Sing Me the Creation: Creative Writing Sourcebook

Index

A Welcome

To this hearth which is a heart, welcome.

Welcome to our hearts. Welcome to our breath seeking to be song.

May those without a place find welcome here.

May those without a tongue be brought to utterance. Welcome to the stone that has no mouth to cry with.

Welcome to the leaf that trembles on the edge of speaking.

Welcome to the owl’s high lonely questioning.

May our ears catch answers.

May the Word which hovers above our heads find hospitality.

May the song which crosses

between the living and the dead

be part of what we sing.

Welcome to the Fabulous Names of things.

P.M.

Foreword

Paul Matthews’ Sing Me The Creation stands as probably the most unusual guidebook for creative writing in the world. Many years ago, when as university professor I was teaching in a programme in depth psychology and literature, I had the privilege of working with the accomplished novelist Caroline Gordon who taught creative writing. Through her I learned that it was not possible to get very far by approaching writing through the kinds of technical manuals in vogue. Her approach was to immerse students in the great literature of the world. Her notion was that it was more important to develop imagination than to work at writing skills. She was astute enough to know that imagination was not a subjective reality and that great literature changes the world and could therefore change potential writers as well. I always felt that she had solved half of the problem of learning to write. Now, after many years of waiting, I think that Paul Matthews has solved the other half.

In this book, Paul Matthews provides an effective guide into the imagination of the word. Further, his approach to the word is somewhat akin to that of Owen Barfield: he has found a way to enter into the word that is at the same time a gateway into an imagination of the soul of the world.

Technical approaches to writing do not work because they are infected with the great disease of language, nominalism. Nominalism sees the word as no more than an instrument, empty of any substance of its own, language as a mere device for bringing the mind out into the open. To understand what constitutes a paragraph, a sentence, a metaphor, a simile, preposition, synonym, antonym can be seen as nothing more than a technology of nominalism. This approach to the word has been with us since the seventeenth century and can be traced to Marin Mersenne. Mersenne carried on a thirty-year intellectual war, taking the side of rationalism against imagination. He took metaphorical statements at their literal level and tried to show that imagination-imbued language was nonsense. For example, he posed questions such as ‘How high is Jacob’s ladder?’ Such a question cannot be answered, for ‘Jacob’s ladder’ is imaginative rather than scientific language. Through the centuries this scientific view of language has taken hold; we are all infected with it. In the domain of the literary arts, the final result of nominalism is that the world of fiction is reduced to entertainment, reading a form of self-indulgence, words a vehicle for conveying untruth, writing only a means of expressing subjective imagination that has nothing to do with the ‘real’ world.

In the past few decades or so, another approach to creative writing has sprung up. Instead of the deadly approach to the technology of language, aspiring writers are now doing inner visualisation work, paying attention to dream images, shifting attention to the inner world. The intention here is to learn how to stay close to the image, and to write directly out of the inner experience of image. Such psychological approaches to creative writing put the emphasis on creative rather than the act of writing. No doubt this shift is due to a popularising of Jung’s psychology. I suspect that writers enjoy these kinds of workshops, not recognising that subjective approaches to imagination cannot heal the illness of the word; it is a little like seeking a cure for cancer by going to the movies.

My friend and colleague, James Hillman, had written as early as the 1970s that in the field of language what is needed is a new angelology of words so that we may once again have faith in them. Angel means ‘emissary’, ‘message-bearer’, and that is exactly the kind of renewal of the word we find here in this wonderful book. Hillman is not suggesting that words bring to us the messages of the angelic world, but that words themselves are angel worlds. Seeing words as angels, as independent carriers of soul, and soul as referring to the inner quality of all things, not simply to subjective experience, saves us from the suffocating thought that speech is no more than the utterance of personal opinions. Hillman’s proposal has the capacity to alter completely our now unconscious habit of using words thoughtlessly. But, how to go about inhabiting words as holy messengers, the actual task of doing the necessary work, that is found here in Sing Me The Creation.

Because the word as angel of the soul has atrophied to an alarming extent, the sclerotic body of language has to be taken out of five centuries of imprisonment and given healthy exercise. This book is filled with exercises which can be seen as homeopathic remedies. If the word is ill then it is the word that can heal; that is a homeopathic principle. Technical exercises, which are something completely different than what is found in this materia medica of the word, exercise only the physical, literal body of language. Such exercise may build muscle, but leave the soul untouched and sick. Exercises of the inner imaginary life may enrich fantasy, but do not strengthen the speech organs, and soul is set adrift without a body. Another aspect of approaching healing homeopathically is that the forces of healing are not brought in from the outside but come through the development of one’s own inner forces. Paul Matthews does not do the work for us; he only indicates a healthy way of working.

The exercises recommended herein have an additional dimension that goes even further than homeopathic remedies. The healing of the word is not only based on the principle that like cures like. The truly great contribution of this book is to be found in its putting forth the basic truth that the word is the whole of the universe, the Logos. Here homeopathy, which is a strictly empirical approach to healing, is taken up and fulfilled by anthroposophical remedies. The remedies of anthroposophic medicine, while also homeopathic, are based on knowledge of the correspondences between the body, soul and spirit of the individual with the rhythms of the creating powers of the universe. Thus, the exercises in this book are more than empirically based experiments that have been found to work based upon other than mechanistic assumptions. Each set of exercises also embodies one of the qualities of the creating elements of the world – Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. The elements are not material substances as we have now come to think of them but are pure qualities of creative activity unifying both inner soul and outer reality. Further, this arrangement is far more than a scheme oriented toward bringing order to the way one goes about working anew with language. The work Mr. Matthews invites the reader to participate in is none less than renewing the universe through re-enlivening the word.

The scope of this book really takes it altogether out of the realm of a self-help instruction manual for writers. As it begins to dawn on the reader that the approach of this work concerns healing the world through healing the word, what first was perhaps seen as an innovative way of teaching creative writing now appears as an essential discipline of world renewal. This discipline fosters interiority of word and world, the co-penetration of one with the other. Thus, this is a book of spiritual practices, taken out of the realm of pious religiosity that has nothing to do with the actual world within which we live and properly placed within the practical dimensions of everyday life.

Anyone serious about the craft of writing is bound to feel sheer joy and delight that someone has finally acknowledged that writing is not a lonely, private endeavour that some few people seem to have to do, not knowing exactly why. In effect, Paul Matthews is saying that writing is world work, and those engaged in such work are an invisible community doing the most practical work imaginable. And anyone serious about spiritual practice will be equally delighted to find that they are part of this same invisible community, silently working toward world renewal. It is not at all accidental, then, that most of the exercises in this book are best carried out in a communal setting. Further, ‘communal’ here means more than a group of people all doing the same thing. These exercises, like the creating powers of the universe itself, do not take place by each individual privately following instructions while happening to be in the same room with others. The exercises are based on the principle that the part is equal to the whole. Thus, the individuality of those doing these exercises together is not annihilated for the benefit of the whole, as often happens when activities are put forth as communal. Rather, true individuality is to be found in the fact that we are each the whole of the universe, but at the same time, this wholeness needs the equal wholeness of other individualities in order to be rightly expressed.

I do not want, by trying to point out the tremendous significance of this book, to imply that this work is destined to be of interest primarily to the serious-minded, the esotericists, the occultists, the metaphysicians of the world. Quite the contrary. While I do want to emphasise that learning the skills of writing as put forth here is in fact learning the skills of living in a new way that is desperately needed, perhaps the ultimate value of this book is that it is great fun. The exercises are humorous, delightful, surprising. The vision of this work is comic, which does not mean just funny, but rather corresponds to the creative genre of the universe in terms of its destiny rather than its origins. My most significant teacher, Dr. Louise Cowan, has a wonderful view of the world as epic, tragic, lyric, and comic. All of the great literature of the world, it seems, falls into one of these domains, with a few transitional forms that bridge between. The epic has to do with the forming of the earthly world in conjunction with the powers of the gods. The tragic vision has to do with the necessary creative mistake of the individual hero trying to make a single view stand in for the whole. The lyric vision is a recovery of the whole, but as existing within the individual soul. The comic vision is the restoration of the whole, and is characterised as a marriage between the human and the divine. The restoration is, of course, always accompanied with laughter and mirth because this union is inexplicable to the rational mind. Great effort may be put into trying to find wholeness, but in the end, it is a matter of grace as much as human effort. The exercises in this book are certainly hard work. But, in doing them, there is always the moment in which laughter intrudes, an indication that the angels of words have indeed been invited back to inhabit language. The perceptible movement of their wings, I suspect, tickles us.

When a rare book such as this is published, one always wonders where it will be put on the shelves of bookstores. It belongs in the self-help section. It also belongs in the section on theology and religion, psychology, spirituality, hermeticism, literature, poetry, art, and humour. In truth, it does not matter where this book is shelved as it is one of those works which will locate its readers rather than readers locating it. This book, I predict, will more or less find its own way into the world, for after all, it has wings.

Robert Sardello, PhD

Author of Facing the World with Soul

Before We Begin

Since 1994, when Sing Me The Creation was first published, I have had a further thought or two, so I welcome the opportunity to revise the text for this second edition, and to graft into it some new material. The many writing tasks put forward here do not all originate from me, but if I have done one original thing it is to place them in a developmental context that is intrinsic, I would claim, to the ‘life structure’ of the language. I have tried to delineate this path more clearly.

Knock, Knock

You have opened the book, but why should you read it? For a long time I scanned the shelves of bookshops and libraries for I didn’t know what and failed to find it. The heart-book on the front cover indicates where it was waiting. But many things had to happen (trials and encounters, humblings and rejoicings) before my pen was ready to write it. Is this a book for you? It grew in response to questions and requests that people put to me when they came knocking, so, yes, it might be. Who’s there? I ask myself that question, and I am grateful to those who, seeing more than I do, keep calling on the lion in me to roar its purposes.

The Purpose of This Book

Please note that I use the word ‘poetry’ very broadly to name a way of seeing and knowing the world, not just of writing about it. Such a poetry can certainly find its way into prose forms as well as verse, so let ‘the poet’ who makes it include anyone imaginatively engaged with writing or speaking. It is my hope that the faculties exercised here will enliven pens and tongues in whatever genre they are employed. That said, here is a glimpse of various circles and situations that could be served through the contents of this book.

Unlocking language:

Those who join my introductory groups don’t necessarily intend to be writers, though some, encouraged by what we do, go on to be so. Many say they are there to unblock creative sources and find confidence in their language – and to enjoy themselves. Words are inevitably hampered by fears and habits acquired in childhood, and I soon recognised that imaginative faculties essential to being human can be freed and fostered in the writing circle. Once unlocked, the imagination can be put to many uses.

That was the beginning of my work with adults, but new contexts for words keep presenting themselves.

Words in the classroom:

My earlier work with children showed me how vital it is for young people to meet living language in their classrooms. I am glad, then, to be involved in the training of teachers. The exercises I present have proved useful in basic language lessons, and many teachers have thanked me for them. No need for a conflict between ‘boring’ grammar and writing so ‘creative’ that nobody can understand it! To write nonsense is a permission I do give to get things going, but if grammar is a mapping of the human soul (as I take it to be) then the activating of its dynamics can unleash our creative sources. The book refers throughout to the art of teaching.

Language in the household:

Children are born poets. We know how they clap and skip if we sing nursery rhymes, and how wide eyed they are when listening to a story. I draw regularly on childhood sources, acts of language uncluttered by adult stuff, and aim to support parents in allowing this now diminishing culture of poetry and story back into the household.

The social word:

Many of the tasks proposed are socially interactive, gathering words in the circle and writing in response to each other. Serious play we could call it – or a practice in the art of conversation. Often I am amazed at how the simplest word game can enliven a teachers’ meeting, for instance, and help colleagues let go of habitual responses. This, in community and workplace, is therapeutic work – a good reason for social workers and group facilitators to turn these pages.

The healing word:

I have explored with counsellors the use of language in the consulting room. Early pioneers in this field were fascinated by the power of words. Freudian slips we know about, and word association techniques to unlock hidden complexes. Although this interests me, as does dream imagery, my way has been to exercise deep attention and to encourage the use of metaphor in the helping conversation. I have also worked with colleagues in ‘biography’ groups. Just to realise that we are creative beings brings meaning to people’s lives. How can our words heal unless they themselves find healing? This is a question carried through the book.

Nature’s language:

Sometimes I work with ecologically minded colleagues in the training of imaginative perception. By taking pens and paper outside I like to test whether the world will accept the words we write. My other book of exercises, Words in Place, is more particularly slanted in that direction.

The artistic word:

One of my joys is to work with storytellers and speakers who, training in their art, are already engaged with the life of language. The book does include exercises to spark new stories to tell, but it best serves by providing moments when words traced on the page allow a conscious crafting and loving of language that tongues can learn from. The movement exercises in each chapter will also help speakers stand their ground before an audience.

Individual writers:

Many of the suggested tasks do not depend on working in a group, and you can adapt them to your needs. Use the playful ones as kindling for your main writing work. In the case of the craft exercises, you can either follow the progressive stream I have presented, or open the book at random and work with what springs in the moment. Either approach will help free your creative faculties and train skills in the use of image, sound and movement. From time to time though, lest you go quietly crazy in your attic, find a friend willing to lend an eye or ear to what you are writing. In my longer courses we practise the critique of written pieces in the group; I also offer individual tutoring for those who ask for it.

In Appendix 3 I have listed (with group facilitators in mind) some of the short writing workshops I offer. For those who want to devise their own programme for a small writing circle I also share my experience in shaping such workshops.

A Developmental Path

It will already be clear that the craft of writing is only one side of what I am on about. The heart-book that I have mentioned gives further clues. I imagine it to be four-chambered, and here in a rudimentary diagram are four great human virtues – the guardians of our work together.

High-minded ideals these may be, but as the path unfolds they will be grounded through further manifestations of this diagram.

One

Minding The Hearth

First the making of this book is placed in a personal and historical context. Its path and practice are then enlarged upon, inhibitions recognised and creative permissions granted. Once initial aims have been stated, the writing begins – social exercises to help with group forming. Word play with nouns, verbs and adjectives expands into a consideration of the poetic line, sentences and paragraphs.

Four basic sentence types are introduced in a diagram as seeds for our work together, and the elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire lend their qualities to both language and movement. This fourfold archetype, introduced here, gives structure and direction to the book.

Discovering Writing as a Path of Transformation

The writing courses that I offer begin with who you are, what your aims are, what the story is that brings you here, so it seems fitting that before I invite you to pick up your pen I should relate more fully the personal circumstance and needs that stirred me to write the book.

Awakenings

I was lucky to have a mother whose milk was laced with nursery rhymes, myths and fairy tales, and a father who thought Winnie-the-Pooh was one of the best poets alive. He also filled me with the love of history that moves through these pages. This was given. Then, aged 17, I was relieved to find the stirrings of my inner life echoed in the writings of William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge, two of the great ‘Romantic’ poets as we call them. John Keats was another. They shocked me into writing my own things, both verse and story. Here, though I blush to share them, are a couple of lines (addressed to the moon) from my first poem:

To me alone you sing your song,

For these poor fools prefer to slumber on.

High talk! It’s mostly the ‘fools’ these days that I choose for company. Yet embarrassment and creativity are fast friends, and silliness, as you will see, is a vital strand of the work I do. That poem, despite its adolescent arrogance, reveals an interest in inspirational sources, a trust that the stones, leaves and beasts speak to us if our ears are open. It seemed natural after that awakening to take up the study of English literature. This, at the University of Sussex, is what I did.

Academic studies

Looking back, it is clear that studies there involved a