Category: Poet Voice Blog 2023

Continuing to think about poetry–after April.

Tips on Honing your Creative Vision Plan

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Suzanne Valadon, 1930

Bonjour creatives!

How is your Creative Vision PlanTM evolving? Are  you pleased with your vision statement and your mission statement? Are you feeding your creativity?

Remember that your vision statement is futuristic and imaginative. Your mission statement is more practical—what you are actually doing or what you want to be doing. 

I am happy with both my vision and mission statements, but it did take me some time and tweaking to get there. I even cut pictures out of magazines to create a “vision collage” to make my vision concrete and real. Are you a visual artist or visual learner? This approach may help you.

Finally, with journaling and collaging, I honed my vision statement as follows:

My Vision Statement: To feed my creativity in all genres and mediums. Keep writing and publishing while nurturing streams of income. Work to insure my legacy remains for future generations.

Clearly, my vision is futuristic, even beyond my lifetime—to my legacy. Also, it’s quite general which leaves me lots of leeway with anything I wish to do that “feeds my creativity.”

Next, you have the challenge of writing your personal mission statement. I find this step a bit more difficult as it involves the doing! What am I doing? What do I want to do? Our mission statements guide our everyday life and what we plan to do as well as what we are doing.

Next step, once you have settled on your mission statement, break it into achievable goals and tasks. If you missed my blog on creating your plan, check it out here on July 31, 2023, “Five Steps to Your Creative Vision Plan” for more on this process.

Next steps: Here is the real challenge (at least for me): Staying true to your goals. Good news! They aren’t carved in stone! Adjust as necessary.  I am finding that I need to trim my goals a bit and also confession: I did not complete a detailed timeline though I did focus on short term goals through the end of the year. As I refine my plan, I am going to add more detailed tasks and a timeline to keep me on track. 

My first goal is the most fun: “Do something creative everyday!”

One of my large watercolors evolving-do something creative everyday!

My second goal is to keep Rainbow Warrior (my latest book of poetry launched in May, 2023) alive and visible. So, I will read a poem or two tonight at the local open mic and share a few lines here with my readers.

Photo & words by poet; lines from “Myth of the Infinite Sea”

And finally, dear readers, please feel free to make comments below about how my suggestions on a creative vision plan worked with your own process.

Sharing the process can be empowering for all!

Happy Visioning!

Five Steps to Your Creative Vision Plan

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photo by the poet

And I/like the moth orchid/

open my petals to the moon

tides swell in me/I wax/I wane

She gives birth/The orchid blooms

My child-self takes form/Ink flows like blood

“Full Moon” by Jacquelyn Markham, from Rainbow Warrior (2023 Finishing Line Press, reprinted with permission)

The waxing moon is in Capricorn until around midnight, July 31, ET (NY) and slides into Aquarius on August 1, Lunar Lammas, a super full moon, the first of two August supermoons! So, wow! lunar energy in abundance as we wind down the summer in full Leo season (in the western hemisphere.)

A new moon rises in Leo on August 16, great energy for focusing on implementing your vision for yourself.

Before we spin around August and enter the moon in Aquarius though, we have a little time to finalize tasks of the Capricorn moon, including setting clear short-term goals (astrological guidance from the We’Moon calendar, learn more here: We’Moon). So, how about a plan for yourself and your creativity?

Does this sound dreary to you creatives out there? Does the phrase Strategic Plan make your eyes glaze over? I understand, but it’s really more rewarding & creative than you might think.  Some years ago as an arts consultant for Kentucky Peer Advisory Network (KPAN), I traveled to arts organizations large and small and assisted them with grants, board development, marketing, and yes, strategic planning! That was a great gig except for the driving on mountain roads without guard rails and the long roads to western Kentucky (I was living in Lexington at the time). But, I digress. As an arts consultant, however, I did learn the importance of having a plan to focus your creativity.

My way of making this process of creating a Strategic Plan more fun is to think of it as a *Vision* for my creative life. So, still in the middle of moon in Capricorn, I set about to work on my Vision Plan and finished the details as the clock slipped into today, July 31, while the moon is still in Capricorn.

What about  you, dear readers? Want to give it a try? I focused my plan on short term goals from now until December 2023. Here’s the step-by-step process:

Step 1: Write your vision statement. Your vision statement is futuristic and should inspire you. Mine is only three sentences long and I’ve written it in gold ink at the top of a new page in my journal.

Step 2: Next, write your mission statement which differs from but grows out of your vision statement. There are many resources on this process of writing a mission statement (search Strategic Plan) but think simply. What is it you do or want to do everyday? Focus on the present. Keep it brief.

Step 3: Now, short term goals that fit within your vision and your mission. I settled on five, but worked through several pages of writing to see the difference in the goals and the tasks it would take to accomplish them. You could focus on three (a nice number) or more if you are energetic, but I suggest no more than seven. Can some of the short term goals be moved to long term goals, for example?

Step 4: The details, the tasks, the baby steps! What tasks will be needed to meet these goals? (You can break up tasks to smaller baby steps, too.)

Step 5:  Create a timeline and in January 2024, review and revise for the new year!

Now that  you have carved out the details of your Vision Plan, enjoy the three lunations of August and start to collaborate and network while the moon is full in Aquarius.  And always, always, celebrate the fullness and beauty of the full moon and your own accomplishments coming to fruition. 

            And remember to celebrate your vision plan for the creativity in your life!

How a Spiral Garden Changed My Life

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credit: returntoitnow.net

This story is a response to a question from Jeff Brown who on the SC Writers Association Facebook feed asked about our favorite piece of writing. I responded:

“I have never thought of having a “favorite piece” of my writing. I write it and it has a life of its own. But, I suppose it would have to be “Story Circle,” a little known and unpublished feminist choreopoem I wrote while at Wolfpen Writers Colony in Prostpect, Kentucky.”

That residency was a month long stay awarded by the Kentucky Women’s Foundation who continues to support women, for example, with the Sallie Bingham Award. That month at Wolf Pen literally changed my life.

So, while I was busy musing on Jeff’s first question, he asked how that experience changed my life. Now, that sent me down another spiral path and here is my musing on that question.

So, other than the obvious—a month away from responsibilities and camaraderie with other writers– it was a combination of cosmic experiences that changed me. Under the dark skies of Kentucky, bonfires throughout the night, a studio far from the living quarters (where my room overlooked a spiral garden), and a library of stimulating material all played a part.

The library belonged to Sallie Bingham, the founder of Ky Women’s Foundation and an amazing writer herself. All these experiences were catalysts for the choreopoem, “Story Circle,” in the vein of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.”

“Story Circle,” my original chorepoem, is about healing & transformation, so the writing of it was healing. Though I had been an advocate for women since the 70s, I began to focus on healing and empowerment in my life, writing, and advocacy.

Poet leading a healing chant in the 1990’s

So when I returned to Athens where I taught at The University of Georgia for 12 years, I was driving down the road when the words “Spiral Dynamics” came to me even though I didn’t know what they meant at the time.  Shortly, I founded Spiral Dynamics Women’s Resource and Cultural Exchange. In the 90s women’s studies programs were struggling to be born. Of course, I was on the steering committee for Women’s Studies courses at UGA, but wheels turn slowly in academia and I was impatient, so I founded Spiral Dynamics to promote women’s endeavors–in writing, art, music, and business.  Spiral Dynamics never technically become a nonprofit but I simply did whatever I wanted to do, for example, raising money to bring the powerful Luisah Teish, Yoruban priestess to town. It was a memorable time to those who attended with Teish (as she likes to be called) leading us in healing and ceremony.

Spiral Dynamics was quite dynamic for years until it was time to transform the energy into something new. I was hired to implement an SBA grant for a women’s business center, coming full circle since the job was back in Kentucky! I was not an MBA; I was a poet and a professor, but by virtue of my work with women’s businesses through Spiral Dynamics, I was hired. I cut my ties with Georgia and headed into a completely different chapter of my life all from the vision of the spiral garden under my window at the Hopscotch House (Wolf Pen Writers Colony).

And that’s the short story! To be continued in my memoir.

Feed the Creative Mind with Emotional Energy of Venus Retrograde

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Venus (credit: NASA)

Bonjour, dear readers!

How is your Circling coming along? (See yesterday’s blog post – 7/18.) We have only just begun!

I had an interesting outcome from my Circle activity as I learned my sadness had sprung from my joy and I had lost sight of that joy due to isolation from the heat wave and an attitude that needed adjustment! Ah, a worthy morning of writing, for sure!

This technique of Circling has helped me and many of the people in my workshops to gather together the scattered parts of our lives. Whatever your creative outlet, you can use Circling. Today, add another approach. Draw a larger circle and write around it the names of people, places, or things important to your life. From this simple activity, you may begin to see themes and continuity.  In the meantime, you are excavating and collecting a pile of raw material to work from as you dig for the gold!

Only five minutes to devote to creativity at the moment? Add to your Circle. Ten minutes? Choose one of your people, places or things (or joys and sorrows from yesterday) and write continuously for 5 or 6 minutes. Are you ready to devote a few hours? Keep going and repeat the process until as poet Denise Levertov said, “the feeling warms the intellect.” At this point in your process, a poem, story, or painting may appear.

Today we enter the shadow of Venus Retrograde. There are many wonderful and knowledgeable astrologers available to us (as well as books and resources) one of whom is Leah Whitehorse. I learned so much from her interpretation of this planetary event. Venus has been associated with love for centuries, but Venus means so much more than romantic love–love of self, universal love, and all things we value and hold dear. On another day, we will touch on other aspects of the goddess Venus. We have a few months until the planet stations direct and exits the shadow zone!

Venus & Cupid, painted by Artemisia Gentileschi in 1625. The Italian artist depicts sleeping Venus who is wearing nothing except a thin wisp of transparent linen around her thigh. This painting can be viewed at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, US.

At the same time that Venus enters the shadow zone, the moon in Leo increases urging us to express ourselves and share. (Learn more here from We’Moon)

And planet Earth is doing its part to influence our creativity! Rebelling against mistreatment and neglect, extremes of weather, like heat waves, fires, smoke, and drought impact us as climate change escalates. Our environment, too, permeates our psyche as we create.  You may be moved to create a Circle of the Natural World and elaborate on some of it.  What moves  you to respond: water, birds, trees, mountains, icebergs, polar bears, pileated woodpeckers, the rainforest—Which of these natural phenomena moves you to write, paint, sing, play music for/about?

In my latest book, Rainbow Warrior, available from Finishing Line Press, I both lament the “last Imperial Woodpecker,” extinct from logging (last seen in Mexico in 1956) and celebrate “a rare sighting of Flickers that grace my world./Crescent breast like new moon rising crimson. . .” (“Flicker Montage”).

Spirit Daughter (Jill Wintersteen) is another popular astrologer you may want to check out. She tells us “Where Mercury Retrograde tends to disrupt and confuse mental energy, Venus Retrograde tends to disrupt and confuse emotional energy.” I recommend Spirit Daughter’s analysis too!

In your creative process, try to explore emotions that may surface or those that may stay submerged in confusion during Venus Retrograde (affecting us through October 7).  We can also benefit from the increase of creative and physical energy brought on by the moon waxing to full.

Try out the Circling technique from my original journal method as you tune in to moon stars, earth, and self.  As I write this and the temperature soars as does our air quality index, I want to return to my Circle of Nourishment and nourish myself as well as extend nourishment to others. I hope you will do the same.

Creatively yours, Jacquelyn

author of Rainbow Warrior, Reclaiming Yourself: A Journal Keeping Approach to the Goddess Within (c1991), & other titles.

Creative Guidance from Moonflower Mentoring!

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Aligning creativity with New Moon in Cancer

Aloha dear readers!

It is officially the new moon here in Eastern time in the US of A. I have a question for you that I pose to myself each day: how can I spark my creativity in alignment with the earth, the moon and the planets?

Today, July 17, the new moon is in Cancer and the wonderful We’Moon calendar published by Mother Tongue Ink (an essential part of my daily life for more than three decades) notes that during the Moon in Cancer, we reconnect with our emotions. We can get “defensive” or “nourish ourselves,” the 2023 We’Moon continues (p. 203).

As I sat at my writing desk, my neighbor decided it was a good time to use a loud leaf blower so close to my window I thought he was working in my yard! Oooohhh!  I shall not get defensive, I thought! I will nourish myself. So, I turned my music up loud and fixed a lovely meal and glass of iced mint sun tea! Yum. And guess what? Now there is sweet silence as I put my musings together, in hopes of sparking your creativity as well as mine!

A lovely meal while the leaf blower passes. . .

The Circle technique, part of my original journal method, moves us away from linear thinking. So begin by drawing some circles on your journal page (or a blank piece of paper). Label three to work with the energy of the new moon in Cancer: Circles of nourishment, circles of sadness, circles of joy (see image).

Next, write around the circles, thoughts, images, ideas.  Circle one, circle of nourishment, ways you could nourish yourself. Circle two, circle of sadness, some emotions of sadness you are feeling. Circle three, circle of joy, what gives you joy?

images by Timmi M. Weingartz, created for Reclaiming Yourself: A Journal Keeping Approach to the Goddess Within by Jacquelyn Markham, c. 1991

Next, do it! Nourish yourself with some of the lovely things you could do for yourself. Is it calling a friend? Fixing a yummy salad and enjoying it? Taking a well-deserved nap or walk if your weather permits? Just, do it!

Now, you move on to your circle of sadness and circle of joy. Select one sad feeling and one joyful feeling. Write for five minutes on each feeling in an automatic writing fashion (sometimes called freewriting).  Most importantly, don’t stop, just write (set your timer). If your mind goes blank, simply repeat your name, colors, birds, flowers or the last word you wrote. It’s that easy!

After this circling, you may want to circle more or circle back to one of your other feelings or move forward with a poem, a painting, a reflection, or simply be satisfied that you have begun the process of creating in synch with the moon. You may create something–a poem, a story, creative prose, art–from these early musings or may you may circle back around to pick up the threads.

As of midnight eastern time on Tuesday the 18th, the moon moves into Leo and that gives us about 2 ½ days to “let our light shine” (We’Moon, p. 203). Signing off to elaborate on my circles of sadness & joy and to continue to nourish myself.

Creatively yours, Jacquelyn (Moonflower Mentoring)

Moonflower Mentoring

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