Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back writer and poet Kathy Labrum McVittie from the UK with two pearls of poetry that deal with types of detachment. The first, “spontaneously, a cross-stick” is an acrostic poem–meaning that the first letter of each line spells out a word or message, in this case, the word “spontaneously.” Kathy dares us to live in the moment and take delight in the world around us “splashing in puddles, without concern for cleaning up.” The paradox of this kind of vulnerability is that it calms us–“tasting excitement in the throat/ and then relaxing the elbows,” making us more aware of and responsive to our environment and often safer within it. Kathy’s love of language shines alongside her love for nature, flowering into sensual imagery and mischievous alliteration. The second poem, “within your hand,” is simple, elegant and breathtaking. Two-stanzas of four lines comprised of rhyming couplets set in iambic meter (unstressed-stressed) serve as a hymn of gratitude to a higher power. The imagery has Christian overtones and recalls the Resurrection, but it also invokes the processes of individuation–of becoming–and transcendence which feature so prominently in the works of Jung and which translate into other religions: “i – naked, foetal, hunched and small -/ a bud, a meristem, a call”. I love how she uses an unstressed, lowercase “i” to begin the second stanza. Again we are faced with paradox: losing our ego and arrogance, we often find our sense of self and purpose enlarged, not diminished. Kathy ‘s meter and rhyme feel effortless in these short forms, which are quite tricky to write, and her revelation feels spontaneous and sincere without hints of dogma and rigidity.
Read Kathy’s marvelous poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Vulnerable” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Kathy Labrum McVittie is a biologist, life-writing companion and dancer, born in Chester, UK. She lives in eastern England and northern Scotland, and welcomes you to her rewilding grove at Trees for Life.
She writes her way whole at writingpresence.com, adding “In winter this body loves to dance (conscious movement practice), in a community space surrounded by wild and caring friends. In summer I love to move upon the young bright turf, and to meld into the misty subtleties of rag-rug landscapes, up here at 58 degrees north, where some of the rocks are young and some are very, very old.”
Kathy has published essays and poetry with Synkroniciti. She also enjoys writing to prompts from dVerse Poets’ Pub, and invites you to join the fun.