At Portals of Perception we often find ourselves at the frontiers of knowledge and emerging perceptions, where finding the right language to express the leading edge of what we see and know can be a challenge. So we brought together several accomplished writers – Libby Wagner and Holly Thomas from the Pacific Northwest - to help us explore what might be called the poetry of transformation, or the words and imagery that can evoke and help us feel the deep inner process of expanding awareness and renewal.
One writer describes poetry as a way of saying the unsayable, describing something that actually is beyond language. Other writers describe poetry as one of the bridges from the realms of the unseen and not yet manifest to the physical world of the mind
and senses. Reaching beyond the membrane of the here and now to what lies beyond.
Yet poetry and the poetic are all around us in the theater of life, always latent everywhere, even in the most mundane moments. How can we see, or feel, or hear it? Poetry invites us into that process.
To be fully human means I've experienced this world as a physical being, but also there's this mind, and this other realm, that edge of transformation that you're talking about, that I think we're constantly trying to make connections to. And so, for me, the way I access it is by being as present as I possibly can.
Libby Wagner
One of my favorite ways of being is in wonder and curiosity. What if? What about? Why? I’m drawn to conversations and contemplations about the Beautiful Questions in human life. As a poet, I walk about trying to name things, to use my sensory experience in the world to make sense of it, even when I know that I’m trying to say the "unsayable." This doesn’t deter me from trying to connect, express, reveal. In my organizational work, I create spaces and places where people can connect with their artistry to arrive transformed by their conversations and their creations.
Holly Thomas
The right poem at the right time can loosen, trigger, or buttress almost anything. As intimate catalysts, poems distill and extend our experience—sharing everything from fear to relief, and from dismay to benediction.
As an editor, poet, and painter, I often teeter between creation and critique—with the risk of stifling creation by prematurely attempting to interpret or refine it. But when I find my balance and trust what is emerging, something with a life and agency of its own seems to enter the world. What happens next depends on those it touches.
Aviv Shahar
Aviv is the Founder of Aviv Consulting, helping leaders unleash strategic innovation, and is the author of Create New Futures: How Leaders Produce Breakthroughs and Transform the World Through Conversation.
