Reflections on Life’s Poetry

Picture of the ocean with blue sky and clouds

Each year in October I invite people to come and join me for Life’s Poetry - six months together exploring life through the landscape of grief. It started tentatively in 2024. At the time I was in the middle of writing my book, Life’s Poetry - meeting the beauty of life in times of sorrow. A book I’d been writing for a few years at this point, when I thought about Life’s Poetry in a different form, a living and breathing form - what if Life’s Poetry became something we did together? And so Life’s Poetry the experience, or journey, or adventure, or movement - definitely not a class or programme - was born - before the book that already has its name. I stepped in tentatively that first year. Guiding and growing in the gates of grief myself, alongside those who chose to come with me that first year. If you’re reading this and you came that first year, thank you.

In March this year we completed the second Life’s Poetry and it was more than I ever expected. It was what I’d hoped it would always be. We created Life’s Poetry together, it was because of every single human being in this space that it became what it became. How could it ever be something else? How could it not be impacted by the different people here? It can’t, and this is the way I want it to be. There’s not a lot I know for sure in this world, what I do know is that when we come together, human to human, something happens, and this is what happens in Life’s Poetry.

Upon completion of Life’s Poetry I always have this sense of how we can continue together, how we might be able to continue to weave, to tend to our grief and our joy, how we might continue to move together. When we finished the first time I said that I wanted to create something where we could stay together, I always want to do things differently in this world, and when it comes to my work, I want to create something beyond consumer, beyond transaction - and so just putting a course out there doesn’t work for me. I want there to be connection, some way of staying together. It took a while for this to be realised but it’s here in the form of Life’s Poetry Rooted - a community space where we can continue to form bonds, to navigate this world we live in, a place where we can continue to be held in the arms of our grief, and explore life together. It’s still in its infancy - if I’ve learnt anything over these past few years, its that we can take our time, that these things need time to percolate, evolve, come to life. So for anyone coming into Life’s Poetry you have a place to land afterwards. It feels wonderful to have this here.

Now my book has finally made made its way out into the world, on 14th July 2026, it was birthed. It’s still birthing, still making its way. There have been so many points when I felt my book was finished, I’m learning that it never is. It takes a lot of holding to bring a book out into the world and for it to land in the hands of another. It holds what it has been to tend to my own personal grief over the course of 19 years, what my devotion to grief has taught me. How we might come to beauty and joy within the heartbreak and sorrow. There’s poetry, there’s stories, there’s questions and reflections. I will continue tending to my book, in the hope that it’ll reach those who need it, that it may offer something in this world.

And Life’s Poetry wasn’t to finish there. When I was preparing for my book to come out I wanted a way to honour this. I have thinking about Life’s Poetry The Conversations for a few years - dreaming about who I could invite. Speaking to people about how I might bring these out in the form of a podcast, but they didn’t materialise that way. They’ve come in the form of live sessions, and then made into resources on The Portal (the home of all my work) so they’re available for everyone. I have loved having these conversations - some more than conversations, an experience. We’ve explored how all grief is political with Holly Truhlar. I got to sit with Jessi Rado, I honestly love any time with Jessi singing the world whole again, there’s something special about what Jessi brings. I am continuously exploring what it is to be relational in a world that divides, it’s something that I think about every single day, how I can be more relational - with those I love and break those familiar patterns that keep us from loving another - and with our earth, with soul, with our plant and animal kin. I got to speak to the wonderful Keri Jarvis about the grief that exists when we realise how much we’ve been severed by the systems we live in. Even just writing those words I feel the grief bubble inside. Then I got to sit with Naila Francis - do you know Naila? She is one of the most beautiful souls I have the privilege to know. We weaved beauty together in the form of ritual, what a treat. Finally (and not finally) we came to the practice of writing together with another glorious soul, Ruth Coates. Ruth has a special presence and we used the willow tree to write and tend to our grief. I hope to continue these conversations and build on what we’ve already created - again - together.

And so Life’s Poetry has become an ecosystem. It’s become something in its own right. When I started writing my book, I didn’t know the title, it just came to me one day. Just as it came to life in the form of six months together, way before the book came together.

Life’s Poetry has become my work. I often wonder how I can articulate what Life’s Poetry is concisely, in word form. Sometimes I feel it’s beyond words, a felt sense, that once you’ve experienced Life’s Poetry you know. Here’s what I’ve come to.

Life’s Poetry is the poetry of what it is to be human.

It’s is an apprenticeship in what it is to be human in this world. Life’s Poetry asks you to grieve, it asks you to remember and return to the deepest relationship of them all, to our humanity. From here we deepen into relationship with ocean life, with the trees, the rain, with the earth. It’s a journey of grief and soul. And of beauty. It’s an exploration of what it is to be you, and us, in this world. And at its heart it says there’s a world where we all belong, in the messiness of our humanity, in the messiness of our sacred grief, we can come to a sense of belonging.

Now I’m inviting people into Life’s Poetry The Tending (Life’s Poetry has become Life’s Poetry The Tending so I can differentiate all that is Life’s Poetry in my world) for its third year. I’m excited about this year, the deepening that happens each year, how it evolves. This year we will be cultivating and deepening in the practices that are necessary to sustain us through all that we’re experiencing collectively - of writing, poetry, music, movement, creativity and soul.

However you come to Life’s Poetry I welcome you. Sometimes the poetry of life is brutal, hard and devastating. Sometimes its full of beauty and love. Sometimes it gives you hope. And just may be it gives you a different way of seeing the world.