Poetry Of Evil: The Mental Health Poetry Podcast

Tonight’s theme is “Arrival” and how “arriving” really means noticing that we have been here all along. When the noise finally recedes to a manageable level, we can see that we are capable of vulnerability in front of another human being, and that we can be open to a healthy dose of intimacy. 

We will talk about the difference that art can make in our lives, and how making art allows us to heal from within — also, how processing what happened to us allows us to grow. 

I would like to dedicate this episode to the theme of having friends, and the wonderful, connected joy that we feel when people truly understand us. 

We talk about acceptance, and the need to make peace with the past. 

Tonight, we will talk about the sparkle of the Divine, which exists even in the midst of all trauma. Often, when things are rough, all it takes is a single second of hope, in order to turn our lives around.

We will be talking about the road, and the journey that it takes us on. So our first poem is called Footsteps, and it’s from my book, “At The End Of My Travels”. Tonight’s second poem is called “Everything Brings You,” and it’s from “Buddha’s Broken Fingernail”. Here too, the emphasis is on the journey itself, and where it brings us. Our third poem is called “I Trust The Journey,” and it’s about looking forward, and not losing hope. And finally, tonight I will share a fourth poem, called “Watch Out For The Immigrant Amongst You”. It’s meant to be taken sarcastically, of course — but as an immigrant myself, I often reflect on the journey and what it means to cross borders and oceans. 

We will be exploring the darkness. Specifically, we will be talking about the darkness that some of us find ourselves in, when confronted with mental health issues. The first poem is “You, Who Creates,” and it’s the title poem from my first book of poetry, published in 2018. The second poem is called “Creation,” and it’s also from “You, Who Creates”. This next poem is called “I Went Back”. It’s from “Buddha’s Broken Fingernail,” and it’s about going back, once we are healthy, to where we were abused, in order to make peace with our own past. And finally, here’s a poem called “The Children of Evil,” from my latest book, called “Into You”. 

Tonight we will look at how pain, especially psychological trauma, is stored within the body. So the first poem I will read is called “My Body still Remembers”. The second poem is called “I Thought” and it deals with seeing one’s own trauma from the outside. Finally, the third poem is called “I Went Back” and in it, we see how important it is, after much therapy, to go back to the places where people were mean to us, and to make peace with ourselves, for what happened. 

The topic for today is trauma histories: specifically, poems which talk about how trauma is passed from generation to generation. So the first poem thus is a meditation on the fictional town of Luminberg and on the Holocaust. The second poem is called “I’m Not Looking For The Easy Way Out, Baby,” and it’s about accepting our trauma histories. The third poem, “I Will No Longer Bear Your Burden,” is in memory of the 215 murdered children, who were found on the grounds of the Kamloops Residential School, in Kamloops, British Columbia, in 2021.

We will look at three poems that describe what it’s like to struggle with mental health issues. Taken together, these poems show both the sorrow that accumulates in our joints and sinews, but also, how it is essential to keep going on. The three poems are “I Have Nothing To Give,” "I know," and "Give Me Back My Body".

We will be looking at poems that explore the subconscious as a land worth exploring. So, the first poem is called (aptly) “There’s A Land,” and it’s from my book “The Womb”. This second poem is called “In The Golden Balloon,” and it’s a meditation about the role of the Divine, within the subconscious. Finally, here’s a poem called “At The End of My Travels," about how we travel through the subconscious.