i participated in a great reading last night in galeria r_z, in Rzeszow, celebrating the poetry of my dear friend Cecilia Woloch and some of the poets who appeared in translation in the latest Atlanta Review - a Polish special edition, which she edited.
after the reading i gave an interview to Radio Rzeszow, which went in an unexpected direction, although i don't know why it was unexpected really, i just told the truth.
i was asked what inspired my poetry, and what my roots were.
i said that it was all just an attempt to express a state of awareness in which you touch the actual state of things - life energy moving.
- did i mean slowing down and getting a distance on things?
- not necessarily, energy can move very fast.
- did i mean finding balance?
- nah... there's no such thing in nature.
it's just one side expressing itself so fully that it tips into the other, slowness, becoming fastness, distance becoming closeness, dark becoming light, and back the other way again.
that's the dance of the tao - tao meaning the natural way organic life works, which only becomes 'a thing' because of the odd way we've got used to thinking. splitting things up, valuing one side over another, and seeing ourselves as separate entities - that being the killer mistake.
it might sound abstract but it's not - do we get days which are half winter and half summer, days in which plants are seeds and fruits all at the same time for balance? do we get a balanced night which is half daytime? would we want that? we could never relax!
so yes, my poetry and my art are my dances with the tao that's dancing anyway, all the time - as long as there's life.
poetry and art are the same spirit that moves everything and everyone, and experiencing that helps you neatly sidestep that killer mistake.
come and join me if you're free on the first week of august and we'll do some dancing with the tao together!
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