Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Explore poems read by the two authors in conversation with each other, then follow your own fish to unlock your own creativity, and share it with us.
Hello. This is Deborah Bachels Schmidt, one of your Follow A Fish Poetry Conversations and Inspiration Podcast hosts. Sue Boudreaux is here with us in the capacity of recording engineer today, one of the many things she does so well, because this is an unusual episode featuring a special guest from our first open mic. As always, this pair of episodes will provide you with inspirational prompts, and we are always excited to hear your responses at curiositycatpodcast@gmail.com. And you can also check us out at curiositycatpodcast.com to find print versions of the featured poems, artwork chosen to complement them, and many other resources as well.
Deborah:Before we begin, I want to let you know that our next open mic will be held Sunday, May 15 at the Good Table Gathering Space in El Sobrante. So let me introduce to you Clare Hedin, who is a marvelous singer, songwriter, and sound healer. We invited her to join us on the podcast after hearing her beautiful reading of Mary Oliver's poem, The Journey, at our first open mic. Clare is also a visual artist and filmmaker who has created a body of gorgeous small videos centered on place. Her work in its many manifestations is centered on and this is paraphrasing the lead statement on her website, which is clairehedin.com centered on connecting us to, quote, the numinous to nature, and to our essential selves, end quote.
Deborah:Clare and I have discovered that we share a conviction that a deep connection to nature often arising from a particular place is the bedrock of environmental stewardship. So Clare, welcome and would you introduce and read for us your poem?
Clare Hedin:Certainly. Thank you Deborah. It's really, really nice to be here. I'm always just really touched and excited to be able to talk about nature and arts. The piece that I'm about to read is called Deiope and it came about because I have very actively been travelling to remote places and spending time when other people tend not to go there, so that I can have more exclusive time with the actual place itself.
Deborah:And
Clare Hedin:I wander through the landscape and I film, photograph, I do field recordings and after that it circulates through me and then I start editing. I don't have a plan upfront. It's very much be influenced and then generate something in response as part of an ongoing conversation with nature and then I'll add. So I might make a poem up, I'll add music and I sort of create an ambience. So this particular poem is from a short film called Deioppe.
Clare Hedin:Deioppe is the original name for a river that is in Woodbridge. It's known as the River Deben, D E B E N originally. So here's the actual poem. Deoppe. I know you.
Clare Hedin:I know you. You are the deep one, the holder of stories. Like the sun knows the horizon and the rain knows its own sound as it lands on your face. I know you. You are unapologetically langorious, rhythmic, winding, intense, dreamy and mystical.
Clare Hedin:You choose your pace. You have helped feed people of all types two leggeds, four leggeds, no leggeds those with and without wings and fins above and below your waistline. You carry life in and on your body. You generate relationships and communities. You help people grieve.
Clare Hedin:You help people think and feel and dream. You provide reasons to escape what was and to contemplate what might be. You intoxicate my dreams. As you draw us to you, you always retain just a little mystery. Holder of stories, conveyor of truths.
Clare Hedin:It is because of you that this whole town became. Along your banks growing like the wild tall grasses, tall, bending in the wind. Your pace slows hours down. When we walk with you, we walk as you would have us walk, slowly, paying attention. And whatever we need, we get.
Clare Hedin:Your waters feed the muddy banks rich with nutrients. You create flora and form. Many find a home on you and in you. The cycles breathe in and out, hosting sunsets and moonrises, all in your stride within your mellifluous flow. Those of us that know you cannot live without you.
Clare Hedin:Those that know you notice The trees, the buds, the breeze, the busy path, the stones and rocks, the shift from concrete to mud to grass. And the wind and the sky hovers above watching everything, your cathedral of life. By day, the tall endless sky brings our eyes and ears upwards to meet the gaze of your wise and deep splendour in all these things. At night there is solace quietly adrift on a floating bench. As we see you, we love you, tides high and low.
Clare Hedin:Deope, Deep One, your true name.
Deborah:Oh, Clare. That was such a gorgeous reading. And our listeners, you can see why we really wanted Clare to come on the show because she does convey such a breath, and this poem has such scope to it. You convey such a deep and abiding regard for the river. I like the repeated affirmation, I know you, which implies profound recognition of this particular beloved river as sister to all rivers.
Deborah:So I do have some questions for you. So often, etymology can carry us to a richer place in a poem. And I'd love to hear the story of how you discovered the name Deope. What language is it in and how did that discovery shape the poem?
Clare Hedin:I started with what I had, which was the name Dieben. And I just started doing searches online for the history of the river and very quickly came across this historical note that spoke of this original name And then when I did the etymology on the name and saw that it means the deep one, I was so excited. I just thought I'm finding something real here. Yeah. Something of the character of place.
Clare Hedin:Yeah absolutely and what is that language, Tina? I believe it comes from Latin.
Deborah:Okay. Wow. Such a gorgeous word. And I wonder too, I didn't look this up, but because it sounds like deep, know, does it have an etymological connection to that word? I love the fact that you directly address the river as you.
Deborah:You never question its existence as a living being possessed of wisdom, depth, and generative power. And quite early in the poem, you list living beings on an equal footing with each other, two leggeds, four leggeds, no leggeds, those with and without wings and fins. Can you speak a bit about how this worldview evolved for you, or is it a way of being in and of perceiving the world that has been with you since childhood? And if it is the latter, how have you managed to hold on to it in the face of this speedy mechanized world? Gosh, there's so much joy and pain in that question.
Clare Hedin:I've always been, one might say whimsical, but not in a way that should be dismissed. I think our whimsy is our way of staying connected to the ethereal and to the more liminal states of being. And I think that we get distracted by form and when we have a relationship with form, we can forget that the form is really the last part of a living element and that there are other things influencing the thing that then becomes tactile, tangible as form. Somehow or other I think I was always in that zone as a child in my imagination. I read a lot and I loved horses and ponies and I loved drawing them and so also as a child I used to draw, every morning I'd wake up and I'd start drawing trees and horses, obsessive just and then we were lucky enough.
Clare Hedin:I mean I think two of the blessings in my life were location. So growing up in England, the house we grew up in, we had Epping Forest, which is a huge expanse of forest and I would just go and play in the forest. Fabulous. Yeah and at that point in time there wasn't this concern of safety. Right.
Clare Hedin:You know so I was free to roam basically. One of those free range children. Very much so yes. And the second place that has been a big influence on me and lives very much in me also is Aldeburgh, which is a fishing town in Suffolk, which is on the East Coast. It borders on the North Sea.
Clare Hedin:And there, I was there from a tiny child, but I also as I got older, then I got into recording, ambient recording sounds, like field recording. And I'd record the stones, my feet walking on the stones and the sounds of the sea and the sounds of the wind and the feel of the wind on my face. And Suffolk, the county that Alburgh is in is very flat and I really like that. And actually Dauphay is in Woodbridge, which is also in Suffolk. There's a similarity there in the flatness of the land, that means your eye can travel.
Clare Hedin:It just travels uninterrupted and I find that really good for my imagination. So I feel like I somehow got raised by these elements and so my relationship to the elements is primary. Wow. And the least complicated. Yes.
Clare Hedin:Compared to human relationships.
Deborah:Oh yes,
Clare Hedin:what a So beautiful you actually merged into my third question, which is how did you come to know the river? Well I didn't have a big relationship with that river as a child because I was infatuated with the sea. So where our house was as a family was right on the North Sea And so that was my focus, being in the sea, being by the sea, picking up stones, looking for shells, know, the saltiness of the sea, the sounds if you just lie at the shore's edge and you can hear this wonderful kind of silt, like this dragging sound. It's absolutely so relaxing. So even as an adult I would stand at the water's edge with a hydrophone and I often felt like I might look like sort of this mad English woman, just sort of standing there recording the sounds of the sea by my feet.
Clare Hedin:Because I was curious if that sound could carry the weight of its impact on me for someone who's not in the water. So that's become a dominant research for me is how much can the aliveness of nature travel through the sounds it generates into people who are not right with it or right by it? Yes. You know and can it still communicate something of itself?
Deborah:Yes that's so beautiful. So that actually segues really well into another part of this question, which was in our modern lives that tend to drive a wedge between us and the planet that nurtures us. What advice do you have for those feeling that divide and seeking to reconnect?
Clare Hedin:Well it's a lonely place, I know that place. And I know how hard it is to stay connected because you're going to feel more of the grief, of the trauma that's being sort of pushed onto the planet and its inhabitants. If people have access to nature to just go and spend time there being with, there's something very harmonising about the ability to do that and to be away as far as possible from any mechanical man made sounds. So that ambiance carries magic in it and I think it restores us. So that would be one thing I would do.
Clare Hedin:And the other thing that I find invariably helps me stay connected or get reconnected is painting, writing, any kind of impulse towards again this the whimsical, that which might be perceived as not having any purpose is the most important place to go when we want to connect with the larger presence of life.
Deborah:Beautiful, beautiful answers. Thank you. Well, now I have the gift of being able to read again Clare's beautiful poem, De Ope. I know you. I know you.
Deborah:You are the deep one, the holder of stories. Like the sun knows the horizon, and the rain knows its own sound as it lands on your face. I know you. You were unapologetically languorous, rhythmic, winding, intense, dreamy, and mystical. You choose your pace.
Deborah:You have helped feed people of all types, two legged, four legged, no legged, those with and without wings and fins, above and below your waistline. You carry life in and on your body. You generate relationships and communities. You help people grieve. You help people think and feel and dream.
Deborah:You provide reasons to escape what was and to contemplate what might be. You intoxicate my dreams. As you draw us to you, you always retain just a little mystery. Holder of stories, conveyor of truths. It is because of you that this whole town became, along your banks growing like the wild, tall grasses, tall, bending in the wind.
Deborah:Your pace slows hours down. When we walk with you, we walk as you would have us walk, slowly, paying attention. And whatever we need, we get. Your waters feed the muddy banks rich with nutrients. You create flora and form.
Deborah:Many find a home on you and in you. The cycles breathe in and out, hosting sunsets and moon rises, all in your stride within your mellifluous flow. Those of us that know you cannot live without you. Those that know you notice the trees, the buds, the breeze, the busy path, the stones and rocks, the shift from concrete to mud to grass, and the wind and the sky hovers above watching everything, your cathedral of life. By day, the tall, endless sky brings our eyes and ears upwards to meet the gaze of your wise and deep splendor in all these things.
Deborah:At night there is solace, quietly adrift on a floating bench. As we see you, we love you, tides high and low. Deo Pei, Deep One, your true name. So today's prompt,
Clare Hedin:in particular based on the conversation we're having, is to ask your listeners about their magical connection to nature and that could be how do you find your connection to nature, how do you experience it, how do you then respond to that.
Deborah:Lovely. Alright. And send what you wrote to us here at curiositycatpodcast@gmail.com. We love finding your poems in our inbox. Besides print versions, email to curiosity cat podcast gmail dot com, voice recordings as .wav files are also welcome.
Deborah:Or let us know if you'd like us to record your poem for you, because we may choose a poem to read aloud on a future show. We will respond to all submissions whether or not we feature them here. Also at curiositycatpodcasts.com, you can read our show notes and see the poems in print with the artwork specially chosen for them. You can rate or review us via your podcast provider, and we'd be so grateful for that and also if you tell your friends about us.
Sue:Our theme music today is by Clare Hedin. It's called Sacred Water, and it is featured on her website, which includes all of her works, not just poetry, but photography and video and more of this beautiful kind of music. That will be in our show notes.
Deborah:Production and editing are done by Sue Boudreau right here in El Sobrante, California. Thanks for listening.