The Illuminating Spark: Poetry as Pilgrimage

Some thoughts about spiritual journeying with words.

(Image description: A photo of an orange, quill-shaped flame with grayish-white smoke swirling beneath it, set against a darkened background.) Credit: Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Another twenty days later, another flamekeeping shift came around. At the start of my shift, I lit my lantern and responded to prayer requests. However, my focus was on writing a poem that I planned to submit to The Disability Collective for possible usage.

I began viewing poetry as a form of pilgrimage as I was brainstorming. It has an initial desire to go to a designated location; along the way, there are markers and signs indicating spots for reflection and inspiration or directing you toward your destination. Eventually, you reach the pilgrimage site and will likely come away with some spiritual insight or awe.

As an example, I’ll use the poem “Namesake” that I wrote in the previous post. When I was younger, I felt a certain amount of negativity toward my name. In popular culture, it had a tendency to be used for stuck-up characters. That’s not a quality I wanted to be connected to. Also, given its popularity at the time, it gained a reputation as being a feminine name, when it’s actually been a gender neutral name for a long time. It originally started as a surname for a place someone resided at or near.

I can’t change cultural perceptions about the name, but I can see it from a different perspective. Some of that shift in viewpoint came from looking at a letter connected to the ash.

Nin, the fifth letter in ogam, has multi-layered word kennings. They are associated with community building, connections, weaving, and spears, to name only a few. According to Laurie (2007), looms and spears were sometimes made from the wood of ash trees.

For this reason, I was able to see some beneficial concepts that felt right to aspire to. This approach isn’t found in any traditional sources to my knowledge, but I found doing so meaningful. It also felt appropriately related to Brighid, given the different forms of woven Brighid’s crosses.

There is a historical monastic tie to weaving. Weaving would have been used to make altar cloths and other sacred materials. Weaving was generally seen as a woman’s task, given how detail-oriented it is. However, I like to throw social conventions like that out the window and personally view it as something anybody can do. (I am a beginning weaver, but I plan to improve my skills in the future.)

With this method of writing, I felt like that poem provided a fulfilling destination, a sense of completion and new understanding. I can see my name as something to aim for in its meaning and connection to Nin. It aligns with my sense of self and an aspect of my religious practice.

This was my first time of viewing poetry writing as pilgrimage, and it feels like a viable and deep way of gaining inspiration for poems. I can see myself as using this as a means for future “pilgrimages”.

As a final thought, what pilgrimages do you see yourself taking?

Reference

Laurie, E.R. (2007). Ogam: Weaving word wisdom. Megalithica Books.