Hello from the other side

how to imagine a life worth living amidst so much suffering

Hello dear reader,

I haven’t written a Substack in a while, mostly because I’ve felt like the world going down the drain at the current moment doesn’t need my anxiety over its inevitable downfall, and I can think of few things that will help with what is coming.

Yesterday I logged onto Zoom to chat with my amazing creative writing friends, people I didn’t know existed 2 years ago, who have now become so important to me, that I can’t imagine going weeks without seeing/talking to them.

During our chat, I expressed my trepidation at the state of things and how useless and unimportant my voice is—considering all the fires going on at the same time (literal and metaphorical)—but also how happy it makes me to read what they are up to when they post on Instagram or Substack. Then my friend Amanda said to me “just as you love hearing from us, we love hearing from you, so keep that in mind”. This is me taking her kind comment to heart, and attempting to catch up with all you wonderful people who still subscribe to this newsletter.

Where to start?

Poetry has been a life-saver. A safe haven for my mind, a way to imagine a world not only plagued by gross injustices and cruelty, but also to see it us a place of immeasurable beauty and possibility.

In the midst of doctors’ and clinic appointments for my little ones, school festivities and private gatherings, my life has mostly consisted or reading, listening to music and metabolizing all of my anxiety into poems.

I have devoured more books in the last two weeks than I have the whole year and I am not exaggerating when I say they’ve saved what sanity I’m clinging on to for dear life.

Say hello to my little friends

So far the list includes Ellen Bass’ Mules of Love, Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Chen Chen’s When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities, Maya C. Popa’s Wound is the Origin of Wonder, Danusha Lameris’ Bonfire Opera and several other collections are still waiting on my night table, as I’m writing this. What all this reading has done, is not just offer respite from a mind that dwells on destruction every time it engages with the news, but also reignite a love for writing, which has resulted in me writing four new poems in the span of a week.

Recently I also watched the replay of

Maya C. Popa

’s Making a Chapbook workshop in Sustenance and was inspired to finally tackle the book-beast, that hairy little thing that keeps nibbling at my heal everywhere I go. All this to say, I have a manuscript. It’s not done but it’s a start and even though it won’t win any awards, or be featured in any prestigious magazine, it is MINE and I feel a sense of accomplishment just for having completed it.

It now sits at the hands of some trusted first readers and after I receive their feedback I might even consider publishing it. If and when I do, I will let you all good people know.

I didn’t even know I had written so many poems until I printed them all out

I was also fortunate enough to attend a workshop with the one and only Pádraig Ó Tuama at Maya C. Popa’s Conscious Writers’ Collective and I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said I was a wee-bit starstruck being in the same virtual space as someone I admire so much talking poetry. We examined the use of “you” through the lens of several poems, the most notable of which for me, Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence (another book added to my never-ending to-read list) in which the speaker is addressing themselves, the “I” and the “you” interchangeable in this internal conversation throughout the entire length of his work.

I have also gathered the mental courage to start submitting my poems again and have already cashed in a couple of rejections. This won’t stop me from chasing after that long-awaited “yes!” of course. I only need one. Or two. A couple more would be amazing but I’ll settle with two for now. Should be easy, right? Right??

Aside from that, spring is finally here in the south of Germany with whatever that means: rainstorms, thunderstorms, wind and few sunny intermissions. The amount of water that’s been poured over our heads this year has been enormous and even though this is a very selfish and anthropocentric way to think about it, I can’t help but imagine the sky weeping for all the pain it witnesses in all parts of the world. Which is probably why I write poems about it.

Thing is friends, I am terrified of the future. All the sinister possible outcomes of present-day happenings and the reverberations those will have onto ours and all generations to come are sometimes too much to bear. I know, though, that helplessness and hopelessness are the weapons of those who want convince us that the future has already been decided and it is as cruel and unimaginative, oppressing and evil as their boring, pedantic, matter-of-fact minds can think.

Screenshot of children in Gaza playing and laughing on a broken swing amidst the rubble of their homes

I read a quote by Wendy Syfret on Howl magazine this morning that resonated and I would like to share it with you.

For better or worse, the work of an activist is to imagine new worlds. To gaze critically and clearly at what is, and ask: What could be? And, How could I help create it? In many ways that’s also the role of a mother. We examine a new, fragile, unmade life and imagine something huge.

To the activists and mothers I would also like to add the artists, the poets, the writers, the social workers, the philanthropists, the people who will do what they can, offer what they have, however small that might seem, in order to alleviate the pain of others, or just shine a light into the darkness that surrounds us. All those whose entire existence revolves around imagining new possibilities for our collective future. The people who see the pain and feel it in their bones while also being capable to conjure joy amidst the suffering. The dreamers who are so often dismissed as such, as if using our imagination and dreaming new possibilities, wasn’t what has always saved us from adversity, or propelled us forward in all aspects of life.

If only we were all so wide-eyed, awestruck, permanently starved for life and wonder.

One can only wish.

Until next time

Love,

Ελίζα