Poetry Corner Reflection

I was recently asked to reflect on the experiences of the process of focusing with poetry. It was a great question as it encouraged me to reflect and spend time with this query. Part of my reflection included spending time listening again to a podcast at onbeing.org “The Inner Landscape of Beauty” with John O’Donahue Some of his eloquent words resonated in me in a way that connected with the whole process of focusing with poems and writing poems.

“Poetry tries to draw alongside the mystery as it’s emerging and somehow bring it into presence, into birth. Everyone is creative, an artist and involved in the construction of their world.  We have a profound ability to be with each other, to be intimate” This is something I have experienced and witnessed in the Focusing and Poetry evenings when the symbols/metaphors in a poem physically interact with a felt sense carried in the body.

“I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much….” Walt Whitman

Marie Mc Guigan

Poetry Gathering Reflection - August 2023 - Niamh Pattwell

God Says Yes To Me - by Kaylin Haught

The bi-monthly Poetry Gathering had piqued my interest for awhile. I was curious to see how Focusing and poetry would pair. After just two sessions, I am happy to report that they are a beautiful combination! It’s an online event to which Marie McGuigan and Elaine Goggin, our hosts, warmly welcome everyone. Next, they explain how the session works, and read through a set of simple guidelines. Most helpfully, they offer a short demonstration on how to focus with poetry, so that newcomers quickly feel at home and everyone else can become attuned. Then, armed with the two poems (shared in the week before we meet) we are sent off, in pairs, into our breakout rooms.

Taking it in turn to focus on the poem of one’s choice, presence, sharing and insight soon flow between us. I love having the poem read to me by my focusing partner, it lifts the words from the page. I also love being in contact with another person’s response. It is curious to see how words in the poem can catch and give shape to whatever is alive in us. On both occasions, I was left in wonder at the variation in our individual responses.

Last month, both of us chose the same poem ‘God says yes to me’ by Kaylin Haught and, even then, our responses were different. My companion wondered what the questions might be she would ask God, what might replace the question of the opening line

‘I asked God if it was ok to be melodramatic?’

and came in touch with some present-moment concerns. The third question -

"I asked if it was ok to wear nail polish 
or not to wear nail polish’

brought me to that part that is fretful and anxious, captured in the see-saw movement and repetitive pattern of the question. We both sensed and welcomed the energy and assurance offered in the ‘Yes, Yes, Yes’ of the final line. On that occasion too, we had some time to spare, so we turned to the second poem, ‘My Box’ by Gillian Clarke. I was surprised by the way in which my initial resistance to that poem had shifted, softened by our encounter with, what I now called, ‘The Yes Poem’.

I think Marie captured the whole experience well with her observation on how everyone was so much more smiley on their return to the main group. I also love these last few minutes where we catch a glimpse of how the experience was for everyone. I have worked with poetry in the classroom for many years and, of course, there is truth in the old saying that you never know something until you teach it. However, I can now say that Focusing also brings an engagement with the words that endures. For someone getting used to meeting in a group in a Focusing way, the Poetry Gathering is a safe space for gentle Focusing encounters with people who might otherwise be strangers.

Poetry Gathering Reflections - December 2022

Everything is Waiting for You written by David Whyte

During a long life I have read a lot of poems expressed in the vocabulary and conventions of their times. Poets reflect the culture of their day, but if the work is authentic it will also express a timeless truth. Contemporary poets face the challenge of speaking in contemporary language and may use the “free verse”  style now acceptable. 

The poem Everything is Waiting For You is good example of how this is done. The message of truth embedded in the poem relates to the ancient discipline  of Mindfulness. inculcated by many religions and recently endorsed by neuroscience. Whyte himself is a zen Buddhist.

The seventeenth century  poet, George Herbert expressed a related theme in the Christian terminology of his day , in his poem The Elixir.

by Carmel Heaney

Poetry Gathering Reflection - June 2022

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952

At the inaugural Focusing with Poetry session of June 23rd. Mary Jennings and I worked with the poem Kindness, an inspired choice on Marie’s part.

We each engaged with the poem in different ways. For Mary the text reflected a specific personal experience. She identified the difference between trite everyday expressions of sympathy and the “ tender gravity” of kindness. For me, the loss of “what you counted and carefully saved” encapsulates the desolation from which I can only be rescued by kindness, which reflects mercy.

I was puzzled by the use of the verb “gaze” in the line …sends you out into the day to gaze at bread…. “ Mary suggested that this reflects the atmosphere of an environment of street food and market stalls. This would be in line with the backdrop of an indigenous society suggested elsewhere in the poem.

These observations only touch on the rich trove of meaning to be explored in Kindness, an inspired choice by Marie for our first focusing with Poetry session.

Thank you for the sharing.
Carmel Heaney

Poetry Gathering Reflections - June 2022

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952

Listening to the poem 'Kindness' being read to me by my focusing partner allowed me to experience the emotion which the words evoked in my body.  I initially experienced feelings of fear running through me at the sense of loss and desolation. Then I felt a sense of sorrow behind my eyes and nose evoked by the suggestion that you must travel where 'the Indian in the white poncho lies dead by the side of the road' before you can know the 'tender gravity of kindness'. I was struck by the richness of our life experience and the emptiness and insignificance of death and the wonder and continuum of it all. I loved the reference to the 'simple breath', the breath of life.

When kindness was described towards the end of the poem, a sense of warmth spread across my chest and into my heart which felt like a balm that soothed everything.

The notion that you can only know kindness if you have deeply experienced sorrow reminded me of my travels in India when I had experienced a dark night of the soul. Feelings of deep isolation and separateness and a lack of belonging kept me from sleep.  They brought me back to the loneliness I felt sometimes when I was growing up as an only child. Feeling the depth of that separation and being with the rawness of the sorrow that arose in me because of it, broke my heart open and enveloped me in a compassionate inter-connectedness to everyone and everything around me like I had never experienced before.

Listening to the poem 'Kindness' in a focusing way allowed me to experience the emotion evoked by the words in my body rather than just an understanding in my head. It gave me a sense of the whole meaning of the poem and the cadence of life's journey.

Focusing provides such a beautiful container for exploring poetry in this way. Thank you Marie for facilitating such a wonderful session.

The kindness in the group and in my triad created a safe space for a very inspiring session.

Tina Kiely

Practical Guidelines

• Take some time to arrive in your body and create a sense of grounded presence. Ask your companion for help or guidance if you need it.
  
  
• Acknowledge any pre-existing thoughts, associations, feelings or felt sense about the poem. Maybe noticing why you chose this poem (you may or may not have a sense of that), or if you feel it is ‘calling’ to you in some way.
  
  
• If you wish to read the poem yourself, read it aloud, as reading it silently may affect the companion’s engagement and presence in the process. Read it slowly and pause during the reading whenever you need to do so if you feel something arising within you that needs attention. You could pause after each line, and check the impact of the poem line by line, or whenever you feel a need to. Maybe certain words evoke a response. You could repeat a particular word, phrase, line or verse/part of the poem if it resonates with you.
  
  
• You might want your companion to repeat a line or phrase of the poem after you read it, or even to read the whole poem.
  
  
• If you want to work with your own poem, and you want the option of having the whole poem read to you by your companion, you can use the ‘chat’ facility to copy and paste it, or send them a weblink so they can access the poem online.
  
  
• Your companion can reflect what you say in a usual Focusing way, if you want them to, or they can listen silently.
  
  
• Focusing on a poem can sometimes bring up strong emotions – give yourself time and space to be with whatever arises in your body. This might mean, if your poem is long, that you don’t have time to get to the end of it in the allocated time. That’s ok – you can always come back to it another time by carrying it forward into another Focusing session. Sometimes a whole Focusing session can arise from just one line of a poem!
  
  
• Reading the poem may also bring up a memory, or a situation in your life, or an insight about something – give yourself time and space to embrace whatever arises during the process. What arises could be ‘personal’ or a response to something that’s happening in the world.

Marie McGuigan (2023)
Adapted from Focusing with Poetry Practical Guidelines with permission from Gordon Adam BFA (October 2022)

Focusing with Poetry

- hosted by Marie Mc Guigan

You are most welcome to the Irish Focusing Network Website and to our Poetry Corner. My name is Marie McGuigan and I am from Belfast. 

This Poetry Corner came about as part of the planning for the Irish Focusing Network website in 2021. I have a deep love of both poetry and Focusing therefore combining both was simply a sheer joy. It is a creative space in which to have, a guided Focusing experience, with a poem. We all carry within us the capacity to imagine and give shape to our world, which can offer a pure and blessed way of living.

We will launch the Irish Focusing Network's Poetry Corner, with a poem written by myself Marie Mc Guigan called "Deeply, Deeply, Deeply". Please click on a poem's image below to access the poem's page, in written word and/or to listen to our recording on YouTube.

We use the Focusing process to lead-in, pause and connect with whatever felt sense may have emerged and resonated with a particular word/phrase or the whole poem. Then we share some felt meaning and reflections from the experience. This is a great medium for sharing ones love of poetry. You may even discover many new poets who resonate with you as others who are interested in this application submit poems using the Focusing process.

"Train yourself to this, trust whatever comes" - "Letters to a Young Poet" Rainer Maria Rilke.

My email address is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to share with me any comments or reflections about the Poetry Corner.

We hope you enjoy our poetry offerings.
- Marie

We welcome your contributions.

If you would like to offer a contribution to the Poetry Corner we invite you to submit a poem of your choice by audio or a video recording. A short introduction to the poem with a reflection after your reading, inviting the listener to engage with the poem using the Focusing process. We would need to have your poem offering one month in advance as this will allow time to prepare a video accompaniment to the poems.

Whether you are new to poetry, a lifetime lover of poetry, or a poet yourself, lift the poems off the page and into your embodied experience. Let them live in your pulse and your breath and your voice. Let them pour out of you, into the space between you and others. Your whole being will come into alignment. And that wholeness is contagious.

Saved by a Poem by Kim Rosen
Publisher Hayhouse 2009

Poetry Corner Reflection 

Click here to read Marie's Poetry Corner Reflection