‘When you open yourself to the view of others it’s a risk. Much like the poem at the end of this post suggests ‘at times we will not open our eyes to see who is dancing amongst the stars with us’.

Thomas Delahunt, Senior Lecturer and Nurturer of the #poeticnursingheart, asks for a student’s view and is amazed by the insight and determined voice that comes back.

I have been thinking more and more about poetry and its value… I asked a wonderful soul her feelings and they are below.

The poetry symposium was phenomenal as it allowed me to tell a story weaved into poetry and was something that was below the surface as other individuals started to share their poem into spoken words. Also I brought my experience with me and it was presented in my poem. I would love to attend another one but hosted by the students and with an option of an open stage or to perform their spoken words from where ever the audience sits. I really loved the way individuals read from the heart and unfolded their emotions slowly as they read their poetry.

I adore the simple and yet razor sharp elements to this response.

I have been thinking about a larger question of learning and meaning in knowledge or coming to know. I was listening to a podcast by the Fundamentalists. This is hosted by a comedian and Peter Rollins who is a theologian, thinker and someone who talks often of intersectional ideologies and pyrotheology.

This week it was about the distance that developed between Freud and Jung when they moved to different stances on the ideas of the subconscious. This is not a section where I explain that…. But essentially Freud was of the thinking that the consciousness is a hard and not in agreement with the idea of a malevolent space that would balance as Jung was suggesting. The mass subconscious or yin-yang, pay it forward, good karma idea was not something that Freud could entertain.

So why is this important to a pop up poetry symposium in a University supporting health and wellbeing within a vocational degree in nursing studies? I hear you say… (the blogger, hoping there is an audience but feeling a bit like the stand-up comic with no crowd).

Well while reading Mentors by Russell Brand there was a moment of synchronicity. He states ‘in the guru traditions of India the love between teacher and student surpasses all other forms, for here it is explicit that what is being transferred in this relationship is nothing short of God’s love and how an individual can embody the divine’. I realise that since the outset the intention is to hand on the butterfly flame to the student body.

I was reminded in a recent conversation of a very valuable insight that being Hayek’s view ‘that liberty exists when individuals are free from external coercion and able to formulate and carry out their own independent plans of life; they may then use their local knowledge to decide how to apportion their time between different pursuits and goals, pursuing them by their own means’.

More and more the defining moments of my life as a developing academic and novice researcher is the demise of self as the student is becoming or maybe always was the master!

 

Dancing amongst the stars

 

So I sit again counting the stars

Asking myself who I want to see

The moon the sun

 

As our friend time excites

We are aware

A feeling deep down

Absence of fear

We are all lost children

 

So I sit again counting the stars

But tonight I want to dance

So I roll and move and writhe

Aware that I am alone and happily so

 

I throw out my hand in hope of a partner

An unfamiliar feeling takes over

Pressure of another hand holding mine

Unable to bear the thought

 I dance

Eyes closed for what seems like eternity

 

Not once am I caught by the wish to break the suspense

As soon as it has come it goes and I am left dancing

Aware I am alone but happily so

 

So I sit counting the stars

Asking myself who I might see

The moon or the sun