Build a Ship

“Poetry builds a space that you inhabit.”

Hello, Poetry Friend

One of my favorite sentences about poetry was spoken to me not by a poet, but by a chef, a filmmaker, and a writer named Adán Medrano. He was telling me how cooking is an embodied act, how it involves smelling, stirring, tasting, and paying attention. Then, knowing I’m a poet, he asked me if it works that way in poetry.

I said yes, and he replied with this magnificent sentence:

            “Poetry builds a space that you inhabit.”

Notice Medrano used the word “builds,” rather than “holds.” When you’re holding something, you’re not doing much else, stuck in an eternal moment of, Here, hold this a sec, will ya? But when we build, we make something.

Perhaps it is a ship.

In the Low Countries

They are building a ship
in a field
much bigger than I should have thought
sensible.
When it is finished
there will never be enough of them
to carry it to the sea
and already it is turning
rusty.

–Stuart Mills

This poem is in my first book, The Joy of Poetry. It makes me think of what I do as a poet — reading poetry, listening to people read poems and discuss them, scribbling poetry into my composition book. With every poem, I am building a ship in a field.

It’s completely impractical. It’s gotten rather big over the years (lots of notebooks, not to mention the Word and Scrivener files). I’m not sure it will ever be finished. I have no idea how to find enough people to carry my poems to the sea. Is there any way they will reach the faraway islands? Some of my poems are so old that the pencil is not turning rusty, like in Mills’ poem, but it is fading away to nothing.

I don’t mind.

My poetry ship is a space I have built. It is a space I inhabit. It’s where I begin and end each writing day, even when I’m getting paid to write something else.

I don’t know any other way to sail.

Poetry Journal

• Read the little poem about the big ship.

• Jot down what you notice, what you like, what you don’t, what questions you have, and at least one way in which the poem speaks to you.

• Read the poem again, aloud (if you didn’t the first time). Is there anything you notice this time that you want to add to your journal?

• What is poetry to you? If not a ship, then what? Write your own poem and lean into the metaphor. (Mine is at meganwillome.com.) If you like, email me what you write.

Happy poeming!

Megan