Art and poetry in the blog

Casorati by Daphne Maugham

Art & Poetry in the Blog

As a mentor coach, I help women coaches grow their businesses and become better, more masterful coaches. I want to inspire you to grow and stretch in all your abilities, including the arts. Each blog post here includes a lovingly curated selection of paintings and poetry. By women artists and poets. Here’s why this is important to me.

As women, we are creators and we all have creative abilities. Sometimes we lose sight of that or we think we aren’t talented enough to create. And that’s the saboteur in our psyche that tells us these lies. So every poem on this blog, and every painting is a reminder of the creative capacity of women specifically. Because it needs to be highlighted.

I have two young daughters. As I began speaking to them and teaching them about art, I was embarrassed to realize I could not name more than two women painters. So it became a labor of love to uncover and learn about all the amazing women who have come before me and struggled for their art. Women who struggled against poverty, violence, ridicule, dismissal, oppression, and much more.

We live in a time and place where we have the freedom to create. That freedom may not be perfect politically or financially but it is so much more than others have had in the past. So it is our responsibility to step fully into our power as women and create. Even more so, we must embrace our creativity and put it to use in the world. We must have the mindset that we can grow into our creativity and our creative expression; it is not a binary trait and more importantly, it can be cultivated. It can be developed. It can be nurtured.

So I encourage you to develop the side of yourself that connects to art and poetry in all its forms. I encourage you to consume art and I encourage you to create it. Let yourself explore and cultivate the meaning of art in your life. Sit with the poems in the posts on this blog. Let them marinate in your mind for a minute or two. Take in the paintings one by one and enjoy them for what they are. Notice the brush strokes and the shading and the subject. These works of art and poetry have been curated just for you. ;-)

How to leave the world that worships ‘should’ by Ros Barber

Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.

Let junkmail build its castles in the hush

of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst

and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.

As hours go softly by, let others curse

the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.

Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.

Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,

immense and wordless, simply understood:

you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -

now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.

See how each wave arrives at last to heave

itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe