When my daughter was small, I found very little time for my writing and began to rely on residencies in focused bursts. When I told this to Alice Notley, a key mother-poet in my life, she scolded me and said I should touch in with my work every day, even if for a few minutes. Although she didn’t put it this way, I’ve come to understand that we need to tend to the living weave of thought and feeling that becomes writing, just as we tend to other things we want to keep alive, like children and plants. While I still find it hard to focus on my literary work every day, under the crush of various forms of duty, I try to keep a little ritual in place at least a few days a week, even when I’m traveling or very busy with other things. It’s simple: I read something that wakes up my brain, light a candle, and put on music. (I listened to Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports over and over while writing my most recent book, Memory Rehearsal.) The music can’t have lyrics—at least not in a language I readily understand—and it can’t be too New Agey. Then I write. “Writing” can mean reading what I’ve previously written, sometimes without the intention of doing anything to it, just living with it again. If I’m short on time, which is often, I’ll spend ten or fifteen minutes looking at my work, and I skip the candle and music. Sometimes I have to put a timer on for the reading and writing parts, to keep myself focused. The thing that can’t be skipped is reading; we need to feed our brains. Another poet I studied with, Diane di Prima, was very forceful: She told us we should be reading at least three hours a day, advice I tried to follow for many years. And in this era in which we are swimming in distractions, it’s ever more important to nourish this part of the mind, which in turn nourishes the psyche and the soul and the spirit by tapping into the creative web of living thought.
—Eleni Sikelianos, author of Memory Rehearsal (City Lights Publishers, 2026)
Photo credit: Kostas Tzoumas / EUROKINISS