PWSA Fourth Annual Undergraduate Symposium

METANOIA POEM

April 29, 2022

Metanoia:

In writing and revision, the transformative experience of metanoia begins with a moment of pause – the moment when a student begins to break, even slightly, from a previous belief, action, style, or identity, thus opening an avenue for new movement in the writing.

Kelly A. Myers, “Metanoic Movement”

Everything begins…at the break

  Jacques Lacan

Regret    stuck in webs   in rooms   deep rivers

of remorse

 

(it gets away from you

as the waves break)

 

where breakdown leads to breakthrough,

where noise cracks through the silence:

 

if we’re all going in different directions,

how did we end up here?

 

Approach the complexity of the situation – the complexity of the break:

 

(I don’t have the energy);

I will find the energy      though

 

the path is blocked,

 

words fail –

words fall through

 

a language puzzle-

 

incomplete

 

different from what we expected:

challenging:

it knots us

 

breaking the fear of fear.

 

Do not fear the unknown: it is through chaos we learn to progress.

But do fear complacency: stagnation is the end of all flow, the end of a break.

 

A writer is a rebel, a willful and artful act of creation, a breaker

of rules, a crafter of tools.

And there where the seemingly meaningless lies,

there lies the duty of the writer:

 

to create beyond limits – for themselves and all their Others.

 

So, to what purpose, April?

 

Winds of desire stir

a world in which we live, poetically,

 

and offer no rest for the weary at heart,

nor for those who sink into the cracks

into the static of time.

 

 

A period only means another sentence is coming:

Pause:

It is beginning:

 

Build    break    rebuild –

(the world’s ending anyway.)

 

Give me something

 

I can hold onto                     letters.

Written by: Amanda Naoum, Amelia Foo-Fat, Betty Paton, Emma Piersanti, May Mac,  Michelle Pattison, Samiul Samin, Suha Momand, Zarin Rahman