Can empathy change our world? Can poetry create empathy? I believe the answer to these questions is yes. I would like to share a poem with you that attempts to create empathy for one little island girl who is forced to leave her home–just one of the many stories from my work in progress, Bikini Laments.
Bikini Laments (and Rainbow Warrior, the shorter collection that includes some Bikini Atoll poems) is a series of poems about the impact of atomic testing on the South Pacific islands. The short 1946 film below gives some background on this atomic testing that occurred in the 1940s and 1950s.
My poetry in this collection attempts to create empathy for those whose life and culture on Bikini Atoll were lost. “A Child Speaks to Libokra” tells the story of one little island girl taken from her home as I imagined it. One of the poems from Rainbow Warrior(Finishing Line Press, 2023), it was first published by Hawaii Pacific Review as you see it here.
The shocking story of Bikini Atoll & the Atomic Testing in a brief film:
According to Psychology Today, “Empathy is a sense that you can understand and share the feelings of another.” As I wrote “A Child Speaks to Libokra,” I became the child. I felt I was leaving my palm trees, my sister’s grave, and my simple home behind to board a big ship to the unknown.
In “Myth of the Infinite Sea,” also from Rainbow Warrior, the poet/reader becomes Eagle, hopefully to create empathy for the avian world that experiences oil on the water (specifically, in this poem, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).
Could our world be saved from violence, war and environmental disasters with more empathy?
If so, I want to do all I can to encourage empathy with my art.
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.
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.
Poet Voice 