Stones in the Stream E-Book

Tricia Heriz-Smith

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 109

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Stones in the Stream, the life-work of Tricia Heriz-Smith, is a beautiful collection of poems from a lifetime of practicing deep living and the writing life. Tricia gifts us with a book filled with astute observations, explorations and invitations to look deeply into this world of ours. (from the Foreword by Diana Button). There is an art to standing on one leg just as there is to balancing one rock on another. Outer balance can only happen with inner balance, and that search has been mine for as long as I can remember. These are poems of discovery, just as when you walk on a pebbly beach you find one stone calling to you to be picked up and taken home. So, these poems have been picked from moments in the stream of my life that have caught my full attention and demanded to be written. seeking that centre where all is in balance withstand waves My poems are the distillation of my own time and space, rather like messages in a bottle tossed into the stream of life. (from the Preface).

Leseprobe

Acknowledgements

This book has been many years in the writing, long before I even conceived of it as a book. The fact that it has birthed now is largely due to Diana Button and the Poets in Residence group, Nada Kojic-Edwards, Sanford Clark, Jennifer Rundle, whose varied voices taught me to trust my own.

Over the past decade, Diana Button has been my poetic companion, inspiring me to go deeper and to keep writing. Apart from all her practical help without which these poems would never have made it to a computer let alone been published, her encouragement has been a constant beacon towards finding and valuing my own creative voice. I cannot thank you enough.

There are many people who have been a part of my creative life at different times. Some have remained close, and others have taken different paths, yet all of them have contributed in one way or another, often unconsciously. Long before I took myself seriously as a writer and poet, Cliff Penwell encouraged me to give my muse, Rabbit, a voice. Louise Broomberg welcomed my Attunement Poems and Miriam Platt, a sister poet, taught me to value the inspiration that arose. Thank you all, and others in my EDL years who encouraged me to look below the surface and to seek inspiration.

Showing poems to family and friends is always daunting, and I appreciate how my daughter, Zilla Pearse, has been so willing to listen to poems at times when she has had many other things on her mind, and to her and Kurt Unger for inviting me to write poems as presents for friends. It meant so much to me to be asked to do this. Thank you.

Most of the early poems were saved by my daughter, Tanya Gazet du Chattelier, who provide house room for my old journals when I moved to Italy. I know it was annoying, especially as you were moving home yourself, but thank you.

My mother, Joan Robinson, who features in these poems by her nickname “Tiger”, and who always took the road less travelled encouraging me to do the same, thank you for your courage and love. Both you and my father, Alan Graham-Smith, brought me up to believe in the importance of being creative, original and true to myself. It must have been difficult for you and I appreciate that you were always there for me.

And you, my readers, as you dip into this book and its varied poems, I hope you will find some that speak to you. I am honoured that you should take the time to read them and hope that they will give you pleasure and stimulate new thoughts, Sharing poetry is a very intimate experience and I appreciate your willingness to walk along this stream with me and participate in this conversation.

we are all stones

connected one to another

without you, silence

To my family

both present, past and future

this, I dedicate to you

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

VARIOUS POEMS

Abortion

Always drink upstream from the herd

Black and white

#me too

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

A Carpet Tale

After the Storm

A Walk Together

A Woodland Song

Dialogue

Deep Play

Distraction’s Discord

Dull

Edgar Allan Poe:

Escape

Iconoclasm

Hearing Summer

Greed

Hedged

Here we go again

Hibernation

If only …

I stood 2004

I remember …

Four Witches

Fishing – August 2004

It’s very strange

Last Moments

Last Night 1996

Late Autumn

Life – Now or Hereafter

Longing

Looking Over Old Journals

Loss

Magic Mirror

Mirror on the Wall

Memories

New Year Resolution

Nota Bene 2

Of Trees and Wind

On Dragon Song

On Eagle’s Wing

On Living too Long

Open Eyes

Pain

Particular

Recalling Life’s My(ths)

Roundel – Frozen

Sister

There is Blood on my Hands

The Good, The True and The Beautiful

Power

We know what’s best for you …

Snap out of it!

Springbok’s Last Song

Strandloper

Suddenly

The Dance

The Old Soldier

The Rift

The Tower

The Woman of my Dreams

Water of Life

What have we done

What fits the Crime

What’s your poison

Wild Woman

Without Trees

POEMS ON POEMS

And so I asked

I spoke a poem

On Being written into Being

Poet in Contemplation

Poetry

Poetry calls

She

Striving for Inspiration

Summer Heat

Synchronised Poems

The Other Companion

Too Many Words

When the Muse comes a-knocking

Writing Spaces Poem

SPIRIT POEMS

Awareness

Am I fact or fiction

A Silent Conversation

Black Madonna

Bubble Girl

Backwards or Forwards

Conversation 2006

Deep Meditation 2006

Deception

Crone and Druid

Can I

Finding myself

I and Thou

I Walk Alone

Life’s Marathon

Meditation 1

Moments Away

My Road

On Cleaning a Room

On EDL and Attunement 2006

On Meditation

A Shared Attunement

On Sharing an Attunement

Preparing to share an attunement

Purgatory

Staying Still 2006

Step Out

Stillness

Still Waters

The Fan

The Path I Walk

The Return

The Stillpoint 2004

The Walnut

Unnameable

HAIKU AND OTHER BRIEF POEMS

August vacation

Bees and Lavender

Butterfly

Basho

Brexit

Cobwebs

Devon Notes

Day’s end

Haiku with pivots

Dirt is just matter out of place

I read the News today

Nota Bene 1

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Owl

Pari

Pivot Haiku

Starlings Squabble over Pari

The Bush

The Butterfly Wing

Waiting

POEMS OF HORSES

Taming Wild Horse

Caress

Enchantment

Freeway

POEMS INSPIRED BY FRIENDS AND OTHER PEOPLE

A Butterfly Girl

David Whyte 2004

For Ray Jefferies

Happy Birthday Margaret

In Memorium Jo Cox

In Memory of an Old Flame 2004

Love’s Deception

Luna

Marianne

Michel, The Gentle Knight

Michel 2

Ode to Claudius

On your birthday, Tiger

Talking about this friend

The Call of the Shaaman

This friend ….

To Tiger

To Pippa

To the Elephant Whisperer

POEMS FROM MY TRAVELS

Between me and the sea (Barcelona 2019)

Blood River

Caceres

Cascais

Note from Cape Peninsula

On Montserrat … Arrival

Pari 2

Salina

Short Winter Day

Spioenkop

The Rattling Call of the Blue Crane

END PAGES

Poet in Residence Blog and Press

Foreword

Stones in the Stream, the life-work of Tricia Heriz-Smith, is a beautiful collection of poems from a lifetime of practicing deep living and the writing life. Tricia gifts us with a book filled with astute observations, explorations and invitations to look deeply into this world of ours and to familiarise ourselves with things that are at one and the same time, evidence of our many differences, our uniqueness and our sameness.

Tricia’s concern for the world, for equality, for justice, for political correctness and for a felt sense of belonging comes across with clarity and touches the reader in all the right places. Her work undoubtedly draws on a life of experience and movement in and out of differing cultures and countries including South Africa, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Malaysia.

This collection shows us our mirror image like water does our face, inviting us to look again at our fixed ideas and points of view.

Our common humanity, our shared responsibility are important themes that re-emerge and connect through and across the chapters of her book as it runs its course towards the open sea. Each poem - each stone – has the potential to grab us and pull us into the current and stream that is converging into one flow.

Tricia’s keen eye for detail, her ability to observe the familiar and to then reveal this to the reader in a new light is an open invitation to enter into this dance with life, into other voices, other perspectives and have the courage to look through the eyes of the unfamiliar other: eyes that have the potential to transform.

When I asked Tricia what function poetry has in her life, for her personally and for the world at large, she offered some beautiful responses that I would like to share here with you:

Poetry has the power to make impossible connections that remove blinkers from my heart; it enables me to be present in a deeply conscious way and at the same time connected with some universal underlying energy and then to be able to lift this into concrete form.

Poetry, and particularly writing poems, are a way to connect with a deep understanding, a way of looking at the world around and really seeing it, and trying to share that perception, firstly with myself over time and then (now) with others.

I suppose that in many ways, poetry is my spiritual practice, like (if not more than) meditation or yoga. The composition of poems is the place where I can dive deep and is a time of transcendence which fuels and energises the rest of my day. In some ways it is prayer at its essential essence. In writing poems I'm seeking a universal truth (god) that underlies everything, and looking for the metaphors / words to clarify that perception.

All I would like to add is a large and loud, thank you Tricia for this wonderful collection of poems. Through it, you have not only gifted us with your compassionate heart and voice, but have gifted yourself and others with poetry at its essence.

Preface

There is an art to standing on one leg just as there is to balancing one rock on another. Outer balance can only happen with inner balance, and that search has been mine for as long as I can remember.

These are poems of discovery, just as when you walk on a pebbly beach you find one stone calling to you to be picked up and taken home. Sometimes, several clamour at once for attention! I remember my brother-in-law, Ambrose Campbell, being overwhelmed by the stones on the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk in the 1960’s, and filling bag after bag with stones to take back to London because they spoke to him.

So, these poems have been picked from moments in the stream of my life that have caught my full attention and demanded to be written.

seeking that centre

where all is in balance

withstand waves

This collection has come together at a time of great social upheaval as the Coronavirus challenges every country to handle this pandemic, and I was touched to see that China printed labels on the boxes of supplies they sent to Italy which read “we are waves from the same sea” (lines accredited to Seneca) to express their brotherhood in this extraordinary time. Poetry doesn't preach like prose, it can slip in and convey in a few syllables universal truths. It's an art of encapsulation and reduction. Poetry makes impossible connections that remove blinkers from my heart. Poetry enables me to be present in a deeply conscious way and at the same time connected with some universal underlying energy and then to be able to lift this into concrete form. They are word synchronicities, a form of magic.

For myself, the main motivation in writing is to better understand myself, my world and to connect with it at the deepest truth level possible. It is to shine a spotlight on an understanding condensed into its most concrete form in words. The poem is the synthesis of all this and the journey is an integral part and equally important.

My motivation for publishing? I suppose that this is in many ways my legacy! My children and grandchildren are the living breathing realities of who I am and have been, and have taken this to their own unique realms. My poems are the distillation of my own time and space, rather like messages in a bottle tossed into the stream of life. I suppose at some level I see them as my epitaph, my memorial! In this age when the tombstones and grave sites of our ancestors are less present in our well travelled world, they are my gift to the future and where I can be found by those who care to visit. And you don't even need to bring flowers!

For readers? I hope this will be an inspiration to you to acknowledge and find your own creative voice.