During the first wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, in April 2020, I was living in community at Osho Leela in Dorset.  Leela means play, it’s a Sanskrit word referring to the Divine Play of the Universe: Creation in the process of Creating, of being Created, of Being.  I was at Leela, in lockdown.  And I was curious to explore what it meant to be under imposed constraint.  How I felt about that.  What were the possibilities for creative play, creative freedom, within constraint.  

I chose a constraint-based poetic form, John Cage’s Mesostic, to give rules and restrictions to my creative practice – and I found ways to express my autonomy within that.  I was exploring the dance between subjectivity and objectivity – which I have also explored at length in my thesis on Utopian Poetics.  

I used an online Mesostic Generator available from ModPo at U Penn.

Cage gives a lengthy explanation of the detailed formal constraints of the Mesostic, before adding: “Then I take out the words I don't want. With respect to the source material, I am in a global situation. Words come first from here and then from there. The situation is not linear. It is as though I am in a forest hunting for ideas.” (John Cage, my emphasis).   

If Cage allowed himself to take out any words he didn’t want, I would also allow myself to add in any words I wanted.  I would alter the lineation, capitalisation, and visible traces of the spine word – giving myself the creative freedom to make the poem according to what felt most appropriate visibly, rhythmically, energetically and intuitively, within the limited resources available to me and instigated by the initial exercise in constraint. 

I wrote: “Cage allowed himself to take out any words he didn’t want.  Autonomy.  Subjectivity.  Creative interplay between subjective & objective.  I will also allow myself to add in any words I want.  Co-creativity.  Manifestation. Abundance. Limitless Possibility. Expansion. Growth.”  

With respect to the source material, I also am in a global situation.  My source materials were gathered from the internet, from emails, from my own notes, from poetry readings, from conversations and from whatever I could copy and paste during those early days of the pandemic.  

I asked myself the questions: 

What happens if I…? 

What happens when I …?

To whom will I give the power to decide whether lockdown is a tool of liberation or oppression?  

I set out to practice co-creativity in lockdown.  To find limitless possibility within limited form with limited resources.

And I took note of Laynie Browne’s words: “No one knows exactly what they are setting out to do because poetry is a living transmission whose evolution is linked to other bodies in time”.  I linked my poetry to other bodies, other beings, other words and others’ words.

This performance works with found objects and improvised interaction with my environment to focus on the creative play between enforced domesticity and strange intimacy during life in Lockdown.

Music: Shaking Music from the Osho Kundalini Meditation.

Big thanks to Jane, Kat & Luna for allowing me to appropriate your space!

Click HERE to watch the performance.

Click HERE to get the ebook.

Sally-Shakti Willow

22 March 22