Overcoming Anxiety With Poetry
with Nicki Cassimatis
Covid-20
Crochet me a flowerpot
Water me a jumper
Place a coaster on my poem
While I draw my meal
With a hook pick out the weeds
Fertilise the wardrobe
Pour some wine into my pen
Watch the ink now heal
Turn that heat down on the scarf
Turn the earth to carpet
Tissue blot the weeping ink
Tell it what you really think
How you really feel
VC
A memory: 1970-something. The excitement of a brand new botany anthology in my book pack for another new school year. There was something about poetry, even then. The nerves of standing in front of the class would quickly be quelled by the soothing rhythm and rhyme that rolled off the tongue. This style was the flavour of the day. It worked. Better than any sound I could make on my $2 recorder. Dr Seuss, Banjo Patterson, Edward Lear. I came to know their galloping words; they became my wise and silly friends, entertaining and teaching me, as they made my prized anthology their new home. This was the space where their words would ring and my heart could sing. Even now, the beginning as clear as a bell:
‘The owl and the pussycat went to sea
in a beautiful peagreen boat…’
I don’t recall anyone ever teaching me about the power of poetry to bring joy or peace, to calm nerves or help me problem-solve, to be a companion in my darkest hours. Perhaps my teachers knew this. But if they did, it was their unspoken truth.
A memory: 1980-something. Someone in the extended family is getting married. A big fat Greek wedding and the songs for the bride start to flow, faster than any bottle of Ouzo. I recall over the years, my mum occasionally breaking into poem, to reveal a little piece of the life she’d left behind. In her tiny Greek village on the island of Rhodes, poetry had its appointed time to shine; poetic nuggets, a long pearly string of rhyming couplets, to mark the seasons. Seemingly plucked out of thin air, they would speak of joy, of war, of pain, of loss, of love, of grief, of illness. If you chanced on their chorus, you would hear the rhyme, you would feel the rhythm, you would know their life.
Was this one of the many crafts they had mastered to relish life? To buoy spirits? To anchor their hopes and dreams? To simply stay alive? I don’t recall any of them ever talking about reciting poetry at school. There was barely any school to speak of, let alone any mythical notions of a Greek god of poetry saving their lives. Yet this pearly string has managed to weave its way from one generation to the next, much like the traditional wool blankets woven to keep out the harsh village winters.
Not yet a memory: The present moment. What if poetry had the power to make a difference in the way we see and respond to the world? To ourselves and those things around us? To the anxiety and grief we encounter?
All I can say is…taste and see…
Nicki Cassimatis is an experienced language educator, workshop facilitator and passionate arts health and community advocate. She is the host of our upcoming July workshop, Overcoming Anxiety With Poetry.