Poiesis - the Making of Images in Words
Poiesis - the making of Images in Words - is a page where I will share poems, metaphors, thoughts and reflections on the transformative power of Expressive Arts Therapy. Below you will find links to my other pages on Expressive Arts and related topics.
Poiesis is Greek for "creating, making poetry". Poiesis - the Making of Images in Words, is borrowed from James Hillman and his book "The Dream and the Underworld". Since I consider poiesis to be the core of Expressive Arts Therapy, its Soul and Language, I am sure it will serve as an appropriate name for this page.
Symbols emerge from our inner Self spontaneously when we need them. They may intrigue us, enchant or worry us, pointing beyond themselves as they are. As long as they have something to tell us, as long as they have something to teach us, we will continue to explore them. They can guide us, give us hope, keep us company and bring about healing, but also scare and upset us. Since they are not one thing but many, woven together in an intricate pattern, like an enigma they create more questions than answers. They are on the move, ever changing, never static. As we let them live with us, listen to their stories, follow their changes, they lend us their wisdom and let us witness their transformations. And then we discover we are also changing, moving, transforming with them. Through them we cross borders, travel inwards and build bridges to our Souls and Selves. Discover means of communicating and connecting with others. Through them we create order out of chaos, form out of energy. Through them we connect psyche with soma, the known with the unknown, the obvious with the ineffable, fragments to wholeness - always those opposing aspects uniting in the symbol.
Since the symbol is a "presence of an absence" it will keep our longing alive and urge us to seek the missing half that will complete the image. Create wholeness. And give birth to something new. Do not ask a symbol to explain itself, and do not explain the symbol - it will kill it or reduce its power. Or it will just stay dumb. When it comes to you, receive it as a dear friend or an honored guest. Feed it - and you will be fed. Get to know it in its own language - paint it, dance with it, sing and play with it, write poems and talk to it. Whatever you do - donīt just leave it hanging around!
Aphrodite is a goddess of transformation - transformation through love and creation. When in love, we transform our beings, move beyond our limits, transcend ourselves. And we create love in our own image. From our dreams and hopes, from our longings, we weave a tapestry of love. From our deepest yearnings we create a song. We weave this image of our heart and sing this song of our longing. And when Someone joins us in our singing, we are not alone anymore, but together in a realm where we transcend ourSelf and move beyond, expand from within and dare unimaginable pursuits. Yes, the passion of love and love of art has a lot in common. It is all consuming. All involving. All absorbing. Great novels and poems are written because of love - and to the beloved. And art itself can become the object of desire and love. As love, art nurtures our souls and links us to something greater - something beyond ourselves.
The Dove is the totem of Aphrodite, her symbolic bird - the bird of loving communication, the bird of Soul and creative communication. But it is also a bird related to Inanna - and Persephone, sitting on her lap in Hades. In the guise of the turtledove it whispers loving words in our ears, words for lovers and people in love. And thus it can really enchant us and tranpsort us into the heaven of illusions.
Through the work of art we can experience wholeness and a crossing of boundaries. Experience a moment of total unity and completeness. In Expressive Arts Therapy those moments can be many and truly transcending, and the merging of borders may be both blissful and frightening. It can be experienced as a blessed shedding of armors. And it can certainly leave us vulnerably skinless, flooded with images and emotions. Thus it is necesarry, both for teachers of this profession and therapists advocating this art, to create a safe space where this search can take place, where it can be explored and experienced, and to some extent, met.
What cannot be said have to remain in Silence - or be expressed in a Poem.
Please note that this text is copyrighted by UniKrea_Art and is not to be used without permission.
Do you have any thoughts you would like to share concerning the Expressive Arts? Please get in touch! You can reach me through e-mail: unikrea_art@yahoo.com
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