Q & A

 

Answering the poet Mary Oliver

Mary Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (1990: 362-3)

Me Oh, what a question! Wade in rivers, suck clover, make small books, belly laugh, see the clouds from above at sunrise, swim in cold water, write poems, paint, get soil under my fingernails, kiss, toboggan, pay attention, be curious …

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question (n) = a sentence or other utterance whose function is to elicit information; from the Latin root ques, meaning ‘to seek’ or ‘look for’

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In early October, I had an email from author and poet Leslie Tate, inviting me to be interviewed for her website. I was intrigued. I had a look at her website, saw the range of artists that had Leslie had interviewed and the wealth of information her questions had drawn out of them, and accepted her invitation.

Answering Leslie’s questions reminded me of my experience of being in an Action Learning Set earlier this year. An Action Learning Set is a group of professionals who meet to support each other’s practice and development (International Foundation for Action Learning, undated). My Action Learning Set was organised by The Hub (www.thehubuk.com) and funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. It brought together a group of eight diverse but like-minded people across the UK for a series of online sessions.

The concept of Action Learning was developed in the 1940s as workplace-based professional development tool by management scientist professor Reg Revans. Over a number of sessions, each person in the set gets a chance to present an issue that they feel stuck on. The goal is for the presenter to leave the session with a series of realistic actions that they can put in place to help address the problem and move them forward. This happens by the set following a carefully structured framework, much of which involves the set member asking the presenter questions.

For the first 5-10 minutes, after the presenter has given a basic outline of the issue they’re bringing to the group, set members asks the presenter Yes/No questions, which are referred to as clarifying questions. Their main purpose is to help the set members understand the practical details and context of the presenter’s problem. So, for example, if an artist was stuck on whether to increase the price of her work, the other set members might ask:

·         Will this be your only source of income?
·         Are you thinking of selling online or in a physical space?
·         Do you write down what hours you work and what you spend on materials?
·         Have you spoken to other artists about how they price their work?

Then follows 20-25 minutes of open questions – questions that begin Who, What, Where, When, How and, occasionally, with care, Why. To continue with our fictional example, the set members might ask the artist:

·         What makes your work unique?
·         Who would you like to buy your work?
·         What would you like them to do with your work?
·         What has led you to think about increasing your prices?
·         What’s stopping you from asking for more for your work?

These open questions are asked with respect and empathy for the presenter. The presenter can take as long as they need to answer, and they can choose not to answer. They are questions that help, questions that guide, questions whose gentle but challenging intention is to bring the questionee fresh insight, not to provide answers for the questioner.

As a set, we gradually got better at asking what our trainer Fi Mason called ‘killer questions’ – the ones that really moved the presenter on in some way, but I found all the questions I was asked useful. They made me feel seen, heard, validated, supported and motivated, helped me gain clarity, and encouraged me to be more confident and concrete in my thinking. One tangible outcome for me, for example, was the creation of this website and blog.

Back to Mary Oliver, and her questions in ‘The Summer Day’. The poet draws our attention from the vast (‘Who made the world?’) to the much smaller, (‘Who made the swan, and the black bear?’) and then to the even smaller (‘Who made the grasshopper?’), finally focusing us in on one specific, here-and-now grasshopper, and its tiny jaws and eyes:

This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Those tiny grasshopper eyes are tiny. They are also ‘enormous and complicated’.

Life is long. Life is short.

I leave you with Mary Oliver’s ‘killer question’: ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’

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Below are the questions Leslie sent me, great questions that gave me the opportunity to reflect on and expand statements I made here on this website. To see my responses, see go https://leslietate.com/2021/12/13832/ Rachel Godfrey, Reflections in Writing (1) and https://leslietate.com/2021/12/13840/ Rachel Godfrey, Reflections in Writing (2).

  • Could you give a few examples, please, of what you call ‘writing used as reflective practice’. How do you work as a facilitator for Creative Writing for Wellbeing?

  • What have you learned about other people and yourself from teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)? How is it different from other kinds of teaching?

  • Tell us about your published books and other writing. What transfers across from one genre of writing to another?

  • Can you describe examples of what you call the ‘relationships between our inner and outer landscapes, and the stories to be found there’?

  • Could you tell us how a poem comes to you and is reworked? What are the differences and similarities to writing books?

  • Could you give examples, please, of what you mean when you say creativity is about ‘drawing something – our thing – out of some pre-existing thing or stuff’.

  • In your experience, how is it possible to use conscious intention and logic to explore the irrational and dream aspects of self (or creativity)? What’s the relationship between these two different approaches to experience?

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References

International Foundation for Action Learning (undated) https://ifal.org.uk/Where-Action-Learning-Comes-From-and-Where-Its-Going [Accessed 10.11.2021]

Oliver, M. (1990) ‘The Summer Day’ in House of Light, pp262-3. Boston: Beacon Press

 
Rachel Godfrey