Judyth Hill… poet & provocateur...
Put a Spin on the Planet: Write!! [email protected]
www.judythhill.com  www.eat-write-travel.com
To know the kind of writing we should do, answer three questions:
What are my gifts?
What breaks my heart?
What are the world’s deepest needs?
Your calling is at the intersection of these.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
Writing for the Change You Want to See:
Love Warrior 101
I do not like, ever, to be proscriptive, but I have some thoughts about the very specific nature of
writing for change.
I believe in grassroots Arts Activism, in Right Action through our writing. Writing is charm bracelet and
can hold it all: the sweetness and the terror; linking our connection to the jaguar, the fate of
Mountain gorillas, a wall dividing sister countries, bougainvillea in luxuriant bloom, our children and
Beloveds, and the turmoil in Turkey.
But when faced, as we are, with so much tragedy and disaster world round, and close at home, how
do we bring ourselves to write? And what can we say that will make a difference?
It is so easy to become overwhelmed, and lose heart! But small acts of caring, and caring to learn, can
shift consciousness, and make a difference. Making Beauty, raising awareness, spreading the word
have power and valence in the world!
Italian storyteller, Gioia Timpanelli, tells this story. When she moved to her land in Woodstock, NY,
USA, the property was heavily wooded and had been through many and many a storm, untended.
She decided that every day as she would walk, she would just pick up the stick in front of her as she
went.
Over twenty years, many beautiful, small winding paths were cleared through the woods.
So when we write: we are picking up the stick in front of us!
Writing that accuses, that exposes, that rage are ABSOLUTELY any writer’s prerogative: and may have
their place, but they are not what I do. I try to seek a place to stand that allows for the biggest hoop,
the largest hope.
We begin the R/Evolution by re-languaging, by writing from our informed heart, passionately and
compassionately.
When we write in an accusatory second person, then the poem cannot help but infer that the “you”
referred to in the poem, is somehow, possibly, the person reading or hearing it. Now we are actually
suggesting, or intimating that they, the readers and listeners, are the people whose bad
behaviors/beliefs/lifestyle is in question: we have turned the audience into the Enemy! They are your
“you” at that moment!
If you transpose the person into third, and write “they” and “them”, you have an Us vs. Them
situation: the start of most of our problems on this planet!
My theory is, if we are going to point fingers: point them at ourselves: and treat the reader with
Tenderness & Compassion; assume their best intentions to do good: I think, if we will assume the
Best, we, as writers can call it forward!
When the Towers fell, I had been reading Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, and was doing the
Buddhist practice of Tonglen: using our breath and heart to transform pain, suffering, grief, terror.
Instead of the Western concept of Breathe in the Good…Breathe out the bad (spread that Bad around
to someone else!) Tonglen says use our mind, heart, body & breathe to heal and transform and Create
good in the world!
This reversal is the heart of that poem, and the heart of my practice in writing poems that Support the
Good….
I always find the Bad has way enough speakers!
After the Towers fell, how many poems and poets made them fall again and again, how many poems
re-created the Terror, and re-played every scene of fear and anguish…over and over like a crazed
poetry version of CNN?
And here is the deepest truth: what we name, what we say, what we speak, write, or put out
(whether for or against) that is what we create in the world.
The Saying makes it So.
Ever notice that when you drive behind someone that has their car placarded with bumper stickers
NO MORE WAR, STOP WAR, WAR IS UNHEALTHY etc, END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, that really
what you are literally, actually taking in, through your eyes and your listening and thinking is: WAR
WAR WAR UNHEALTHY VIOLENCE STOP END AGAINST NO NO NO……
I want to RE-LANGUAGE the entire thinking! I call this the Dharma of Eloquence! I think of
Eloquence as …”El”: an ancient name for the Holy in many faiths, and cuanto (!): how
much…in other words, how much of the Divine can we hold and move forward in our
speaking and writing!
I want to speak FOR, write FOR…that is my idea of the paradigm shift: the way we can truly inspire the
Good, we can transform, not describe, not judge, not castigate or berate.
But these are PERSONAL choices. I repeat: MY choices!
I would not ever wish a poet to Not Say what they need & must! So this Speaking FOR What We Love
and Treasure…or against what we abominate, and must fiercely declaim, is a delicate balance and
must come from our deepest self-inquiries into our poet vows as a writer and human.
That said, (whew…!) please write as you wish! Please, please feel free!
And do it NOW, and often! Kathleen Dean Moore says, “In a ‘world of wounds,’ it’s not enough to
write about a marsh as it’s being bulldozed for a K-Mart parking lot. We’ve run out of time; we have
to move quickly and reach a wider audience through new venues such as newspapers, blogs, and
radio essays.”
Facebook is about as Instant Publication as you can get! But…take it seriously: work on the piece in a
“document” or on paper, and revise your work. Passion is wonderful…but passionate editing is divine!
And get the work out there beautifully: add a gorgeous photo to your post: way more people respond
visually. And the internet is mostly a visual medium. A magnificent, evocative photo will bring readers
to your words.
I love these thoughts from Iris Graville, “Maybe I should follow the behavior of the osprey both when I
settle into worship and to write—take whatever time is needed to listen patiently and lovingly,
keeping watch for shadow. There’s plenty of that as I open myself to my own flaws, mistakes, and
regrets. And observing more widely, I’m aware of the shadows of hurts, disappointments, and wrongs
in my community, my country, and the world. I want the courage of the osprey to dive deeply into
some of those shadows and to engage with them.”
And then stand and remember… and write from gratitude for the blessings in our lives.
But whatever you do, write from your heart, from your shoe, from your daughter’s hand in
yours….and tell your truth. Like this:
“A Foot” by Eduardo Galeano; the Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist, a literary giant
of the Latin America, from his book, “Voices in Time: A Life in Stories”:
Many did not return. Of the citizens of the world who marched off to fight for the Spanish Republic,
many stayed there, buried under Spanish soil.
Abe Osheroff of the Lincoln Brigade survived.
A bullet ruined one of his legs. With one foot dragging and the other foot walking, he returned to his
country.
Spain was the first war he lost. From then on, carried by his roving foot, Abe never stopped.
Despite betrayals and defeats, beatings and jailings, he never stopped. One foot refused, but the
other went right ahead. One foot told him, “I’m staying right here,” but the other declared, “I’m
taking you there.” Time and again that foot, the errant one, hit the road, because dissent is destiny.
That foot carried Abe across the United States from end to end, from sea to sea, and it git him in
repeated trouble, marching against McCarthy’s witch hunts, and the Korean War, and racial
segregation, and the death penalty, and the coup d’état in Iran and the crime in Guatemala and the
butchery of Vietnam and the bloodbath of Indonesia, and nuclear tests and the blockade of Cuba and
the putsch in Chile and the strangling in Nicaragua and the invasion in Panama and the bombings of
Iraq and Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and Iraq yet again…
Abe was ninety and still a marcher when his friend Toby Geist asked him, just out of curiosity, how he
was doing. He raised his lion’s head with its big white mane and smiled from ear to ear, “I’m still
getting along, with one foot in the grave, and the other one dancing.”
Judyth Hill… poet & provocateur...
Put a Spin on the Planet: Write!! [email protected]
www.judythhill.com  www.eat-write-travel.com
Every poem is a thank you letter, an IOU and a complaint to the management.
~ Alice Waters
Writing for the Change You Want to See:
Love Warrior 102
I love simple. I’m not that good at it…but I love it.
So crashing into the question of writing for the change we want to see, I did a little synthesis.
Writing deeply and heartfully about change – and maybe about anything - starts with
Know What You're in It For:
Why are you are writer? Why not a dancer? A chief? A painter? But even if you are a writer and a
passionate somethingelse, what happens for you in words that doesn’t happen in your other
mediums? And how did you get that way?
Think about it. Really think about this, and then write your Artist Statement…your Literaria
Biographia, a title borrowed from Samuel Coleridge’s justification and explanation of his style and
practice in poetry, a Dharma Lineage I am proud for us to claim.
This kind of glues your feet to Sacred Ground. And you can always read it to remember your truest
self, or change it as that self evolves.
Now you also have a strong, succinct piece of writing about your writerly goals, hopes and yearnings
that makes for great Intros and to send out with applications!
And maybe keep it on the wall above your desk.
Ambush/Impulse/WorkingClassHero:
Next you need a strong electrical current running between your Listening and your Writing. Poet Jack
Mueller always talks about being “Ambushed” by his poems. Like they sneak up, grab him by the
collar, and drag him to the desk. He loves to say he wishes he could stop writing…but, O, those
Ambushes.
But seriously folks. Our writing does Ambush us: how many times have you seen/said/heard/thought
of something…and thought, “That would be a good…” And didja get it written down? THAT’S the
paradigm shift right there.
Are you stopped by… “Is it good?” Well, how can you know, if you don’t WRITE IT DOWN?! And
maybe…work on it?
So, best practice: Write it Down. Everyday… write something…Keep your hand in, so when the Muse
throws you a Beauty, you have a soft, pliable and ready catcher’s mitt.
Caroline Forche said, “I sit at my desk, at the same time, in the same place, every day, so the Muse
will know where to find me.”
Passionate Revision: Attentions// Radar
I call it the Mule and the Muse. A visit from the Muse is an implosion/explosion. The Call to Page: we
all know that's the best. The writing endorphins kick in and it's rocketfuel, solid joy. It's aerobic, our
body heat rises, words tumble to the page; we shake. Then there's the Mule, the one in for the long
haul, reading the work aloud, over and over, tempering, tasting, savoring and stirring. Hanging on,
staying down and in for the duration; riding the rocky parts like a marriage that lasts: writers can't
afford trust issues. So, build yourself a set of Attentions - not rules -but all the things you learned to
look for in your writing that need to shift, change or go away. Just like in our culture! And go over the
work…and then again. Bring it all the way in.
Gift
Then give it away. Writing is our best Give-Away; the most delicious thing we offer at the Pot-Latch. In
his must-read book, The Gift, Lewis Hyde says, “The gift must keep moving.” Read at Open Mics, Arts
Activism readings – no opportunity: make one! Post on Facebook, send your work to your legislators,
make a gorgeous broadsheet, leave poems in taxis, on paper tablecloths. The bottom line is:
OUR WORLD NEEDS YOUR VOICE!
NOW!
THIS IS THE LATER
YOU WERE WAITING FOR!
Judyth Hill… poet & provocateur...
Put a Spin on the Planet: Write!! [email protected]
www.judythhill.com  www.eat-write-travel.com
Biographia Literaria: Living the Writing Life
I often say that I'm from the "Everything Matters" school of writing.
I feel entirely blessed. I have the pleasure and privilege of devoting my time to making and
performing poems, teaching writers of all ages, free-lance journalism, teaching poetry in museums,
and generally making all the important, juicy mistakes of life.
I am dedicated to studying and teaching creative process as the next major phase in the development
of the Future Human. All while living seriously rural, in the ponderosa and aspen splendor of the
Colorado High Country, surrounded by the blessed presence of my children, my sweetheart…and elk,
deer, fox and bear; and a wealth of wildflowers!
It's a life about passion, and choices. And joy. And having fun.
Years ago, leaving NYC, my childhood home: I chose New Mexico. Chose her above all others
for beauty, for the possibility of preserving still-pristine landscape, air and waters, for her swirl of
tangy cultures, and green chile and melted cheese on everything.
And now, have chosen again. Chosen to live near my children, and my Beloved, to live my
wild, delicious Writing Life in the sacred presence of my family, and extraordinary Beauty.
My writing, performing and teaching come from my faith in the delicate and intricate
connection of our political, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, imaginational bodies, both within the self,
and within the social web, to each other.
And all of this connected to our funny bone.
I am lucky: I love to write. I love the balancing of craft and passion, the work behind the work.
And then, I love to read it to you.
Because that's what completes the circle of the creative act: it's not "whole and sole" without
your presence.
So, Everything Matters:
Being a force for good in the world, keeping a sense of justice and a sense of humor. Knowing
to fall in love with each other, good desserts, red tails in flight. To notice Bear Creek when she is
running full, the appearance of morning doves in June, the line breaks in Williams, the melody in
Yeats, the instress in Hopkins and the way the lilacs fill the city with purple blossoms in April.
To use my mother’s good dishes because she never did, and my own gift with language,
because if I don’t, who will?
Making love, dinner and connections. Getting the point. Listening deeply to the music of the
ordinary, the wisdom of elders and infants, and the night wind moving through. And singing it back, as
best my innate talents and acquired skills will grant me.
Making sure my best keeps getting better.
Admiring the plain, astonishing beauty everywhere present, and not losing sight of the fallen,
the Middle East, and oil spilling onto our so-vulnerable seacoasts.
Remembering to show gratitude, forgiveness and a little leg.
Remembering that if it’s true that 90% of success is just showing up, 10% of every effort goes
for glory.
So, I am here, pen in hand, ready, willing, able: and going for gold.
Judyth Hill… poet & provocateur...
Put a Spin on the Planet: Write!! [email protected]
www.judythhill.com  www.eat-write-travel.com
Poems that Send a Message from the Heart
WAGE PEACE
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea …and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.
Judyth Hill ~ September 11, 2001
HAZ LA PAZ
Haz la paz con tu respiración.
Aspira bomberos y escombros,
Espira edificios enteros y bandadas de mirlos de alas rojas.
Aspira terroristas
y espira niños durmiendo y campos recién segados.
Aspira confusión y espira arces.
Aspira a los caídos y espira amistades intactas de toda una vida.
Haz la paz con tu escucha: si hay sirenas, reza en voz alta.
Recuerda tus armas: semillas de flores, pinzas de ropa, ríos limpios.
Haz sopa.
Pon música, memoriza la palabra gracias en tres idiomas.
Aprende a tejer, y haz un gorro.
Piensa que el caos son frambuesas danzantes,
imagina la pena
como la espiración de la belleza
o el gesto del pez.
Nada en dirección contraria.
Haz la paz.
Nunca se antojó el mundo tan fresco y precioso:
Toma una taza de té y alégrate.
Actúa como si el armisticio hubiera llegado.
Celebra hoy.
Judyth Hill ~ ~ Traducción de Elisa Serna
#REALFACTS
I have March on my body, 3+ million beads of love sweat,
I have March on my body:
Little girls and visionmakers, babies, and boys. I saw signs:
Faggots against Fascism: we called ourselves there and out:
and I have March on my body, my Backdoor darlin’, my hotlove,
my dream for a blessed America, for Muslim peace and waterrights and no pipelines
forests and grasslands, rivers and poetry
and prayer prayer prayer.
I saw the hats and Pussy was everywhere!
We are in the Pink: and I have March on my body,
Women, men, elder and new, and everycolor:
I walked behind streams of copal carried by our sisters in beads and embroidered beauty,
and I have the smoke of the Americas on my body.
I have Democracy on my body.
This is what it looks like!
This is what it smells like!
Tastes like chocolate and honeypie, sounds like Billie and Bessie, Fats W and Mick.
I have March on body: wanna lick it off?
I’m contagious, delicious, sheer belief in the best,
rarin to go, keep going, keep going, keep going;
We got it this time!
We have MARCH on our bodies!
Judyth Hill
The Hand That Holds the Pen Can Rock the World
I believe in writers.
Because we can speak softly and loudly
and not carry a big stick.
Because we can link arms and not bear them.
Because we keep our commadres and compadres beside us,
And not behind us.
We can stage a play and a rally.
We change diapers, genres and the world.
We pick up the tempo, the children and the phone.
We make dinner, metaphors, and commitments.
Because we can write a novel, a poem and our Senator.
It’s the artist way. Not either/or.
It’s and/and/and.
I believe in writers.
We know the way of snake and moon, which is to say, edit and revise,
shift and change.
Because we apply ourselves, lipstick, and narrative structure.
Because we can form a carpool, a sentence, a chorus and a committee.
Because we think big and start small.
We take heart, take hands.
Make meaning, make music.
I believe in writers.
Because if I have and you need.
I know to lend and you know to borrow!
Because we write mysteries and bills.
Because we think circles and families.
Not me and mine, but us and ours.
Because we know how to talk together,
To cut —to the chase, and not to the funding.
I believe in writers!
We’re the next generation, the Star Fleet,
making love and films.
Because we’ve always known to cry.
We’ve always known to sing.
Teachers and nurses. Gardeners and librarians.
The work left to writers will build the new world.
We are part Papa H, part Lorca and Rimbaud,
Octavio Paz, and Joyce C O.
A smidgen of Rumi, and Barbara K,
Salinger, Marquez and Austin – J!
Daughters of Mirabai and Emily D,
Sons of Cervantes, Rilke and Keats.
James Baldwin, Gertie S. and Luis U.
Machado, Morrison and Dr Seuss,
We’re Dickens, and Langston, and Pablo N,
Alice Walker and Hopkins and Allen G.
We’re talented and passionate and plain.
I believe in writers.
We’re the hope of the ozone layer,
Mothers of the rain forests,
Brothers of the homeless, Children of peace.
I believe in writers. Writers can. It’s time. We must.
Judyth Hill
America! I’m Talking to US!
America, we tore down the sycamore forests and built Wal-Marts!
I wish we didn’t have to talk this way.
Let’s walk in high grasses along the Rio! Where are the marsh birds?
Our addiction to electricity has blotted the stars from the nightsky!
Don't make me say this! Believe me, this is hurting me more than it hurts you.
Bring back Orion! Bring back the Pleiades!
America, I don't want to be our Cassandra - I don't want to be our Persephone.
I want black bears and honey bees. I want to grow hollyhocks and blue sage.
I want be there when the Monarchs come flying in. I would be grateful
for a life without strip mines and holes in the Ozone.
Let’s learn the tango and get a second chance in Mississippi!
Let’s deliver hot lunch all over Appalachia, down comforters in the Shelters,
Greet refugees at the airport with roses and dinner, clean sheets.
flower boxes in the subways and replant our parking lots with amaranth and quinoa!
We want Original, not Institutional! And we mean pronto!
If I never drive up for a burger again, it's OK by me! I can lie down with chocolate!
America, come to the table and we'll talk: I'll make tea, and Sky High butterscotch pie.
Show me your best side - aspen forests, and rainbow trout leaping in clear creeks,
Show me your hardwood: I can take it.
America, I’m here with baskets of new baked bread, my red cape on,
heading into any forest left.
Judyth Hill
Song for the Dark Times
In the dark times will there still be singing?
~ Bertolt Brecht
The mariposas have arrived.
My vecino tells me they are the souls of the dead come to visit.
My mother has now the splendid body of the Amazon Swallowtail, my Father,
as he would have loved, a Monarch.
A neighbor in Jalpa says the butterfly’s migration is in danger,
their comida in east Texas decimated by drought and char,
forests overlogged,
corn and soy modified to resist herbicides, and those sprays
have taken out the milkweed.
The butterflies improvise, change tactics and appetite:
fill ditches with the milagro of their trembling color,
turn fall’s flower gardens into tableau vivants,
settle in boisterous clouds on maple and oak.
Here in the blue blue sky of October, that deep autumn shade,
they wing vivid, exuberant from their feast on cosmos,
also in final falling to seed.
Poetry is a farm of listening, grows the green of the Possible.
In an autumn of marigold and bee buzz,
Finality of nectars sweet as truth,
I say aloud the name of my mother, Suzanne Schack,
my father, Edward Schwartz.
I add the names of Los Muertos, the Ones who dared to write,
disclosed secrets kept in the pockets of Power,
the Ones that stood with what they knew:
Hugo Alfredo OLIVERA CARTAS Juan Francisco RODRÍGUEZ RÍOS and María Elvira HERNÁNDEZ GALENA:
Enrique VILLICAÑA PALOMARES Evaristo PACHECO SOLÍS Jorge RÁBAGO VALDEZ Jorge Alberto OCHOA
MARTÍNEZ Valentín VALDÉS ESPINOSA José Alberto VELÁZQUEZ LÓPEZ José Bladimir ANTUNA GARCÍA
Norberto MIRANDA MADRID Ernesto MONTAÑEZ VALDIVIA Martín Javier MIRANDA AVILÉS Eliseo BARRÓN
HERNÁNDEZ Carlos ORTEGA SAMPER José Armando RODRÍGUEZ CARREÓN Miguel Angel VILLAGÓMEZ
VALLE Miguel Ángel GUTIÉRREZ ÁVILA Candelario PÉREZ PÉREZ Alfonso CRUZ CRUZ Bonifacio CRUZ
SANTIAGO Francisco ORTIZ MONROY Gerardo Israel GARCIA PIMENTEL Saúl Noé MARTÍNEZ ORTEGA Raúl
MARCIAL PÉREZ Hugo Alfredo OLIVERA CARTAS
Let us say the names of these fallen.
Become the Ones that continue on.
Tell this Story:
No single butterfly makes the entire journey.
The navigational clues mysterious, ancestral, magnetic.
Flavor of milkweed, scent of future.
Gathered together, the many as one,
flowers in flight: they arrive in Michoacán.
I wrap myself in the Tallit of Remembrance.
Stand, say the Kaddish of Butterflies.
Judyth Hill
Pollen for President
What if today
we plant bulbs for Spring, so tulips
hyacinth and crocus will remind us of the day
we committed to Beauty, to love
each other well, to music, to take to the streets
and our pens, write poems
and letters, dance and paint, sing out,
speak up, stand with and for sweetness and the rights
of all, all. Vow to believe in blossom and what opens
delicately into color, into various. Bee and buzz,
hum rows of peace. Be river, and blessed and easy.
Let our voices be garden. Get out our seeds, promise to do our part.
Judyth Hill
Carolyn Forche: