It’s hard, this uprooting. Getting back into my poetic life of making art and writing takes time and goes through several stages that overlap and repeat, until at some point something begins.

The leaving and the arriving

Leaving the UK house, cleaning and packing, and closing down. That’s hard, emotionally and physically. The travelling – that’s hard on the poor temporal body, forced to shift out of its circadian rhythm into the completely reversed timezone. Not to mention all that bad food eaten on the way in desperate attempts to find some energy.

Arriving is good. For a day or two. Being welcomed and hugged – that’s wonderful. Then everyone gets back to their normal life and I fumble around, trying  to feel at home in NZ. I recognize streets but find familiar buildings missing – experience as metaphor.

Gathering resources to re-start

I find a garden centre and buy green for the balcony and bright red and pink geraniums. They catch my eye and remind me to breathe.

I go back to the wonderful library and find books. Buy more books from second hand bookshops. I build up a hoard of books as if they might save my life. I get the new biography of Simone de Beauvoir and read it with my breakfast, as if she might hold the secret.

It’s so bright here my eyes hurt. And so cold that I’m back wearing socks and using the electric blanket.

Making a space for the work to happen

I unpack my paints and brushes, move the furniture in the spare room, create a temporary studio.

Leave it untouched for several days.

Catching whispers and attending to them

My fuzzy, overworked brain produces some amazing disconnected prose poems, that I tuck away to do something with later.

In a book shop in the mall, I spy a set of felt pens that don’t so much whisper as shout to me: “Buy us! You need us. We’ll help.” I buy them.

In a sewing shop, I am tempted by embroidery threads and material. A friend tells me about some books on stitching as art. The library again provides. Daughter-in-law lends me her sewing machine. I clean it. It sits in the kitchen, waiting its time.

I read some of the old journals that I brought with me – I knew I would need to be in touch with my other self, in the other place, in other times. I make a list of ideas from there that could be interesting to do some more work on.

Letting it happen, and not happen

One of the possibilities on the list attracts me more than the rest. Pulling out the brown paper and the new pens, I write on it some themes and ideas that matter to me, that thread through my life and my art-making. I use the colours the make long lines around the page. I find myself starting to decorate the lines with little repeated patterns. An hour later, I am still working.

Some kind of poetic life has returned.

Two days later, the felt pen drawing is put aside and painting begins.

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If you need to re-seed your poetic life, you could try

• acknowledging the pain, and the joy, of whatever has stopped you being with your poetic self, being creative

• gathering resources for the re-seeding

• catching whispers from your intuitive self and attending to them

• connecting with an earlier you, who was in the flow of making work

• doing something very simple, like drawing patterns and colouring them

• letting something happen

• letting something not happen

• giving yourself the time you need

If you need a helping hand, Catching the Whispers starts in the New Year and will take you gently and deeply through many of these steps.