Inspiring poetry and spoken word event with Sovel Cunningham

On an Autumn October evening we found “space to unwind the mind” thanks to the inspirational Sovel Cunningham who took us on a journey – “Just being me” – a poetry & spoken word event on Zoom.

This was scheduled as a social event for Club Members – and in “normal” times we would have probably held an event in the hall where we meet or gone out for a meal together.

We began with the Soroptimist Vision and Mission, read by Vathsala, which always focuses our minds at the start of an evening.

Soroptimist Vision Women and girls will achieve their individual and collective potential, realise aspirations and have an equal voice in creating strong, peaceful communities worldwide.

Soroptimist Mission Soroptimists transform the lives and status of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities.

Sovel Cunningham is a poet. She began by giving us wise words about needing to create space to unwind our minds in the noisy world we live in.

We each spent time “downloading” everything we had done in the day – starting with the last thing first and going back to the start of the day – most of us were amazed by how much we had done in one day! Next we did a breathing exercise to relax and ground ourselves.

We had all been asked to bring a piece of nature with us – there were shells, leaves and berries, an acorn, a pear, a stick, a flower and a sumac tree cone. Then we in turn had to describe our items to one another, including the feel and the smell and why we had picked the item. Next we each wrote a few sentences about our items before breaking into four groups. The groups then worked together to take what each person in the group had written and collate all the words and thoughts into a single poem.

At the end of the evening the four groups of three and four people came together with Sovel again and read out the poems they had created. The results are below and everyone was amazed at how beautiful they sounded. People said after they had finished reading the poems “what an amazing process”, “this was a very surprising experience”, “it was moving how it flowed, surprising how it all fitted together”. “The evening was something a little bit different.” “Inspirational.”

To round up Sovel said “There is so much in nature to pick up on, it brings people together. We can all explore poetry – there is no set format, it brings people together and unwinds the mind”.