Kortney Garrison

Homeschooling With Ease

Poetry Postcards + Publication

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The Thunder Moon came full and it’s not many days till my birthday.

In honor of the day, I’ve been working for the past weeks on sending out 46 postcards of original poetry.

Little hellos from my desk on the sunporch went out today to California, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Oman, and North Portland!

In other poetry news, Better Than Starbucks published a few of my haiku. I am thrilled to be a part of the same issue that features poetry + an interview with A.M. Juster!

The three poems published are a part of a larger series about Julian of Norwich. I began working on these poems in Spring 2019 as a part of a class with Holly Cornfield Carr about the poetry of place. Julian’s cell–what a place! Then I took them to our Summer writing retreat. And now a few are being published during my birthday month! Pure gift.

Every Ordinary Thing

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God is ever working on our behalf–St Ignatius

Every ordinary thing in your life is a word of God’s love–Caryll Houselander

People laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on than we either know or care to know.

Who can say what it is that’s going on? But I suspect that part of it anyway is that every once and so often we hear

a whisper from the wings that goes something like this,

“You’ve turned up at the right place at the right time. You’re doing fine. Don’t ever think you’ve been forgotten.”

Coincidences are God’s way of getting our attention–Fredrick Buechner

We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?–Wendell Berry

I have a blue notebook that I keep on my desk to record the tiny, reliable patterns that emerge from the tangle of days.

One more way to remember what went right.

Memorizing Poetry

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Sally Thomas turned my mind to memorization again. It’s a big part of our everyday learning together.

Billy Collins says that one of the high points of his teaching career was when a stranger approached him on the subway. The man recognized him; Collins had been his teacher years before. One of the assignments had been to memorize a poem. And the man recited the poem right there on the train.

After all the intervening years, the poem wasn’t lost. It was “carried in his head, and maybe in his heart.”

That’s really what we’re after! Not word perfect memorization but hiding good words in our hearts. This year we’ve been learning real poems. Not poems written for children: Auden, Milton, Donne, Frost, Yeats. There’s no reason to spend time with less.

The point is not to make sure we drill some list of classic poems into our kids. It’s to listen carefully each day to the rhythm and words, to quiet our hearts and enter the liminal world of the poem, to let it do it’s work on us.

The point is the poetry.

Gratitude Three Ways

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In September I had the chance to go to Nashville.   It’s a neat town, and I got to travel with some pretty neat women!  After the fun of being together for a weekend, we were inspired to stay connected through an informal writing group.  We all had projects that could use a little more time and attention.  So we made the committment to write for 30 minutes 3 times a week in October.

I am learning how I work best and finding ways to build on those strengths.  I quickly adapted the requirements to fit how I work best–15 minutes a day every day.  It’s way easier for me to show up every day rather than wrangle with myself about whether this is a writing day!  You’ll be happy to know that we are continuing into November–our own tiny nod to NaNoWriMo and daily practice.  I’ll be stacking the deck in my own favor at the beginning of the month with three wonderful writing practices to nudge me along if inspiration flags.

Hand lettering by Laurie Blackwell

 

First up is Laurie Blackwell’s Tips for Keeping a Gratitude Journal.  I love the way Laurie looks at life–open and inquisitive with a touch of whimsy.  Her offerings are always worthwhile, and you can get this invitation into gratitude by signing up for her newsletter.  But move fast!  It goes out tomorrow, so you need to get on the list today!

You’ll want to keep up the gratitude practice with Michelle GD’s Gratitude Week.  This is one of the most amazing things that happens on the internet!  Each day for a week, Michelle slips quiet, thoughtful, soulful emails into your inbox…and then the wonderful community that Michelle has built starts posting on Instagram.  Following #GratitudeWeek2017 is such a pleasure.  Women, who are looking at their lives with fresh eyes, put words to their experience.  Registration closes on Saturday.

That same week, I’ll be immersing myself in poetry.  I found the work of Holly Wren Spaulding at the end of the summer and felt an immediate attraction.  She is a poet who weaves the natural world into her poems.  She lives by the seasons and let the earth touch how she works.  I am so excited to learn from her.  I’ll be taking Seven, a week long class that she describes as “an experiment in following your curiosity and desire.”  Come on, give yourself a little bit of space to see where this path might lead.

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