Our church has a variety of small group offerings. Some of the groups have been started and are led by lay persons. Others were started by church staff. The Faith Formation Board has loose oversight of the groups. It doesn’t control them in any way, but the board does try to keep track of the groups and help members and friends of the congregation informed about the groups and how individuals can participate. I regularly attend several groups and there are others that I have attended on occasion just to discover their nature so that I can recommend them when new participants inquire.

One of the fun groups is a poetry-writing group. They meet twice each month. Their meetings begin with a round of sharing of “homework” poems. Each meeting ends with a prompt to inspire poems. The prompt might be a photograph, or a quote, or a question. Each participant has two weeks to create a poem inspired by the prompt. The group is very supportive and has fun discussing the offerings. Sharing the poems takes about a half hour. Then a prompt is given and the group pauses for five minutes while participants write. Another round of sharing follows the short writing time. That process is repeated a second time. After the third round of sharing, an hour has passed. The group passed around responsibility for giving prompts, with members working in pairs to come up with them.

Susan has been participating in the group and I have gotten into the habit of asking about the homework prompt. From time to time, one of the prompts inspires me and I try to write a poem. One of the things that the process does is to remind me that I am not a poet.

I went for years during which I read little or no poetry. During college and graduate school, I was focused on my academic reading. I was reading very little fiction in those years as well. When I graduated and began my work as a pastor, I continued professional reading, but I started reading novels for recreation. Little by little, I discovered a few poets and now I usually have a volume of poetry that I’m reading alongside several other books that keep me entertained. I enjoy having multiple books going at the same time, which is a good thing because I have a couple of small groups that I facilitate that are book discussion groups.

The prompt for the poetry group a couple of weeks ago caught my attention, and I took a moment during a break from work to write a poem. It wasn’t great literature, but it amused me and I decided to bring it to the group. I was worried about the following prompts, when there are only 5 minutes for writing, but the group is so supportive that I didn’t find the process to be intimidating.

It might sound like the poetry group is pretty tangential to the life of the church, but from my point of view, I’m delighted that the group is part of what we offer. One Sunday earlier this fall the group produced lyrics for a song that was sung in worship. Group members offer creative writing skills to the congregation in a wide variety of ways, from helping with publicity to crafting liturgy. The church has a long tradition of supporting the arts and poetry has the power to express religious concepts and experiences in ways that reach beyond prose. We know some of the great poets of the church through the words in our hymnals.

I don’t think I’m likely to become a poet. I’ve become too accustomed to using words a bit too freely. In my essays, I allow myself to ramble on, without imposing much economy on the choice of words. Poetry requires a particular discipline with words. One of my seminary teachers gave us poetry assignments. I used to balk at those assignments and often struggled to produce anything. I remember receiving a paper back from that professor with these words written at the top of the page. “Good. Now say the same thing in half of the words.” When I read the teacher’s comments my first reaction was that I’d been given an impossible assignment. How could I convey the same meaning without using my words? I somehow succeeded, but wasn’t pleased with my project.

Over the years, however, I have gained an appreciation for the ability of poets to convey deep meaning with few words. I suspect that that ability comes in part from disciplined work. They craft poems, edit poems, and revise poems regularly until they have honed skills and developed abilities. I have not applied such discipline to my writing.

Because I was a preacher, I learned about the distinction between oral and written communication. Effective public speaking involves the use of repetition, sentence fragments, and vocal variation that do not come across well in writing. Conversely, many written documents are dry and difficult to follow when read aloud. I practiced the art of telling stories throughout my career and eventually developed a preaching style that led me away from reading manuscripts. I still would create manuscripts for some of my sermons and always used them for funerals, weddings, and other special occasions, but the bulk of my preaching was done without written notes.

During the time that I was working on learning the skills of effective oral language, I discovered that many poems come across very differently when read aloud than when read silently. From the days when I beat a path from the library to my tree house and back again, I have enjoyed silent reading as a hobby. I read a lot of words without speaking them. Poetry, however, now invites me to speak aloud even when I don’t have an audience. Speaking words gives me a fresh perspective.

I’m unlikely to ever become a poet, but understanding poetry might help me craft meaningful prayers. I’m grateful to the poetry group for pushing me out of my comfort zone for an evening and reminding me that I still have much to learn about the processes of communication.