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Focusing with Poetry

- hosted by Marie Mc Guigan

 

You are most welcome to the Irish Focusing Network Website and to our Poetry Corner. My name is Marie McGuigan and I am from Belfast. Swans

This Poetry Corner came about as part of the planning for the Irish Focusing Network website in 2021. I have a deep love of both poetry and Focusing therefore combining both was simply a sheer joy. It is a creative space in which to have, a guided Focusing experience, with a poem. We all carry within us the capacity to imagine and give shape to our world, which can offer a pure and blessed way of living.

 

We will launch the Irish Focusing Network's Poetry Corner, with a poem written by myself Marie Mc Guigan called "Deeply, Deeply, Deeply". Please click on a poem's image below to access the poem's page, in written word and/or to listen to our recording on YouTube.

 

We use the Focusing process to lead-in, pause and connect with whatever felt sense may have emerged and resonated with a particular word/phrase or the whole poem. Then we share some felt meaning and reflections from the experience. This is a great medium for sharing ones love of poetry. You may even discover many new poets who resonate with you as others who are interested in this application submit poems using the Focusing process.

 

"Train yourself to this, trust whatever comes" - "Letters to a Young Poet" Rainer Maria Rilke.

 

My email address is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to share with me any comments or reflections about the Poetry Corner.

We hope you enjoy our poetry offerings.
- Marie

 

We welcome your contributions.

If you would like to offer a contribution to the Poetry Corner we invite you to submit a poem of your choice by audio or a video recording. A short introduction to the poem with a reflection after your reading, inviting the listener to engage with the poem using the Focusing process. We would need to have your poem offering one month in advance as this will allow time to prepare a video accompaniment to the poems.

 

Whether you are new to poetry, a lifetime lover of poetry, or a poet yourself, lift the poems off the page and into your embodied experience. Let them live in your pulse and your breath and your voice. Let them pour out of you, into the space between you and others. Your whole being will come into alignment. And that wholeness is contagious.

Saved by a Poem by Kim Rosen
Publisher Hayhouse 2009

 

Poetry Corner

This is a great opportunity to share our favourite poets and poems using Focusing to gently evoke felt senses, felt meanings, symbols, and memories.

In the following poetry offerings, you are invited to click on the image of your poetry choice, and allow yourself to rest into the guidance, the silences, the resonances with the words, or lines from the poem. To further explore the focusing way with poetry click here to access our main poetry page.
Deeply, Deeply, Deeply
by Marie Mc Guigan
Recited by Marie Mc Guigan It has been a pure gift to join the Irish Focusing Network on zoom weekly in giving and receiving, helping me to connect deeply with how I am carrying it all at this time..

Click here to go to the poem
Breath
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Recited by Marie Mc Guigan For our third offering of the Irish Focusing Network's Poetry Corner I have choosen a poem called Breath by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Click here to go to the poem
Ask Me
by William Stafford
Recited by Tom Larkin This poem was chosen by Tom Larkin. Watch the video below to hear Tom recite the poem and offer some guidance along with it. You are in for a treat with Tom's offering.

Click here to go to the poem
For Beauty
by John O'Donohue
Recited by Marie McGuigan This poem was chosen by Marie McGuigan. I hope you enjoy this offering and your own focusing time with the poem/blessing.


Click here to go to the poem
 

Focusing with Poems cont'd

More Poems

Clearing
by Martha Postlethwaite
Recited by Mary Jennings I have read this poem many times, used in mindfulness sessions, especially for very busy people in the caring professions who tend to care for others , sometimes to the neglect of their own well-being.

Click here to go to the poem
Guesthouse
The Guest House
by Jalaluddin Rumi
Recited by Marie McGuigan For our seventh offering of the Irish Focusing Network's Poetry Corner I have chosen a poem called The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi.

Click here to go to the poem


dragonflywings
On Dragonfly Wings
by Maggie McCarney
Recited by Marie McGuigan Maggie Mc Carney is a friend and former colleague of mine who has recently published her first book of poetry reflections called "Luminosity, Words of Reflection".

Click here to go to the poem
The Breeze at Dawn
The Breeze at Dawn
by Rumi
Recited by Marie McGuigan There is something so powerful about the words 'Don't go back to sleep' in this short but beautiful poem. Allow yourself space and time to listen to it and welcome whatever is touched inside.

Click here to go to the poem
 

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