Call & Response: Why Write a Collaborative Poem? [poem & commentary]

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On February 25, 2024, ten contemplatives gathered at Still Place Retreat Center in Mt. Rainier, Maryland for a Call & Response Poetic Vespers Day Retreat.

During the evening vesper hour, we considered the practice of call & response poetry as a collaborative threshold practice. We read a call & response Psalm, as well as several vesper-themed poems. We called across the thresholds of time of day as well as centuries, keeping conversation with the words of our ancestors.

There’s a popular image of the poet as one who sits alone in her room, channeling images and ideas to inspire future verses. While this image is sometimes accurate, it doesn’t reflect the powerful ways that poetry can also build community. Reading poems with others, and discussing them, is certainly one wonderful practice for building relationships with humans and with the poems themselves. But what does it look like to write a poem with other people?

Collaborative poetry can take many forms. During our poetic vespers retreat, we spent an hour in silence, holding space for each poet to respond to the sixteenth century aphorism from St. John of the Cross, “in the evening of life, we shall be judged by love.”

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Here is the collaborative poem that emerged from that silent listening:

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I had the honor to serve as editor for this poem, listening to the stanzas to discern when they wanted to speak. I appreciate the different voices that emerge in these verses: who is the “I?” who is the “we?” Who cries out in confusion, and who invites us to rest? St. John of the Cross wrote the original refrain, but is he the only one speaking the words, “in the evening of life, we shall be judged by love?”

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The collaborative poem itself serves as a conversation parlor, asking questions that many mouths have spoken through the ages: “what is mine to do?” “Could I be a poet?” Just as ten contemplatives gathered last month in the room pictured above, the stanzas of this poem serve the purpose of the original Italian meaning of the word stanza: “room, stopping place.”

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I’m grateful to the following contemplatives who contributed the visual art pieces and poetry stanzas included in this post, all created in response to the sixteenth century call from St. John of the Cross, “In the evening of life, we shall be judged by love:”

Carla Boccella, Polly Duncan Collum, Margot Eyring, Lorie Preheim, Andrea Stutzman, Judy Walsh-Mellett, and Melanie Weldon-Soiset.

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