inner excavate-along: week 3, chapter 3
liz lamoreux
Welcome to Week 3 of our Inner Excavate-along adventure!
I know I'm repeating myself, but I really hope you will head over to the Flickr group to soak up the inspiration and beauty there. I am deeply inspired and moved by the ways IE-along participants have opened themselves up to the prompts in Chapters 1 and 2, and I'm really looking forward to seeing more peeks into your worlds and stories this week.
As I’m getting ready for the next Poem It Out ecourse and surrounding myself with poetry, I feel moved to invite you to dive into poetry this week. I believe that poetry can save lives as it gives us access to the words of others that can become lights along our paths and it helps us unearth the words inside us that most need to be let out into the world.
In today’s video, I share the poem “Summer Story” by Mary Oliver from her book Red Bird. I also talk about the Chapter 3 themes of noticing what we gather and paying attention to what we are drawn to in the world around us, creating altars in our homes that give us visual reminders to re-center, and a few more words about poetry.
This week’s prompt: I am going to explore the poetry prompts in this chapter and write a few poem notes. And I imagine I will take a few "on the ground"-inspired photos because I can't stop myself.
A fun resource for you today: Below you will find a link to a PDF of a word list full of the words shared in the giveaway post a few weeks ago plus a few other words I feel called to right now. You can download this PDF and print it out. Then, you could circle the words that speak to you and work with those words, cut them out and try to incorporate a few into your poem, use the words as writing prompts, or just let them inspire you as you write.
In the video, I also talk about creating an altar and what creating a sacred space can look like. You can see a glimpse of my studio altar on the bookshelf behind me in this video. If you feel moved to create an altar this week, or you have one (or more) already in your home, I invite you to share photos in the Flickr group. And if you have any questions about this, other pieces of Chapter 3, or poetry, please ask away in the comments.
Blessings and light to you today,
Liz
Update: The Inner Excavate-along was a free read-along on my blog in the summer of 2012. All the posts are here on the blog, but I'm not directing a group through it with newsletters etc. at this time. I hope you enjoy following along! Find out more about my book, Inner Excavation: Explore Your Self Through Photography, Poetry and Mixed Media, here.