Endless Open Heart: Collaborative Poetry and Image as Contemplative and Restorative Practice

In this article, we share how during a time of retreat from our academic careers we engaged in a shared contemplative arts process that included two practices, the first being renga, or linked verse poetry, and the second being Miksang, or contemplative photography. Through our particular collaboration, we sought to co-create a space where healthy habits of mind and open-hearted awareness were nurtured through practices of spaciousness, restfulness, curiosity, and compassion. In this way, we manifested a process that has been restorative for ourselves and that is potentially helpful for other artists, teachers and researchers.

n this article, we explore collaborative poetry writing and Miksang (contemplative photography) as a way of inquiring into our lives compassionately and kindly: a form of restorative practice. As women who worked for years in precariously contingent and parttime positions in postsecondary Faculties of Education (Richardson, 2015), and who both, at the time of writing this article, were employed full-time at small Canadian universities on opposite sides of the country, we are attentive to how the shifting conditions of our work life affect our well-being in the academy and the quality of our lives overall. Here, we share the collaborative poetic and contemplative process that we developed while we were in a period of transition and retreat from our usual academic roles and labour. Finding ourselves in unexpected and disconcerting terrain with destabilized identities and a need to relax expectations, we sought to trust and feel our way and relate to our experiences with compassion, gentleness, and kindness. As our creative and healing process deepened, we discovered renga or linked verse, a form of collaborative poetry writing that felt like a perfect form of expression for our collaborative work. Later, we also expanded the scope of our work through integrating Miksang photographs with our poetry.
Throughout our adult lives, we have both been students within various spiritual and contemplative traditions, including Shambhala Buddhism. Also, we are both writers/poets who engage with meditation and other contemplative practices as ways of living in the world. We draw inspiration from contemplative practices and collaborative writing as creative inquiry (Jordan, Richardson, Fisher, Bickel, & Walsh, 2016;Walsh & Bai, 2015, 2017Walsh, Bickel, & Leggo, 2015). And, as teacher educators, we have also integrated artful, narrative, and contemplative practices into our personal and professional development and into our work with students (Schnellert & Richardson, 2016). We place our work alongside those who work within various arts disciplines and/or spiritual traditions as they inquire into their lives as artists and educators in caring, creative, and collaborative ways both within and beyond the academy I (Allegranti & Wyatt, 2014;Bhattacharya & Payne, 2016;Bickel & Snowber, 2015;Gale et al, 2013;Litovitz & Wolff, 2008). We also align ourselves with researchers and artists who specifically foreground contemplative practice in the inquiry process (Bhattacharya & Payne, 2016;Franklin, 1999Franklin, , 2012Gradle, 2012;Jordan, 2013;Neilsen, 2004). Through artful and contemplative process in research, teaching, and everyday life, we broaden and deepen work we have explored previously, particularly in terms of our aspirations for healing and restoration (Jordan, Richardson, Fisher, Bickel, & Walsh, 2016;Richardson, 2015;Walsh, 2018;Walsh & Bai, 2015, 2017Walsh, Bickel, & Leggo, 2015). Our inquiry has taught us ways in which compassion, gentleness, and kindness can be nurtured through a creative and collaborative process. While neither of us had intended a retreat from academic labour at the time it transpired, we realized that it was an opportunity to deepen our understanding of non-attachment and compassion with regards to our work lives and academic identities. Through our processing, we came to renga, or linked verse, 1 as a poetic form that both embodies and advances these ways of being.
Our contemplative inquiry and collaborative writing process has had three phases thus far. First, we met monthly by Skype to meditate, write, and discuss our writing and meditation experience. We framed these meetings as contemplative retreats with each session lasting about two hours. Typically, we would sit in silence for 30 minutes, then write for 15-20 minutes, then share and discuss, which generated more notes and writing. We met monthly for five months. The next phase involved working with the accumulated reflective writing that we had done during these sessions and composing renga, which we will describe below. To compose renga, we drew both on the reflective writing accumulated over five monthly retreats (in the tradition of found poetry 2 ) while also integrating our immediate perceptions and experiences through fresh images. In this way the renga verse evolved with both our past and immediate perceptions included. The third phase, which we discuss below, involved integrating Miksang images with the poetry as a visual dimension.
Renga is a form of poetry that arose in medieval Japan. Although it was written by poets, it was also practiced by "low-ranking monks," who "would often compose their linked verses under the cherry trees … at Buddhist temples" (Barnhill, n.d.). Renga was also written by members of the royal court and of the general population whose subject matter might include "a host of different events-everything from births to deaths to political successes to even impending battles, not to mention renga gatherings themselves" (Carter, 2011, p. 2). 3 The renga began with an initial verse of three lines, called a hokku, which was written by a poet of "skill and experience who could produce verses of true excellence" (Carter, 2011, p. 2); others would then join the writing process. The three lines of the hokku, like haiku, were comprised of 5-7-5 syllables. In fact, haiku as a poetic form was originally derived from the hokku that were written as the initial verse in a renga (see Carter, 2011).
Renga, then, has a relatively set structure of lines and syllables. A renga verse consists of five lines: a tercet of 5-7-5 syllables and a couplet of 7-7 syllables. Renga is composed collaboratively by two or more poets through a process of linking verses. For example, author A composes a verse comprised of a tercet and couplet, then author B writes a subsequent tercetcouplet verse. Author B's initial tercet must link with the couplet above it written by author A. In this way, the couplet by author A and tercet by author B create a distinct five-line renga verse on its own. The challenge and gift of the renga form is that each stanza must relate equally well with both the preceding and following stanza. As we wrote our renga, we read the verse that the other had written, contemplated the verse, and then wrote a new tercet and couplet that was responsive-and that also brought fresh perceptions, images, and ideas to the poem.
While renga can continue up to a 1000 lines through an ongoing poetic collaboration, 4 it is not to be read as an uninterrupted flow of verse. For example, the first tercet is only to be read in relation to the second couplet and not in relation to the third tercet. The second couplet can be read both in relation to the first and third tercet but not both at the same time. The first tercet disappears from the text and each subsequent stanza is embedded solely within a meaning structure created by its immediately adjoining stanzas. As the renga unfolds, various topics emerge and dissolve; there is no attempt to create a unified whole. Rather, the renga is like a cascade of images and feelings. This creates an experience of shifting meanings and relational movement through the apprehension, appreciation, and release of words and images. In this way, renga embodies Buddhist notions of impermanence and interdependence through its composition and structure (see Barnhill, n.d.).
In accordance with our initial aspiration to co-create a space of care, restoration, and healing, we consciously worked with kindness and gentleness towards ourselves and one another throughout the various phases of our process. Exchanging these short verses several times a week, we stretched a thin but steady poetic thread across the country through which vitality and engagement could be communicated. We resonate with poet Melca Litovitz who, in a duologue with Elena Wolff about their renga writing process, says: "It's giving me life. It's the momentum that's carrying me through life because writing is so important to me and right now the renga line is a lifeline" (Litovitz & Wolff, 2008, Duologue section, last page). And, "collaborating intensified the creative power to enliven and gratify, touch and transform, soothe and heal." (Forward section, last page). As the writing of the renga progressed over weeks, months and multiple pages, we found that we often could not remember or distinguish who authored which verse. Our identification with our words came to matter less than our experience of the creative process and the shifting flow of experience. Our intrinsically interconnected and empathetic natures surfaced. Through poetic exchange, we engaged in a form of the Buddhist practice of Tonglen, the exchanging of self for other (Chödrön, 1994). Tonglen teaches us how to compassionately open our heart to the suffering of another and extend wellbeing in exchange, thus growing in our awareness that we are not and never could be separate from each other. Of their collaborative writing, Elena Wolff (2008) likewise says: [a]t the beginning I really did feel that we were two separate voices, but by the third or fourth renga, I felt a coming together. We became more attuned to the other, more empathic. There was even an emergent 'third voice'.... An embracing voice that included both of us. (Duologue section, 4 pages before the end) The third phase of our writing process involved integrating Miksang photographs into the renga; this phase took place when we were revising our poetry. Although we had not originally planned to include a visual dimension to our creative work, the possibility arose unexpectedly. When Pamela arranged to have our renga exhibited in the gallery space of a local meditation centre, 5 we discussed how to display the poetry in the physical space--and were inspired to include the visual dimension of Miksang. Miksang is a contemplative photography practice in which the practitioner attunes with the phenomenal world through the use of her camera; she attends to visual "flashes of perception" from a place of tender open-heartedness (McQuade & Hall, 2015). As such, like the renga process we outline above, Miksang is a practice of consciously noticing the concrete details of experience and also of working with impermanence: of fully experiencing whatever arises, and then being willing to let it go. (In Miksang, the technical aspects of the photograph are less important than the intent of being present and in-theworld.) We aspired to juxtapose renga and Miksang in ways that evoked more and more interpretive and responsive possibilities: beyond what the poetry on its own might do. We chose photographs from Susan's Miksang collection 6  Through our particular collaboration, we sought to co-create a space where healthy habits of mind and open-hearted awareness were nurtured through practices of spaciousness, restfulness, curiosity, and compassion. In this way, we manifested a process that has been restorative for ourselves and that is potentially useful for other artist-teachers-researchers.
We have experimented with renga in a workshop context, and found the process of beginning with free writes to be useful (ex. What brings me joy? What do I appreciate?). Similar to the way in which we based some of our renga on free writes we did after meditating together, the texts of the free writes then served for participants as the starting place for the writing of haiku. Participants then passed their haiku to another person, received a haiku from someone else, and contemplated the latter silently. Each person then wrote a couplet from associations, images, words and/or feelings that arose from their contemplation of another's haiku. This passing along/receiving/contemplating/writing process can continue indefinitely-and over time-through the alternating of haiku (tercet) and couplets, as we have described above. A visual dimension might also be introduced at any phase of the process. For us, the juxtaposition of Miksang photographs with our renga verse came towards the end of our creative process. Doing so opened generative gaps, at times disjunctive, between the words and images: a multidimensionality that created new insights, connections, and possibilities.
Contemplative arts practices such as renga poetry and Miksang can teach us about living with awareness and appreciation for ourselves and our conditions-such sensibilities are enhanced when working collaboratively with intentions about compassion and kindness and healing/restoration. Our offering here is an invitation into ways of being that help us to live well together in and with the world through contemplative and artful practices.
Educators need to be well in order to serve others. Collaborative contemplation and artmaking increased our self-awareness beyond what we could achieve on our own. Mindfulness meditation, collaborative writing and the sharing and reshaping of our inner-landscapes are means of enlivening our relationship with the phenomena of our lives and enhancing our reflective capacities. We offer our own process and renga as a structured approach for creating conscious and articulate experiences with a healing intent. May all teachers be well.