Using WoWWaH in response to dVerse poetry prompt: a hollow grieving

Yesterday Punam from dVerse Poets Pub offered many tasters of poetry on grief, and asked that we go gently with writing on this topic, if at all.

I am aware of many flavours of grief both in my life and writings, and could have linked in existing poems and essays from this site..

But I felt led to explore not so much the concept or experience, but the word grieving as a resource…

… such as I’ve encouraged students to use in ‘writing our way whole at home‘ (WoWWaH), my practice in person and online, in Cambridgeshire and Sutherland, for many years now.

My student Sara loves using anagram-play at the start of our sessions, and so that was how I entered the grief theme yesterday. And then I tuned in to how my body felt after the anagramming, as awareness of this can be revealing in our response to a topic.

When I wrote, the “felt sense” infiltrated itself into the poem below, along with eleven of the “found words” shown in bold. These entered subconsciously.

Give three synonyms for grieving: keening mourning missing
Find a few words from the letters of GRIEVING:  E G G I I N R V
vie veg gin rive egg vire vir virgin verging give given venge rig vine vein ginger rein ring
{ Noticing the felt sense }: a strange hollow behind my tenth rib

a grieving hollow

there is a grieving hollow beneath my tenth rib
and the virgin snowfields of that long winter
vie to leave no impression, no expression
of the given pain, the vein of deep illusion
of the fruit of the vine that is ripe for collusion
with ginger and Niger and verging on grin 🙂
though with gin on the menu I wish to rein in


©  Kathy Labrum McVittie 30 July 2024