Sideshow: Finding the Words

What happens to your poetry practice when you suddenly lose your words?

Sideshow barker Juliet Cook writes about how surviving a health crisis is only the beginning in a series of challenges, which include struggling with words when you used to be prolific, losing people you love and contending with the guilt of not being grateful enough for simply being alive.

Juliet’s article talks about her writing practice before and after her stroke and how words — not always the “right” ones, sometimes even more interesting ones — come.

Here is an excerpt:

I’m very pleased and happy that I am still so passionate about and turned on by poetry.  I’ve always drawn my poetic words from various sources, including product packaging, TV shows, scholarly articles, pop culture, porn and more.  Now, due to my own weirdly, slowly healing brain power, which continues to have a hard time remembering lots of little words without extreme concentration, that extreme concentration seems to be causing big, strange, oddball words and phrases to suddenly blurt out of my head.

Click on the excerpt to read the entire article. Check our About page for a list of other Sideshow Barkers, friends of Big Tent Poetry who are generous enough to share with us their columns, interviews and reviews. There is no set schedule for these appearances; willy-nilly is a symptom of creative genius!

Tags: juliet cook