Wild Writing has taught me so much. Writing continuously, pen never leaving the page, not listening to any critic or censor trying to butt in, has uncovered so much in my psyche, and I have used that as material for poems or just material for reflection and improving my understanding of myself. Through doing it most days for about 2 1/2 years and being in training to be a Wild Writing leader for the past several months in preparation for leading my own Fierce Writing groups, I have made it a practice. Some days I feel inspired to write and inspired by my writing. Other days, not, but the poem Laurie Wagner, creator, leader, and teacher of Wild Writing, read today resonated with me and unlocked me in a way that I don’t often experience. Here’s the poem by Teri Ketchie, a fellow Wild Writer:

Complicit

I never asked for this addiction to comfort, yet
here I am, a sucker for slow seduction,
in sweaters made in sweat shops, industries’

bewitching promise of newer dresses,
better groceries, easier ways to travel.
I never asked for designer anything, but

this lotion makes my legs glow in the skirt
that hugs my hips on the fast track
to fitting in, maybe even belonging.

When I was fresh and wanting
to make the planet a healthy place,
I carried my life in a backpack.

That was before marketing beguiled me,
before I succumbed to denim, silk, linen, lace
couches, drapes, floors from the wildest places.

I don’t need a thing, but flooded with desire,
I am consumed by what I have consumed,
aware that few bread tags

are recycled and the beaches of Ghana
cannot breathe under layers of scraps
where children search for anything to sell.

I don’t scream about it.  I know I should,
and, on my latest trip to paradise,
in the taxi from the airport to town,

past open burn pits of plastic debris,
I held my nose, mulled over toxic
trespass and tenable solutions,

Until I got to the hotel

where they offered me a drink
and a hammock to swing in
at the edge of a sweltering sea.

How It Works

In Fierce Writing, the leader reads a poem aloud first and then chooses “jump-off” lines from the poem as prompts plus another line or two not in the poem that could be a good one to get the “juices” flowing or “recharge” writing. Fierce Writers are free to use any, all, or none of the prompts or choose different lines from the poem. Then we write for 15 minutes or another length of time that the leader decides. Then we read our writing with each other if in a group. In my daily practice alone, I usually don’t share my writing with anyone unless I decide to use it in a poem that I submit for publication. When we share our writing in groups, we give each other undivided attention, with one person at a time reading and no verbal comments afterwards, just non-verbal gestures of support. Here are the “jump-off” lines Laurie chose for this poem:

“I never asked for the addiction to comfort, yet…”

“I still don’t need much, but…”

“I’m not sure how I got here.”

Here’s what I wrote in 15 minutes today:

I never asked for this addiction to comfort. No one does. you’re American, you’re born into it, not necessarily because everyone’s comfortable, but it’s our culture to strive for comfort or more comfort with consumerism. Look at the commercials and catalogs. Imagine what it would be like if you had those products and lived like the actors and models. To get those products, you need money. To get money, you need to work for it, unless you were born into it, in which case, you need to focus on holding on to your money and acquiring more of it by exploiting others, finding loopholes, hoarding it as much as you can. I’ve cut back quite a it, now that my income is about a third of what it was when I was a university professor. I have traded income and insurance for peace of mind and time to do what I had been putting off for 25 years. Yet I am able to do that because I sold my house and moved in with my boyfriend, who pays the mortgage on his house, which I still consider his since he bought it, although I do pay for gas and electricity, utilities, and food. I also have an inheritance and the money from my 403b. Even with all of that, I qualify for Medicaid due to low income. A sweetheart deal, if you think about it. Yet I have become more frugal, not really for ecological reasons or because I want to donate more to causes I believe in that help the non-privileged. I do it so I can have more when I am unable to work, which may be sooner than later since job opportunities seem to be decreasing every day. I am not hoarding things, actually donating quite a bit, not so much money because to me it represents security. That is a major shift, since before I quit my job, it represented the clothes and jewelry I could buy and the trips I could take. Quitting my job has made me realize that I was using those things to counteract the stress and depression I felt at that job, my need to present myself as having it together while I was falling apart. Now I work from home, unseen, where image doesn’t mean a thing, and when I go out, I feel no need to stand out, in my appearance of my affect. I keep a low profile, stay under the radar, happy to be invisible, my new superpower. It’s a freedom that is new to me, this lack of concern for how I appear, whether others like me, whether they see me as successful as defined by this society’s terms. It feels subversive, and I like that, as I have always admired those who are different than they appear, as if they’re keeping a secret, and only those who really want to know will bother to unlock it by looking deeper.

Why I’m Sharing This

Not because I think it’s a high-quality piece of writing. If I were to submit this for publication, I would revise it substantially. That’s not the point with Fierce Writing, though. It’s to write what’s true for you, uncovering that with the help of a poem and where it takes you. I was impressed with what the poem was unable to uncover in me and how my thoughts just flowed from my mind onto the page. It revealed some things to me that I hadn’t realized. And that’s why this practice has become part of my life.