I was delighted to hear when the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie was named as the Seamus Heaney Visiting Poetry Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. I have followed Jamie’s career for some time, as her poetry for me, combines a lightness of touch, along with an ethereal, otherworldly quality. Above all, there is a tenderness, and a gentle nudge towards finding joy in this muddled, confusing world.
I’m a member of a poetry group, and we meet, every couple of months and chat a bit about poetry, and a lot about what’s going on in our lives. Last Christmas, we did a Secret Santa, where instead of presents, we chose a poem that meant something to us and exchanged them. I chose Jamie’s poem The Way We Live because I love its message, to celebrate every aspect of life, even the most simple. It begins:
Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises
to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute
non-friction, flight, and the scary side
The essence of the poem resonates with me, because of its resolute optimism. I’m sure we have all asked ourselves how to find, and then hold on to happiness. However, a constant state of happiness is not only unattainable but utterly unrealistic. Jamie’s poem urges us to appreciate the everyday instead. It seems to me, that the pace of life is so frantic, and our world climate so frightening, that if we let it, we could become dispirited and depressed. ‘Don’t let it,’ is this poem’s firm message.
It challenges us to find positivity in the imperfect and more than that, in the ordinariness of the everyday. I try to think of it when I’m feeling irked when sitting in traffic; or listening to my children squabble. I think of it when ordering a coffee and hear the hiss and steam of the espresso machine and the jingly jangly tune in the background. And I think of it when beset by painful memories, because in her poem, Jamie asks us to praise both ‘misery and elation.’ If we think of life as being a mosaic, made up of every colour; the bright gleam all the more vividly when pitted against the dark. Many times I have read this poem and thought back to cherished moments with lost loved ones. In my mind these memories are like precious stones, which every so often I take out, hold to my heart and smile, before replacing. When we reconcile ourselves to the fact that life is not only difficult but terribly short, poems like this, which make us conscious of every single bit of it, are treasures indeed.
Helen McClements is a mother, writer and teacher from Belfast. She can often be heard on BBC Radio where she shares her musings on 'Thought for the Day'. In contrast to this, she writes a blog called www.Sourweeblog.com, where she unleashes her frustrations at juggling parenthood with work and the vagaries of life.