The Importance of Walking in Poetry: Part 1

Let’s talk about how walking benefits poets and readers, bringing the mind’s eye into focus. In walking, we observe the world and people around us, get inspired to write about it, ruminate on how to get it just right on paper (or onscreen). Walking also helps for reading and appreciating poetry. Tie up your shoelaces, put on a hat and coat (’tis the season), and let’s head out into the world on foot. Need experience? Need a refresher? Need some perspective?

Put down those car keys! And go for a walk. A long one….like at least 6000 steps, the more the better. The more you walk, the clearer your mind gets. Your shoulders will slide down, you will breathe.

When you get back from your walk, browse through the Igneus Press bookshop, there’s free poetry and ‘fo on poets. Check out the White Quartet by Richard Martin, a series of 4 books that reflect on natural spaces inside our psychology. Wonderful for thinking in the woods.

Observation

The four main ways in which walking helps to read and write poetry are:

Observation

Inspiration

Rumination

Reading

Today we’re going to focus on observation.

So what is observation. Same as looking, right? Not exactly. A lot of times we look at something, but don’t really see. This is because our minds are multi-tasking genius bots. Our minds have multiple tracks and levels of thought, memory, visualisation, and imagination going on, all at the same time. To make things crazier, all these tracks and levels organise around our ego, around a sense of self. Now, many of you know as well as I do, there is more than one of us in here.

So where does observation come into all this? Well, taking a walk may be your one clear shot at quieting down all this noise. Particularly for writers, these extra thoughts get in the way of our authentic voice…distracting us, confusing us, not believing in us, dividing our vital qi 气. In Chinese poetics, qi (sometimes spelled chi Chinese characters, like 气, have to be Romanized to help us Romance-language-speakers to sound them out. The old system of Romanization used to be the Wade-Giles system, but more recently the Pinyin system is used. So in older books translating Chinese terms, the former will be used. In current scholarship, the latter will be used. Other examples in addition to qi & chi (Pinyin & Wade-Giles), common examples are Dao/Tao, and Yijing/ I Ching. As if Chinese wasn’t all Greek to begin with, LOL) exists both inside and outside of us. A poet’s qi connects with qi outside of them-self, thus the foundation is laid for a good poem. The natural and ideal state of observation is one in which our qi This word’s so cool it deserves two footnotes. Just want to mention that qi is translated roughly as pneuma, or breath. But it’s not breath like living organisms’ breath, but breath or ‘energy’ pervading all that exists connects with qi around us.

You may recall how Buddhism and Daoism incorporate meditation into daily life. This slows down our thoughts in order to allow our qi to regulate. In modern parlance, we talk about regulating our nervous system. We talk about nervous system or qi depending on whether we base reality on Exoteria or on Esoteria. Just kidding…I mean that it doesn’t have to be either/or…either qi is real (and thus Buddhism and Daoism would hold the keys to calming us down and helping us be more observant), or the nervous system is real (and thus modern science on stress is right), Exoteria and esoteria can co-exist in our now Aquarian Age.

In walking, once we’re ten, fifteen minutes in, we begin to look slightly upwards, above the horizon of sight, say, at the tops of trees far ahead, helping our spleen meridian to cleanse According to Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture, one of the 12 meridians is the spleen. Good health depends on all 12 meridians allowing the flow of qi along their networks. According to neural science, looking slightly up will help your mind enter into Theta, a state of meditation and calmness.

Now THIS is the stuff of poetry. Observations are seeds of reality which will now live inside of our mind, heart, and body. They gestate, culminate, and wait for inspiration to come. The poem will now begin to speak within us, based in observations we’ve made in communion with the world and people around us.

In the next part of The Importance of Walking in Poetry series, I’ll talk about ‘inspiration,’ the second major way in which taking a walk helps us to read and write poetry.