Shapes of Writing and Grief by Andrea Corrie BEM

 

I’m now into the fifth year of running a local creative writing group — a role that is delightful and rewarding in equal measure. As the group has become more established, my challenge has shifted to finding fresh and engaging aspects of writing for us to explore together. I usually introduce a topic for discussion, followed by prompts to trigger some writing, which often produces excellent results both in our sessions and in between meetings.

Recently, we explored the sonnet and its structure — quite advanced stuff! — and it prompted some of the group to create their own modern sonnets. That session was sparked by this description from Scottish poet Don Paterson:

As poetry moved slowly off the tongue and onto the page, the visual appeal of an approximately square field of black text on a sheet of white paper must have been impossible to resist. Which is what the sonnet is, first and foremost: a small, square poem … a sonnet is a paradox, a little squared circle, a mandala that invites our meditation.

It wasn’t until I began facilitating the writing group that I realised that, in my mind’s eye, I see pieces of writing as distinct shapes.

When I think about producing an article, I see the shape of a diamond: it begins narrowly with its introduction, broadens in the middle, then narrows again towards its conclusion.

A poem might take the form of a square or rectangle; a piece of free prose, a loose circle. Some pieces of writing have layers, like an onion. A short story climbs like a hill — rising to a peak before descending through its turning point, its dénouement.

As I sat with this idea, I began to realise that, for me, grief has shapes too.

Becoming a bereaved parent in 2005, with the sudden loss of my 19 year old son James, threw me into the maelstrom of grief in its most acute form.

There is a well-known — and much-debated — model that presents grief as a series of stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. I have often struggled with these headings, as I do not experience grief in a linear way. Instead, it seems to move in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back pattern, particularly in the early days.

New, raw grief presents as an amorphous tangle, like unravelled wool — a formless scribble on a page that has no language and makes no sense. It doesn’t sit neatly in ordered stages. Rather, it may take on a kind of spiral form, moving you along and back, along and back, each time with a little more space, a little more settling.

The laments of grief appear as jagged shapes — sharp and sudden, like the visual burst of ‘Pow!’ and ‘Wham!’ in a cartoon.

Later, loss may settle into something tidier — perhaps a symmetrical cylinder, where the darkest sediment of despair sinks to the base, while lighter memories rise and effervesce at the top.

Then there is the familiar ‘ball in the box’ analogy. At first, the ball fills almost the entire box, striking the ‘pain’ button again and again. Over time, the box remains the same, but the ball shrinks — and the impact comes less often.

Personally, I tend to shut away the most painful aspects of grief in my mental picture of a lidded box. At times, it feels right to open that box, to sit with what is there, and then gently close it again. I have found contemplative prayer, writing, reading and meditative time all help to create that space.

The chaos of early grief gradually resolves as we live through its reality, until it takes on the form of something more defined — a unique, three-dimensional shape that is as individual as each person’s path.

And so it is with a piece of writing. When I sense that a piece holds the right shape, it seems to draw itself together into its proper form, often with surprisingly little effort. Perhaps this reflects the interplay of inspiration, experience, and imagination that underpins creative writing.

Taking time to consider the shapes you see — in both grief and writing — may prove helpful to others too.

Try it and see.

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