Hello,

I used to be obsessed with the self-help industry. Anyone else?

I used to fill my days with gratitude, meditation, movement, proper nutrition, and a weekly mastermind group. I stayed up-to-date on the latest and most ‘paradigm shifting’ self-help literature. I spoke words of affirmation and pasted those words around my home. I  created vision boards out of magazine clippings, journaled 3 pages a day, took cold showers, visualized my ideal future, and used all of the correct hashtags. I even had a BLOG called The Positivity Project, which I posted in 3-4 times a month.

For my work, I was a ghost writer and copywriter for ‘gurus’ in the industry. It was self-help all day, every day.

I was exhausted.

In 2017, I walked away from self-help (eventually re-finding poetry — more on that below), and wrote one final blog about what I’d learned about myself from this obsession. There is a particular bit from that reflection that I still think about:

What happened next is a long story. But what I want to share with you is that after everything imploded and I was coming up for air, I found poetry again at a pop up used book sale. I’d walked in on a whim and found myself drawn to a book of poetry called ‘Limits’ by Robin Skelton. I opened it to the title poem. Read it. And then promptly brought the book to the checkout. I think it cost me $2.

Over the next year, this book LIVED beside my bed. I read all the poems, and then I read them again. I returned to the title poem over and over — maybe reading it 50 times over the following year (maybe more).

I’d love to take a brief pause in this story to share that poem with you.

‘Limits’ by Robin Skelton

This poem was published in the book of poetry ‘Limits’ by Robin Skelton. Published by ‘The Porcupine’s Quill’ in 1981. You can read the poem here. 

Every time I read that poem, I felt calm. My breath would start to move with more gentleness.

Turns out, there may have been a few reasons why that was the case. In her book ‘How to Read a Poem… and Start a Poetry Circle,’ Molly Peacock writes about the effect of rhythm in poetry. She writes about how our lives can become all heavy beats. BAM BAM BAM; ‘More, more, more’; ‘not enough’, ‘not enough’, ‘not enough’.

Peacock writes, “Being inside frenetic activity is like being, rhythmically, in the staccato grip of fear. Each syllable of your life seems stressed.”

But poetry (thank god) has down beats. Peacock continues, “by removing half the loudness, by equalizing its emphasis with softness… the alternating rhythm of [poetry] clarifies by… allowing us to breathe with the deep and regular inhalations and exhalations that sustain life.”

I’ve found it tremendously calming and even healing to read and write poetry regularly. Maybe it’s because poetry brings down beats into my life. Or maybe it’s because, through reading poetry, I encounter language that speaks to my experience and makes me feel like I’m not alone. Maybe poetry (in the words of Eli Griefer, the founder of poetry therapy), allows me to borrow “ego strength” from a poet whose rhythms are different from my own.

Whatever it is, reading ‘Limits’ (and other poems) always feels like visiting an old friend. I feel better afterwards.

So yes, poetry is awesome. You should read more poetry. AND… ugh. It’s still there.

Whatever need deep inside myself that self-help authors spoke to with such precision. Maybe you have that need too. The need for guidance, or order, or a way forward that is guaranteed to work.

Poetry does not satisfy that need. It also hasn’t made that need go away.

Self-help offers the promise of change, while also priming you with the need for change. Poetry promises nothing, not even consistency. 

Self-help teaches us how to dominate our thoughts, our hours, our breath, our lives. Poetry gets under our skin and asks us to relish in the experience of being lost.

Self-help paints for us a destination of wealth, abundance, freedom;  places the power in our hands to create this world of our dreams. If we fail, despite being shown the way, the responsibility is ours.

Poetry offers only questions, with answers that flow like rivers; with a rhythm that includes the sweetness of relief. You don’t have to go, go, go. You can stop and feel.

Which is why I love poetry. Which is why it’s so meaningful to me to share and possibly pass on this love of poetry with you.

UPCOMING CLASSES

Metaphor & Renewal - 8 Week Poetry Writing Workshop

When: Mondays, March 3rd - April 21st 2025 (no class April 14th)
from 5:30 - 7:45pm PT
Where: Online, Over Zoom
*6 spots max. (1 spot remaining)

In this 8-week online series, you’ll explore the metaphors that have shaped your experience, and then you’ll harness your creativity to write new, imaginative metaphors that will breathe new life into the way you see the world. These new metaphors are the seed from which the poetry you write every week will be born. 

Voice into Poetry - 7 Week Poetry Writing Workshop

Free intro: Feb 27th from 6-7pm (online). —> Register

Workshop details:

When: Tuesdays, March 4th - April 15th 2025
from 6:30 - 8:30pm PT
Where: IN-PERSON at The Gallery @ Artech, 336 E 1st Ave, Vancouver
*6 spots max. (4 spots remaining)

A compassionate exploration of your spoken and written voice, using poetry as your tool and companion. Every week, we'll read poetry by authors writing about their relationship to their voice and use their poems to reflect on our own. Next, we’ll speak these poems out loud and bring awareness to our own vocal resonance and playfulness. In the second half of each class, we’ll write poetry of our own that reflects on our relationship to our voice.

Writing can be a wonderful tool for empowerment. Even if you’ve never written or read poetry before, join us and explore how writing can be used to better understand yourself and (if needed) to dream into being a different way of showing up in the world.

Some links I think you’ll enjoy:

• One of my past students has released a BOOK OF POETRY!! I was very grateful to be one of the BETA readers for this collection. Learn more.
  

• Keep planting flowers — a substack that offers something that feels like hope, from artist Mariana Yatsuda Ikuta. Read it here.
  

• A call for board of directors for ‘The Falling Company’ — a nonprofit, project-based dance company dedicated to the creation of inclusive spaces for dance and collaboration. Learn more.
  

• I’m grateful to be on the speaker team for CreativeMornings/Vancouver, and on March 7th we’re hosting poet Jónína Kirton, who’ll be speaking on the theme of parallel. Learn more.

Questions or comments about anything in this email? Send an email to [email protected] . I’d love to hear from you.

with thanks,
Christine Bissonnette

P.S — Know someone who would enjoy receiving this email? Pass it along! 9 Creative Lives Studio is a small business run just by me (Christine Bissonnette). Your support and referrals make a big difference.