How do you go about writing for the bees?

Bee lore escaped me until I entered the world of poetry. “Tell it to the bees” is a tradition that’s both ancient and modern, built from ancient Greece and at home in the most domestic of settings. The tradition rests on the idea bees can slip between the living world and the world of the dead, that they are messengers, predictors and vessels for our secrets.

I asked this bee to pose for me. It did a good job. The bees we tell are honey bees, but they’re not a good in front of the camera.

This idea has got me thinking. Over the past few weeks, during those liminal moments between waking and sleeping I’ve been jotting thoughts about what I would write if I had no name, or how I would talk about all the decisions I’ve never made. I have begun to crave anonymity, to see it as freedom and realise the constraints that writing in public brings. I have so many snapshots of poems on my notes app, the things that come in the middle of the night (with various degrees of sense) and so many of these are words that could become something that resonates and that I’m proud of.

Here lies the conundrum. To write to be read means being comfortable with people knowing what’s inside. Being comfortable with people knowing what’s inside means being comfortable with yourself, and with the story that got you to this place of needing to put it down on paper. It also means being comfortable with the fact that people may be angry or upset about what you write.

Or does it? the brilliant thing about being a writer is that it allows us to use metaphor as a means of expression. It allows us to create scenarios that are close enough to the truth to feel like our story, but not so close as to be recognised. This in itself offers a way through the concerns but is also prone to pitfalls. The quest for concealment and protection can supersede authenticity and dilute the reality of emotion. If I think about some of my favourite poets, like Sharon Olds for example, their work is bold, honest and raw. Poetic techniques are used to add depth and power, rather than to conceal.

Which brings me to a point of no real answer. If I write as though no-one will read I have to take on the risk of hurting either myself or other people. If I cover up and conceal behind technique, am I being honest to myself and the connection I want to create with the world? I’m increasingly frustrated by the raft of poems I have but dare not publish, for fear of exposure and recrimination (I consider many of them to be some of the best things I’ve written) yet I am still cautious and a still afraid. What do you think? How do you go about writing as though you’re writing for the bees?

Thinking about how I consider what ideas to expose, and what I still hide has led me to delve back through my somewhat muddled archives (I found I have 32 documents called “document”). Looking at some of my really early poems I cringe a bit at their clumsiness, but I’m also impressed by how bold they are. They need refinement, which I’ve set as a project for the next few weeks. More than anything I was surprised how many poems I have squirrelled away and even more surprised at how many I want to keep, even in their rawest form. Even the most terrible ones have value, if only as a snapshot of events and my personal response.

Maybe the truth is I am afraid of myself and the key to becoming brave in what I share rests in self-acceptance. A wise friend once recounted the fact that once she’d had extensive therapy a part of herself was unlocked, and tracking back through I can how my experience of EMDR therapy shifted the themes and thoughts in my work, offering a way to flourish through the pain. I also know there are subjects I long to tackle (for example the experience of being part of various acutely evangelical organisations) and that it may be time for their emergence.

More than anything these abandoned poems seem to be a diary of growth, a diary that may make its way beyond the bees.

Another of my bee photos. Fuzzy bundles of loveliness.