Wake, Butterfly: Orb Weaver with Gabrielle Calvocoressi

The Poetry Magazine Podcast

In the first episode, Gabrielle Calvocoressi invites listeners to make a web.
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Matsuo Bashō wrote:
Wake, butterfly—
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.
Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié.
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Here’s an edited version of Calvocoressi’s prompt:
Make a web. Use whatever form of web making comes naturally to your orb-weaving self. Could you make a web that connects one part of your room or the place where you are to another? This can be theoretical, spiritual, pragmatic; it can be tactile, it can be sonic, it can be visual, or just the deep web of memory.
Could you make enough space for a ghost to come through?
What’s your web? Get as intricate as you want. Weave and weave, and just let your mind make the form. Or you want to get physical? Find yourself a ball of string and whatever mobility means to you. This can be done in bed. This can be done alone or with others. Construct a web.
You can stop right there. You don’t have to make a poem. Nobody has to make a poem. But if you want to keep going, you could make a poem that contains all the things that you caught in that web.
Could you make a form called an orb weaver? What would that look like? What would your orb weaver look like?