Invitation to our Annual April Poetry Celebration
It's happening - and YOU'RE INVITED. You'll find all the info on how to participate and our wonderful prizes in this video. I would love to have you with us! https://youtu.be/3LWedfHRaMs
Keep Playing
Just a quick word of encouragement from a "found" poem, discovered in a sheaf of papers recently. Can I just say again: I love my students. I feel so lucky to teach them. And I feel lucky that every day I sit at the piano and help someone to sing or play the piano or [...]
Let’s Be Unwilling to Relinquish the Sensual
Sometimes, a visitor to my home notices the mermaid-blue typewriter or the record player or the crowd of ink bottles and fountain pens on my desk. From time to time, one of them asks why I have these things in a tone that suggests I may be keeping a zebra in the bathtub or a [...]
The Sails of My Ship
By sheer chance, I just opened a journal from 2021 and felt encouraged by this entry: "The hardest goodbye (at the end of the term) was with C who tried bravely not to cry. It’s easy to assume I don’t mean much to people, that I’m part of the furniture of life. But even that [...]
Listening to Pleasure
Sometimes in my morning writing, I ask questions of “Wise Kate” – that part of me that knows more than I do at present. Today, I asked her: “What do you believe about pleasure?” Here’s what she said: +That it’s as necessary as air and water to life, and more than that – to [...]
What Bards Do
Do you know what Bards do? They learn stuff - demonstrable, actionable things that can be shared on the spot. Sing a song? Check. Recite a poem? Got it. Tell us a tale? Gladly! This picture shows the evolving repertoire of one of my dearest and most long-standing Bardic Academy students. At present she knows [...]
Choose Something and Off You Go
I’ve been a whirlwind of fruitful work this year. It has been exhilarating and sometimes tiring but always, always worth it. I feel I’m using my gifts and I’m helping. I love my students and my days are about my favorite things: songs, stories, poems, and enchantment. What could be better? And yet, I’ve also [...]
Use Your Brain to Make Yourself Happy
Yesterday I finished listening to the BBC podcast, “The New Gurus” – or rather, almost finished listening because when the host began to cover things I’d rather not think about, I turned it off. Same with a book I began reading recently. About twenty pages in, I set it down. “Nope,” I thought. “Three hundred [...]
A Visit to the Thought Store
I'm very inspired by the idea of the "thought store"* and on a grumpy, anxious day recently, wrote this little piece in my journal and changed my whole day: I closed my eyes and entered The Thought Store. I carried my needless anxiety - a black garment with scratchy lace - and marched up [...]
The Lovely Fields (guest post by my friend Jo Toale)
Here's a lovely treat for you today: a post by my friend and neighbor, Jo, that will make you want to hop on the very next plane to Ireland. Also check out an exciting opportunity in the PS! The Lovely Fields by Jo Toale (2019) I went home to a place I’ve never been. Mountains [...]