages further. Like a string of rituals, hung up to air out the old, and welcome the new. I think the place is the better for it.

Like any decent tradition, it goes deeper though too. Samhain, the initiation festival of the Celtic Calendar, the start of the Celtic year, positioned not at a time of rise, but at descent. Here in the Northern Hemisphere we are moving into the dark season, a time of release and decline, heading towards a wintering of being, the great fallow, and the slow - if we can let it. For ever season holds its gifts, and its invitations. The gift of Samhain goes beyond the playful parade or the night of trick or treat, and into the gift of the dark descent itself, which is also its invitation. What if, it asks, we allowed the darkness to take hold, if we allow ourselves the initiatory rite into its dark passage of slow time and the unknown? What might we find there? And how might we return?

The role, symbolism and questions of decent are not unique of course to the Celtic lineage. Scan any of the great mythologies and we find parallel underworld trajectories. Inanna, the Sumerian Goodness descended through the seven gates of the underworld only to be stripped bare, slain, then resurrected once the domineering masculine was rejected. She returned, like all devoted descenders, transformed. Persephone too descended, not from her own volition but from force. It was a brokered deal from Zeus which split her time between the dark and the light, the summer and winter, the masculine and feminine- in other words, she ascended to mirror the dual nature of existence, learning to straddle polarities and dichotomies, and learning to live between. In Maori tradition, we meet Hine-nui-te-po (The Great woman of the night), the Goddess of the dark, who is tasked with receiving the spirit of the dead into the underworld. It is here that out of force and will, she kills her father/ husband who, without consent, had tried to enter her, serpentine, through her vulva. She subsequently killed him with a set of piecing obsidian teeth in her vagina. If ever there was warning, let this be it. In Inuit mythology, we meet Sedna, Goddess of sea and marine creatures who, with parallels to the selkie stories of the Celtic lands, is flung to the ocean by a controlling father, sinks, grows a tail fin, has her hands frozen off, and her fingers turn into multiple sea creatures. The depths may be violent, but they are fecund too.

As the great myths continue to teach us, the underworld and the feminine are deeply, and often, deadly, intwined. What must die in order for the true power to rise? What must be slain? What transformation awaits those that dare descend?

While there is death, so too is there retrieval- of limbs, perhaps, but mostly of power or the force which ultimately emerges to restore balance and order; to allow the cycle of time and nature to continue. As the news cycles spins yet another dark spin, I can’t help but think that within these old stories is a pattern which offers their own gift of questions for these dark times we trying to navigate. In this larger cycle of time, what might we be invited to retrieve? What maps might the underworld- the world of our ancestors and mythologies, of old rituals and traditions offer us now.

As I walked along the village street, among the willow fish, the techno jelly fish, beside the haunting ghost ship and the giant squid, as crowds gathered and were filled with awe, a moment of ‘collective effervesce’ as the philosopher Emile Durkheim would call it- a feeling of social cohesion in a moment of shared purpose, knitting social structures together, I couldn’t help but think: much. It can offer so much. Like questions: what if we are only just be realising the true power of the myth or story as a map, as path, as psychological reframe? What if these stories and their honouring of the old cycles, is a way of restoring and rebalancing what holds us apart, within ourselves, and within the natural cycles of time and death and rebirth? What if the ritual is a threshold, a bridge to our transformed return; equipped with true power and the wisdom from the depths. The descent, the threshold, the liminal, the giant octopus, the community. We step across. We shapeshift.

Coming up this Month

**Samhain Salon- Oct 30th**

An evening of poetry, writing and ritual to make the Samhain season. Tickets here.

Clare Mulvany 29/08/2024 Clare Mulvany 29/08/2024

When No is a Secret Gateway to Yes

When no is a secret gateway to yes.

You can listen to this piece here:

When no is a secret gateway to the real yes.

The morning sun still holds the promise of summer, yet there is a distinctive autumnal turn. The ‘back to school’ vibe is real, with its corresponding prepping mode. September always feels like a new start for me — my work is still connected to academic cycles, but my psychology is too. Come late August, I become squirrel, furrowing, burrowing, plotting and planning to give myself a good foundation for what are traditionally busy months ahead.

As a school kid, I loved the opportunity to get new stationary and the ritual of covering my new school books. I seem to need these physical triggers, to mark a new clearing. At the weekend, for instance, I did some tedious but deceptively pleasurable tasks. What was a fridge in desperate need of defrosting, now ordered to a ‘capsule wardrobe’ of condiments. I was never going to eat that ferment really. But alongside the physical sorting, there is the mental sorting. In the time it takes to clear a fridge, there is space for review, reflecting on learnings and reconnecting with priorities to buttress the months ahead.

In looking back, I have a chance to think about this past summer, one which held an incredible opportunity and incredible challenge. The opportunity: to take on the running of a beautiful building (cafe/ pottery studio/ learning space) in the village where I live, and develop community events and learning programmes. The challenge: exactly that!

So, trying to put into practice what I teach, I set about applying design methodologies to the task. There was so much learning in the process. From engaging in deep listening approaches, using community participatory practices and ultimately listening to my instinct, after almost three months of research, I realised on a fateful dark night of the soul, that while a wonderful prospect, the opportunity was not for me. There are moments in life you have to give a full yes, and there are moments in life where you have to listen to a full no. Embarking on the process, a strong values-driven yes, led me into the possibility, but it was a gut instinct, body based, no, which led me the decision to not to proceed. Sometimes no is a gateway to the real yes.

I’m so glad I tried. And I am so grateful to people, the place, and tools that have helped me. It was not the summer I expected, but it was a summer of learning, then letting go with confidence in the process which underpinned the path which took me here. (Given the richness of the learning experience, I have written more about the process over on Thrive School- which I hope might be a useful resource to those embarking on their own projects)

So, the real yes. Isn’t that always the challenge, and the opportunity.

I don’t think our yes is ever singular, or crystal or static. Our yes can speak in whispers, nudges, bringing us closer towards that idea, image or story that just won’t loose grip. It’s not always linear or logical. It requires listening. Sometimes over and over again.

For me, that yes starts in my journal. There are scribblings, sketchy inklings, allowing ideas and longings to land, perhaps for years, letting them ripen, grow, find ground in my psych and soul. The ideas which keep repeating, the desires which keep rising, over time, these patterns become evident on the page.

The listening is supported with ritual. Yesterday, I took a wander down some overgrown paths, on the hunt for blackberries. The picking is such a marker of the season, both in its turning and its gifts. As I was picking, with the birds and the waves as sonic companionship, I was thinking of the privilege and power of such space, of where I find myself. I was thinking of the preciousness of time, and how to use it wisely. I was thinking of hope.

There are so many needs in the world right now, so many causes and urgencies, no one person can bear. At times I find myself numbing, blanking out the news and the social feeds of another tragedy. And there is one part of myself which shames me for doing this- how can I turn away, how can I be so removed, from my place of privilege and vantage. Another part of my brain knows that the numbness is a protective mechanism from grief. It’s how the limbic brain has learned to be animal: fight, flight, freeze. Freeze can be strategy for survival. The challenge with freeze though, it’s cold and solid and immovable, and it too requires defrosting.

Plug out, remove the clutter, replace only the essentials, leave space.

Who knew that lessons from deep cleaning a fridge could be so valuable.

Alongside the briars, there are fruits, ready for picking. In a quiet, unplugged solitary afternoon, I pick enough to fill a small container. A few are bitter, but they are mostly sweet, products of time and weather, just enough sun to ripen. I return home, invite a friend over, bake a blackberry pudding, and together we eat the season, letting the inky berries stain our tongues, leaving them longing for more. So we have some.

Later, I take out my journal, and can see the patterns more clearly again, these inky stains of longing. My pen meets some questions.

What am I longing for?

When that question is exhausted with ink, it’s time to go to the next one:

But what am I really really longing for?

And when that one is done, the next:

But what am I not giving myself permission to really long for, but secretly do?

This last question, it is hard, and revelatory. For me right now, it plugs me into long held ambitions around my writing, teaching, owning a home, and travel. It also brings me to questions about how I am using my voice to speak up and out about injustices, and climate, and the issues I care about. It demands that I focus and keep on dreaming. It demands that I keep going, even when the path ahead is uncertain. Longings are not tame like that; they make us become more of ourselves, so we can continue to bring our gifts to the world. Secretly, they have our back. And when we let them, perhaps not so secretly after all.

Your ten minute writing practice.

What are you longing for?

What are you really really longing for?

What are you not giving yourself permission to really long for, but secretly do?

Want to sustain your own writing process? I have a several ways to support you, online or in-person

Sanctuary: Next Session September 22nd

**Sanctuary**

This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Find out more and book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

**Final in the Summer series.**
Live a New Story. September 7th, Schull, West Cork.
Learning about the art of personal narrative writing in this one day workshop. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

There are many people reading this who know they have a book or writing project brewing but are not sure where to begin, how to structure it, or lack the courage and confidence to bring a draft to the next level. My writing mentoring packages are here to support. From private one-to-one workshops, a three month intensive, or a year long engagement, I hope your writing and story has a chance to grow.
Find out more here

Clare Mulvany 03/07/2024 Clare Mulvany 03/07/2024

What Beauty Might We Yet Create?

A 5 minute writing practice and prompt.

Something a little different today. A five minute writing practice for you.

Here is a piece of my own writing, followed by a prompt, where I accompany you in your writing.

Grab a pen, paper and comfy spot. And press play!

July has come, with its attendant blooms and night songs. Dawn comes early too, and the chatter of the birds rises me. It is not the only the birds keeping me awake though. It is all the questions which are spooling in these times of uncertainty and change. Yet, it is the birds which give me courage. The butterflies too. And between every curl of foxglove, the darting swoop of swallow and wing. Yes, it is beauty which gives me courage, and nature’s insistence on becoming all it can be.

Recently I was editing a piece with reference to swallows. Moments later I walked upstairs, and there was a swallow sitting on a picture frame, shocked and surprised, both of us —an awe of encounter, and then, on my part, a flurry to open all the windows to encourage flight back to the skies again. This tiny remarkable being who has the will, power, stamina, determination to cross continents, cross deserts and mountains, seas; straddling its place in the world. Between Ireland and South Africa, a home in two parts, and an entire mystery of migration in between.

I wonder sometimes what would happen if we all stopped for a moment and pondered the true marvel of even a single blade of grass, or just one flap of wing; how the world might be different; how we too might insist on crossing continents, opening to our full bloom, rising in the early morning to let our song out. What would we sing? What beauty might we yet create?

…

The Prompt:

What beauty might I yet create…

Want to sustain your own writing process?

This summer I have a several ways to support to, online or in-person

Sanctuary: Next Session July 20th

**Sanctuary**

Next session: Sunday July 20th. This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Find out more and book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

**Come to West Cork this summer.**
Next sessions 6th July, 14th July or Aug 3rd
Across the summer I have a series of beautiful writing workshops planned, in Schull and in Leap. From nature writing to learning the art of personal narrative writing it’s writing + nature + west cork. What’s not to love. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

Clare Mulvany 05/06/2024 Clare Mulvany 05/06/2024

Writing as Assemblage- and Overcoming Rejection

On writing as an act of assemblage, overcoming writing rejection and the transformative power of the creative process…

You can listen to this piece here…

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.

- William Stafford

In personal narrative writing I’ve come to understand that the story is never singular. It is more layered and mosaic than anything chronological or linear. If anything, writing our story is an act of assemblage. It is about learning how the pieces may thread together to create something new which holds an adherence to truth (for it is only there that we get to the really transformative material). But there is also a call to beauty, asking us, ‘How can the story take shape in a new, artful way? What else might I uncover? From what, or whose, other perspectives might this be written from?

Holding out for duality, plurality, and beauty, opens possibilities not just within the narrative arcs, but in also in the writer themselves, a measurement of ‘success’ which is often outlooked when gauging the value of the writing process and outcome.

Publication is so often used as the final benchmark of writing success. Yes, it is one way to measure, but it is also such a small measure which the commercialised world thrives on. So many people try, are rejected, then stop writing. But we loose so much when external indicators of success are taken as the gatekeepers into one’s own power and potential; ones own story.

The publishing world is an industry driven by the judgment and validation of market forces and profit margins- it is an industry after all, with it’s own metrics. There are disruptors within the industry for sure (I love what Unbound Books are doing for instance, or The Pound Project), but as someone who has submitted many book proposals, and received many rejections, I am grateful that I understand the value of writing for my own growth, curiosity and creativity outside the limited bounds of these external markets.

When I was looking for a publisher for my own memoir which I wrote as a rite of passage/ ritual for my 40th birthday, the resounding response from agents and publishers was ‘we love this, but we don’t know how to sell it’. I came very close with several publishers, but in the end they choose not to take it on. I’ll be honest, the rejection was hard. With multiple doors opening, then closing, it felt raw, particularly with writing so personal. I had to remember: it is the book they are rejecting because they cannot see how it fits into their market, for now. It was not my writing or me they were rejecting. That shift in perspective has kept me going. I love writing too much to stop because of market forces. It is too much a part of how I navigate this world to give up.

I put the memoir down for now (I may come back to it again later), and I just returned to my journalling practice, and kept going. Page after page after page, and slowly something new has been emerging. I work with publication in mind, for sure, but I also work with my own creativity, imagination and love for the craft in mind. The process in and of itself is a gift I give to myself, one which continually helps to strengthen me, change me, show me a way forward, enrich.

Writing, particularly writing personal narrative, demands that we pay attention to the truth, lies, half-truths, and influences which mould and make us. In the assemblage we get to make the links and connections we otherwise would not have noticed, and ultimately I believe we can meet ourselves and therefore others, with more compassion and nuance. Whether one is published, or not, is not the final measure of success for me. Am I being true to myself? Am I listening? And I learning? Am I being of service? These are more interesting questions for me to help guide the process. Writing personal narrative- whether in essay crafting, in looser journaling form, in that sense, is a medium in which the transformation of self can be both moderated and witnessed. The words are the mould makers and the mould breakers. The words themselves are the alchemist’s thread, which I will happily follow. Where they will lead, I have no idea really, but it is a journey so worth taking.

Want to spark or sustain your own writing process?

This summer I have a several ways to support to, online or in-person

Sanctuary

On June 16th ‘Sanctuary’ commences. This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

Come to West Cork this summer!

In July, August and September, I have a series of beautiful writing workshops planned, in Schull and in Leap. From nature writing to learning the art of personal narrative writing it’s writing + nature + west cork. What’s not to love. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

There are many people reading this who know they have a book or writing project brewing but are not sure where to begin, how to structure it, or lack the courage and confidence to bring a draft to the next level. My writing mentoring packages are here to support. From private one-to-one workshops, a three month intensive, or a year long engagement, I hope your writing and story has a chance to grow.

Find out more here

**Summer Writing Workshops, West Cork. June-Sept**

Join me for a series of writing workshops in Schull or Leap, West Cork, Summer 2024
More information and bookings

Clare Mulvany 28/05/2024 Clare Mulvany 28/05/2024

One of the scariest places

One of the scariest places in the world is…

What is one of the scariest places in the world?

It is a question I often ask students. I get a range of responses from sniggers to specific locations. ‘My grandmother’s knicker’s’, a student once said, to which the room took a collective gasp, then broke into hysterics.

‘How about the blank page… ‘ I offer.

They look at me as if I’m half mad.

But it’s true. I believe the blank page is one of the scariest places in the world. But it is also one of the most exhilarating, wondrous, powerful and transformative places there is. It’s a place not just where stories and books are born, but lives too. It’s a place of homecoming, connection. In times of loss, it can be a place of solace, and in times of joy, a place to celebrate.

The marriage of ink and page is a loyal companion to action and insight. The data confirms it: commit an intention or a goal to the page, write down specifics with a deadline, and it is more likely to happen. Writing is as much about making the world, as it is narrating it.

I’m sharing all this because I’ve been in a reflective space around the power of writing in my life. I started writing a regular journal when I was 11 and have kept one ever since. That’s a lot of blank pages. A lot of mundanity and lists too, yet when I look back on those pages I see the origins of my ideas and the evolution of how my creative life and career have mapped around them. I’ve seen that it is the habit of returning over and over to the page which has been the bedrock not just to my creative life, but to my career as well. The blank page + a pen + regular habit =…..

….

This summer I’ve lots of ways for you to engage with writing and supporting your own creative habits.

Sanctuary

On June 16th ‘Sanctuary’ commences. This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

Come to West Cork this summer! . In July, August and September, I have a series of beautiful writing workshops planned, in Schull and in Leap. From nature writing to learning the art of personal narrative writing it’s writing + nature + west cork. What’s not to love. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

Find out more here

Clare Mulvany 04/07/2023 Clare Mulvany 04/07/2023

Instructions for Creative Unblocking

Instructions for Creative Unblocking and Learning from the Creative Process.

As I embark into some new writing projects this summer, the following list contains my learnings about the creative process I want to my future self to remember. Like the application of the earning, this list is a work in progress. So, for the times I am feeling stuck, blocked, fearful or small, dear Clare, please remember…

Creativity is like lifeblood, always flowing with its own pulse and rhythm. Even when you can’t see or recognise it, trust that below the surface it is forever in motion. And just like with a heartbeat or pulse, you can tune into that rhythm with consciousness, attention and pause. Creating is an act of surrender to a deeper beat.
Remember: You create because it is something which brings you most alive to the hidden undercurrents of connection, ideas and relationship. It brings meaning to the ordinary in ways which render everything extraordinary. Life is better in creativity mode.
The beginning of each writing/ creativity session is the hardest part. Make the beginning easy. Lower your expectations and allow yourself to enter slowly. Let kindness be your guide.
Keep booking creative meetings in your calendar, blocks of unmovable time. Even if you don’t write/ paint/ make immediately, keep showing up. Something always gets impatient and shows up eventually too!
If one tool feels blocked, use another. If you can’t write, then paint. If you can’t do that, then dance. If not that, then move. Move in whatever way feels nourishing. The movement begets movement, so everything else can flow.
Remember: your job is not to make ‘good’ work. Your job is to make the best work that only you can make. Whether others think it is good, or not, has nothing to do with your creativity. What matters is that you keep seeking to make your best work yet. Then repeat again and again and again.
Trust the strange imaginings. Trust the voices in your head. Trust how characters show up in the middle of the night to whisper details and twists. No matter how mad it all seems, these are the gems which makes the work all the more distinctive, and mysterious too.
You don’t write poems, you walk into them. Your task is to be ready to catch them at any moment. Then the craft of shaping them can begin.
Remember: creativity is a co-creative process. It’s between you and the source of life itself. When you commit, life shows up too. May the dance always be about to begin.
You are never going to get ‘there’. That’s the point. ‘There’ is an aspiration, designed to keep you learning, growing, changing, exploring, evolving. ‘There’ will always move depending on your capacity. Remaining proximate to ‘there’ is a better destination.
Poetry is the place to figure out the silences. Listen. Then, listen to the silence below the silence, and write from that place.
If you haven’t reached the chaos, you haven’t gone deep or far enough. Chaos is an indicator of the wild life within a project. There are tools to help carry your through. Use them.
Every book, every poem, every photo has an original essence. The craft is to reveal that essence in as light and beautiful way as possible. There will be many attempts to reach it, and each draft can bring your closer. But mostly the essence keeps some of itself hidden- that’s the mystery, which is also the beauty. Keep working your way through the layers.
Time is not linear. What happens in flow can defy natural order. Sometimes you only need five minutes for your best work to happen. And you always have five minutes.
Leave room for the blanks.
Photography is ‘drawing with light’. What gets exposed is a matter of choice, and craft. Light is both an instrument of revelation and restraint. Less is often more. As with images, so too with words.
When in doubt, swim. When still in doubt, walk. If all else fails, just keep showing up to the blank page. It is an ocean and a mountain too. Keep moving.
Nothing will ever be fully finished. At some point you need to decide to stop so new work can arrive in too. Be willing to gift your creativity to the world, knowing there is more to come.
Making your creative work is a love letter to your deepest, most tender self. Keep making. The love letter isn’t finished yet.
To be continued….