Julia Cameron: “I wish I could take language / And fold it like cool, moist rags. / I would lay words on your forehead.”
Today we feature Julia Cameron—writer, poet, and heroine of creatives everywhere
Julia Cameron, who is most well-known for the cult classic book The Artist’s Way, is the writing version of a polymath. She is an author, teacher, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, journalist and more.
And—she is also a poet!
One of her poems in particular has been a faithful companion to me for years: “Words For It.”
Kafka said that language should be an axe for the frozen sea inside us, but Cameron says that language can soothe and heal.
“Words For It” begins: “I wish I could take language / And fold it like cool, moist rags.”
It continues: “I would lay words on your forehead, / I would wrap words on your wrists.”
There is such kindness in these simple images—language as a soothing cloth.
Another verse:
I wish I could take language and daub and soothe and cool Where fever blisters and burns. Where fever turns yourself against you.
I love the physicalization of language in this poem—and the longing that drives it. It is powerful to think of language as a tool, a bandage, a conveyor of comfort & care.
And as for the longing in the poem, I have felt that too. There are times when one yearns for words to have an impact that is almost physical. This can happen when writing a letter to a struggling friend, or writing a condolence card to someone who is grieving.
I think it can also happen when a poet is writing a poem with a certain type of flicker, a certain type of splinter & heat. A poem that can reach right into someone’s pain and whisper hush now, whisper rest now, offer solace, offer warmth.
Read the full poem here.
Cameron’s multi-faceted creative career started (somewhat accidentally) in journalism. Fresh out of college, she was ready to be an “important writer.” But, she needed a job. 1
A friend got her an entry level job at The Washington Post as a copy aid, helping writers and opening mail. It wasn’t long before she got her own byline and “became known for snappy, stylish pieces on everything from nail polish trends to politics.” 2
Eventually, she left to freelance for publications like Rolling Stone. This was when she met & married filmmaker Martin Scorsese. However, during these years, her creative career mirrored the archetype of the “suffering artist.” She struggled with addictions to alcohol and cocaine.
After becoming a mother and going through a divorce, she realized that she needed to confront her addiction. This led to a new kind of writing, and a new kind of spirituality, as outlined in this excellent article in The Guardian:
“When I started getting sober, I was told that I had to pray,” Cameron says. “I said: ‘Prayer? Not me!’
“They said: ‘You must believe in something.’ I thought about it and then I realised that I believed in a line from Dylan Thomas: ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, that particular creative energy that makes something grow to be a petunia or a pansy …
“It struck me as being far more benevolent than the concepts of God that I had grown up with.” The thought freed her own tortured artist, facilitating free and full expression; she has been sober for 44 years.
This marked a sea change in Cameron’s life. This is when Cameron learned to “write sober.” (In interviews, she refers to a glass of scotch almost as if it were an office supply—as necessary as paper and pen for her early writing.)
This is also when she developed her signature philosophy—creativity as a spiritual practice. In fact, when she was developing the book The Artist’s Way, a boyfriend told her that she should franchise it. She responded that it should be free, like a 12-Step program. 3
(If you go to her website, you will find an FAQ that gives guidelines on how to form reading groups for The Artist’s Way without having to pay a fee or request permission.)
There is a collection of poems available on Cameron’s website called Remembering. It has poems about addiction, prayer, spirituality, seasons, and the creative process. It has lots of love poems too. (And a few love-that-didn’t-quite-work-out poems.)
Here is a sampling of excerpts.
In “Remembering,” she asks someone who is lost (perhaps in addiction?) to remember who they are and where they came from:
Cast off your shame. It is an old coat. Remember who you are. You are a star, A mountain, that fountain in the sun. Your heart is the velvet cave. Where birds sing.
In “Mark My Words,” she describes aging:
These days, your face is lined like paper. The scrawl and scratch of time Makes it match mine. In the photo on the bureau, You were young and dapper. In the photo, back at zero, we had time.
In “Why We Write,” she opines:
We write because language is slippery, And truth is. We write because The light we have to see by Is always shifting.
In “Jerusalem is Walking in the World” (one of Cameron’s favorite of her own poems!)4 she describes spiritual joy:
This is a great happiness. The air is silk. There is milk in the looks That come from strangers. I could not be happier If I were bread and you could eat me.
And, lastly, the short poem “Summer,” always gives me a chuckle when I get to these lines that surely describe a heat wave:
In bed, we turn our bodies slowly,
Like rotisseries.
Read the full online of collection of her poems here.
More, please
Julia Cameron’s website, full of goodies, including links to her poems and her musical scores.
In this video, she discusses how she came to discover that creativity and spirituality were linked. Here is one quote from the presentation:
“I began to realize that they were actually what we would call ‘dancing partners’… that if I said to you ‘let’s work on your creativity,’ you would work on your creativity—and wake up spiritually! And if I said. ‘let’s work on your spirituality,’ you would find yourself using your creativity.”
In this video, Julia Cameron and Liz Gilbert discuss creative practices, intuition, and seeking “guidance.”
Fun fact: Did you know that Eat, Pray, Love wouldn’t have existed without The Artist’s Way? It was through the practice of Morning Pages that Gilbert got in touch with her desire to learn Italian—which was the basis for the Eat part of her trip’s trilogy of adventures.
Here are some wonderful podcasts that she has appeared on:
In The Good Life Project podcast, the host travels to Cameron’s home for the interview. It is a sweet & intimate chat that covers a lot of Cameron’s life, from stories about her childhood home (apparently, it was THE place for playdates in the neighborhood—as it was always full of art and cookies) to the the difficult years when she was newly sober, newly single, and newly a mother:
In this interview with the London Writers’ Salon, Cameron is delightful. Her personality really shines through when she reads a couple of her poems—and when she breaks into song!
Yes, halfway through the interview, she sings a few verses of the first song that ever “came to her,” from the first musical that she ever wrote. Her tale of how the song came to her reminds me of Liz Gilbert’s famous telling of Ruth Stone’s poetic process—how when a poem visited her, she would run from the fields to the house—“racing” the poem—trying to reach pencil and paper before the poem moved on.
In Cameron’s version, she is racing up a hill from a walk by a mountain creek to reach her friend’s house. As soon as she arrives, breathless, the friend grabs a tape recorder to help her “capture” the song.
In the part of the interview where she reads her poems, she says:
“I love stepping out from behind The Artist’s Way and saying, well, this is the Artist that made The Artist’s Way.”
How about you? Did you know that Julia Cameron wrote poetry? Do you have a favorite poem?
See you tomorrow with a new poet!
Jenny
Lovely all around 💛, and I have some material I need to watch now.