Loose Leaf Notes

That’s the way I introduced my friend Katherine and myself at the Death Class Poetry Reading that we presented at Yoga Jam 2023.

She  is a Life Passage Ceremonialist who leans towards the study of the spiritual masters, like the Dali Lama. I am more drawn to the work of master mythologist and Irish wise guy Michael Meade and to the study of Quantum Physics, which I refer to as the LSD of science because it blows my mind. We are both interested in psychology and consider our poetry as depth psychology meets death mythology.

I shared with the group of about 25 how Katherine and I have been close friends for more than 30 years, and how we knew each other before we knew each other, referring to the fact that we both had published articles in Mothering Magazine in the ‘70s and unknowingly worked at rival daycares in the same town in Massachusetts around the same time. In Floyd, since 1985, we raised our kids together (all boys who were all friends), attended women’s circles and created community via the Blue Mountain School, Women’s Wellness Week, celebrations and gatherings and more. And now we are sharing and blending our poetry memoirs together.

“What is a poetry memoir and how can I learn more about doing that?” someone asked. I think Katherine and I both wanted to leave our stories as a legacy to our children. As poets, poetry was an obvious medium. Our histories are sprinkled throughout our poetry that weaves together personal and universal themes, and even some humor and word play.

‘What is a Death Class?’ another attendee asked. I explained that my interest in death came when my brothers, Jim and Dan, died a month apart in 2001. It rocked my world and resulted in me writing a book, The Jim and Dan Stories, about growing up as 9 siblings, my brothers’ deaths and the grief process. Alan Forest, head of the counseling department at Radford University, read the book, made it part of his class curriculum on death and bereavement for counselors and asked me to be a guest speaker at the class, which I did for about four years before the book went out of print.

More recently, Alan, who is recently retired, learned that Katherine and I have been on a Soulful Aging Poetry Reading Tour, sharing our poetry in a call-and-response style, setting up readings and reading poems that delve into loss, grief, aging and death where we have been asked to. The Death Class Reading was born there in that RU class that Alan invited us to. Katherine and my topics overlap, and our styles and voices are different, which gives the readings a deepening and a multi-layered experience to listeners.

Every death is a big bang / that blows up our pretense / splits us like atoms in two / Wherever you go / a part of me follows / and I carry a part of you… When my brothers died, I was only 50 and not yet thinking about taking my own leave from this world, but since Kathrine and I have both broken the age barrier (hitting 70) our poetry reflects that as way to “apprentice to our own disappearance,” which is a fitting term coined by poet David Whyte. More recently, our Soulful Aging has morphed into exploring our developmental stage of life as Transcendence.

If you want to know me / Be still and go within/ To your own welcoming soul / We can meet there anytime / The more familiar it becomes / As you reside there / You will know/ All you need / to know me…   Katherine has written poignantly about the death of her sons’ father, her niece and close friends that she attended to and created memorial services for. She read from her new book Streaming from the Inside: Navigating Middle Elder (see my review HERE.)

Held in the Yoga Jam Tea Shanti Oasis, along the Greasy Creek, it was a good turnout with focused attention and shared discussion.

Our books are available for sale on Amazon. Just google our names, Katherine Chantal or Colleen Redman to find them.  HERE is an intro to my latest book Poems from the Darkroom.