The Revolution is inside your stories

protest, prose and a poem in your pocket

Yesterday I was in a coffee shop along the coast in Manzanita, Oregon when I saw Danusha Laméris’ poem Small Kindnesses handwritten on a chalk book in cursive writing - a poem I know well because the compassion is the opening class in our next six-week writing series - Story Revolution.

The chalk-board poem reminded me how I love the energy of cursive writing, and the kindness of strangers, and this little town we were visiting where the people who lived in it seem to be shining their light on each other daily.

Laméris’ poem has been used in church sermons, by Buddhists, and was published in the New York Times in 2018 - this poem belongs in everyone's pocket.

Just a few towns over was another town with a totally different vibe. There were Trump T-shirts everywhere with Trump giving the middle finger with both hands with derogatory statements about women written on the shirts, and as I walked by the window, holding my nine year old granddaughter’s hand and my seven year old grandson’s hand, Mika pointed and said, that’s bad.

And I said yes, it is very bad. But there are good men all over the world who respect girls and women and the person who owns this store just isn’t one of them.

There is so much hatred right now, it’s hard for all of us to reconcile. In Mexican restaurants here in Oregon, those who didn’t speak good English seemed afraid to speak, and a Mexican mother and her children eyed me with suspicion when I stopped to ask them directions, then sighed with relief when I asked in Spanish to make them more comfortable.

Oregon as a state seems to be a little like soup where everything in your refrigerator is thrown into the pot.

I believe the only way forward in this world is not by shouting, but by writing our stories and poems and essays, and sharing them - stories that connect us to each other in a time of chaos and disappointment.

I didn’t choose to be a writer during this time - writing chose me, and writing may have chosen you, too. I think as writers we were born for this time in history.

Even so, if I’m honest, there are days I wake up and wonder if I want to write unless my story can change something in the world in a Big Way, and then I remind myself the most important thing I do is write about the small things.

To save my soul, and recalibrate, and because I’m putting together the curriculum for our summer writing series starting next week, I’m reading the following books:

Rebecca Solnit's book No Straight Road Takes you There: Essays for Uneven Terrain - Katherine May’s book Enchantment, Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. Finding meaning in every day experiences is critical to the way forward and something we are exploring in the next series.

Lydia Yuknavitch wrote in the forward of another book I’m reading and enjoying by Jen Pastiloff On Being Human. Yuknavitch wrote Our Life choices surge out of us when the pressure to move gets bigger than the pressure to hold it all in.

For the series coming up I’m also re-reading James Crews contemporary poetry anthologies and Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness, and if you think Ocean is an overnight best selling author I’ve been following him since his poetry chapbook in 2010 and suggesting my students put Ocean’s poetry in their pockets. It took him years, rejection, timing and exquisite writing to sit and cry with Oprah about his mother over his latest masterpiece.

I often sleep with many books in my bed, and read five books at a time, but that’s part of being a teacher - I’m always looking for inspiration by other poets and writers to inspire writers in our community.

If I’m honest, the state of the world now helps me look at my own stories through a different lens, and go deeper to find what I’m still learning.

I didn’t write my breastfeeding story until twenty five years after suing a company I worked for for pregnancy discrimination. The whole of the story came full circle while witnessing my daughter openly breastfeed in the parking lot of a health food store, the flatbed down on her truck, not even attempting cover up baby’s mouth or swollen nipple.

My small story mattered then because it was part of a bigger story - rights are never easily won.

The stories we tell and the love we offer are the seeds we are planting for the babies being born right now, and their children.

You see how it goes.

As storytellers, this may be our most important work right now, and it’s more important than ever to show up for our writing.

A True Revolution might start with a Poem in your pocket.

A Story Revolution begins by paying attention and giving others your undivided attention.

A true revolution has laughter and singing and dancing. It has crying and curiosity, and belief a better world is possible. Most of all it has community, because we have each other and a beautiful planet filled with Bald Eagles and Maple trees and Albatross.

I leave you today with an excerpt from Joyce Sutphen’s poem Out of the Cave -

in the midst of these

everyday nightmares, you

understand that you could

wake up.

You could turn

and go back

to the last thing you

remember doing

with your whole heart:

that passionate kiss,

the brilliant drop of love

rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,

then you wake,

you stumble from your cave,

blinking into the sun,

naming every shadow a

as it slips

---

LITerati Academy has a few openings available in our upcoming Story Revolution series that begins next week and rolls out from June 23rd through the 29th. If a class you want is full, reach out to Laura Lentz.

Laura Lentz is the found of LITerati Academy, the author of an essay book Freeing the Turkeys and the writer’s workbook STORYquest, the Writer, the Hero, the Journey.