Poetry and Water Meditation
Director Louie Schwartzberg has been exploring our waterways with his camera for more than four decades, showing us the healing power of Visual Healing with water imagery. The same filmmaker that brought us the movie about mushrooms Fantastic Fungi also brings us poetry and water meditation.
Millions of viewers around the world have relaxed with Louie’s very first episode of his Netflix Moving Art series, “Oceans.” The Ted Talks Gratitude episode Louie hosted may also be something you have seen. If not, please check it out!
Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg has brought us some of the best fungi pictures in the world! A few years ago, he created this gorgeous forest and freshwater compilation for the organization, 1% for the Planet.
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Sweet Water Poetry
As we celebrate National Water Quality Awareness Month this August, we also highlight the voices of artists around the world who lead the way towards clean water for all.
Water is not only an element necessary to survival on Earth, but it is the substance that connects all beings to one another. Across geographic distances, across species, and across time, water connects us all. In that way, water is very similar to the mycelium network.
Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds is a brand new poetry anthology. It gathers the voices of poets from across Canada, the US and the UK who have written work inspired by water. “Bottled, clouded, held in rain, in river, estuary and lake, sweet water is the planet’s life force and the poets here examine it from every angle,” states the editorial page.
Laurie D. Graham
In Laurie D. Graham’s poem “Antler River,” the juxtaposition between humanity’s reverence and disdain for nature is stark. The excerpt below speaks to the delicately fraught relationship between the humans and birds that share access to the river:
Mallards and their escaped domestic kin and the bright,
rasping horns of Canada geese in false spring, in glacier-
turquoise water. Hundreds and hundreds of sharps sinking
into the banks.
In this excerpt from “Parts Per Billion,” Canadian writer Joe Zucchiatti meditates on the generational differences in how his family handles water treatment in rural Ontario:
the living water,
my uncle proclaims proudly, defiantly,
as if purified water
was only for sissies,
and impurity and pollution
somehow nutritious
Solveig Adair
Solveig Adair, a scientist, teacher, and writer, contributes her poem entitled “Grandmother River.” The excerpt below calls into consciousness the oneness of all life, even after death:
before she died she
knelt in the river and when
I blinked there was no
distinction between her and
the water body
fed by veins and arteries
wild as water returning
always to the heart
Some writers contribute odes to the creatures who inhabit swamps. In contrast, others meditate on the destruction of waterways and the future of Earth’s ecosystems. Either way, Poetry and Water Meditation go hand in hand. As an anthology, this collection is the perfect way to honor National Water Quality Awareness Month.
It offers the special gift of presenting diverse and international experiences with different bodies of water. After that, it calls readers to engage with its themes, and be moved into action.
Social Media Posts
Moving Art Twitter Post #1: A poem by Solveig Adair meditates on the power of rivers: “wild as water returning / always to the heart.” Read more poems from the new Sweet Water anthology.
LINK TO OUR ARTICLE
Moving Art Twitter Post #2: “Bottled, clouded, held in rain, in river, estuary and lake, sweet water is the planet’s life force and the poets here examine it from every angle.” Read poems & watch our Moving Art videos of our great waterways.
LINK TO OUR ARTICLE
Moving Art Facebook Post #1: “Wild as water returning / always to the heart.” A poem by Solveig Adair meditates on the power of rivers. Read more poems from the new Sweet Water anthology…
LINK TO OUR ARTICLE
Moving Art Facebook Post #2
“Bottled, clouded, held in rain, in river, estuary and lake, sweet water is the planet’s life force and the poets here examine it from every angle.” Read poems & watch our Moving Art videos of our great waterways.
LINK TO OUR ARTICLE
Moving Art Instagram Post #1: A poem by Solveig Adair meditates on the power of rivers: “wild as water returning / always to the heart.” Read more poems from the new Sweet Water anthology.
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Moving Art Instagram Post #2:
“the living water,
my uncle proclaims proudly, defiantly,
as if purified water
was only for sissies”
In his poem “Parts Per Billion,” Canadian writer Joe Zucchiatti meditates on the generational differences in how his family handles water treatment in rural Ontario.
EMBED NEW CLIP FROM 1% VIDEO