Why poetry on Rim of Africa?

If there is one thing Rim of Africa guides are really keen for every hiker to do – it’s to keep breathing: To breath in. And to breath out. And for that poetry is essential.

Poetry as an in breath – an in~spiration.

To help us see more clearly. To walk awakened. To pay attention and to be astonished by what is around us and inside us.

We use poetry because…

We seldom notice how “each day is a holy place.”

We seldom realise that part of the mystery of walking is “that the destination is inside us.”

We seldom remember that “to step out, is to step in, to walk is to be still, to journey is to return.”

We use poetry because, as Stephen Graham said: “When you sit on the hillside, or lie under a tree in a knot of indigenous forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, – the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.”

We use poetry because as John O’Donahue put it,…

Here is a poem written by a Rim of Africa guide that we might read at the start of a day or for a period of walking in silence, … 

The Blow Away Soon by Sandra Hill

When the wind comes,
go to a high place
and there, build
an altar,
of sticks and stones.

Look through your pockets.
Open your fists.
Let the sand from your shoes.
Shake the scent from your skin.

Some things are for keeping,
others for the wind.

Poetry as the out-breath. 

Poetry as exhalation and maybe even of exaltation. 

Writing poetry crystallises experience, helps us relive it, and gives others a little taste of the mystery of where we’ve been, and of who we are.

I Come Here by Zaheer Karolia (who walked the very first Rim of Africa. Been back a few times for more)

I come here ravaged, torn, blistered
To these mountains…
To these mountains that exude energy
I am folded into the power of their granite
Pressed out and made smooth again
The rock and grass and sky scour me of all the rust I accumulate
Unnecessary thoughts
Things I don’t need to think
Stories I don’t need to tell
These mountains are a healing ground for me
A pilgrimage
Here I find the root of the root of my thought 

There is Nothing by Liesl Ravenscroft

I am learning that there is nothing
in life to hold on to,
except the welcome of wet washed rocks
on a high-honed peak
and the greeting of softened ochre  
on horizons, sun-smeared.
Lick of flame replying to my breath,
in dark sutured by stars
and in pools seldom seen,
the slap and grip of breath-chasing swims,
these things I know I can come back to
when all else falls away.

Excerpt by Tony Davenport

And the stone taught me that all things re-form with time
And the snake told me to strip the next layer
And the seed signaled death and rebirth
And the plant fibre suggested we are all connected
And the blossom whispered fragility and love
All things come and all things go
It was not really a walk.

Why poetry? Because on Rim of Africa it is as essential as breathing.