It’s becoming something of a tradition for me to start the new year by immersing myself in writing and writing workshops, and once again – because it always does – it’s paying dividends. Some years ago, the poet Jo Bell put together ’52’, an excellent book of fifty-two poetry prompts which I unreservedly recommend, and I’m currently working my way through that (for the third time, I think) with a small group of poet friends; I’m also turning up each morning to ‘Writing Hours’, run online by Kim Moore and Clare Shaw, and thoroughly enjoying that, too.
Yes, I’m writing poems – which is good news, obviously, when you’re a poet – but the process of immersing myself in all these suggestions of how to look at the world also means (and this is every bit as important) that I’m going through my day in a state of gently heightened awareness, noticing things I might normally miss, paying attention to the beauty and the ugliness and the more-than-occasional oddness of what’s around me, mulling things over, thinking.
It’s fantastic.
And it needs to be, because set against that is the news. Glance at your TV, laptop, or phone screen, and it’s fires in LA, genocide in Gaza, obscenely wealthy men choosing to use their power to amplify the voices of hate and division just because they can. Our collective direction of travel does not, right now, seem to be a particularly good one.
Trying to reconcile these two – my personal happiness and enjoyment of what I’m doing, and what’s looking a lot like civilisation’s headlong rush towards a dystopian future – is bloody hard. Some days it feels impossible. And if you’re struggling with this too, I’m here to say you’re not alone. That’s the thing to remember: you’re not alone. Do what you can, but make space for yourself. Bear witness, but remember to rest. Don’t look away, but don’t doomscroll either.
And remember, above all, that you don’t have to deal with this alone. The best counter to our increasingly atomised society is us talking to each other, listening to each other, sharing with each other. It’s us doing things together – whether that’s writing poetry or playing sport or picking litter – in order to make our small part of the world a little better, a little more palatable. We recently set up a writers’ group in the small post-industrial town I live in, and the joy that’s come with doing something positive in the face of all that’s wrong has been both wonderful and unexpected. Does it solve all the problems we face? No. Is it making a difference? Absolutely. It’s a small step, yes, but multiply that one small step by a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand, and – when we look up – we’re somewhere we never dared to imagine we could be.
Take a small step. Open the door to all those possibilities.