My Story
I'm John Gillespie, the host of Poetry Medicine for the Soul.
Poetry started for me in 8th Grade (1963-1964) in Ms. Fogg’s class, where she taught E & S (English and Social Studies). We had to memorize most of “Paul Revere's Ride” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1860. It was a requirement since Newton, MA, was next to Boston.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.
The other poem etched in my memory is “Barbara Frietchie” by John Greenleaf Whittier. It was first published in the October 1863 issue of the Atlantic Monthly and later included in Whittier's collection In War Time and Other Poems (1864). The one line that still resonates for me is:
"Shoot if you must this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag," she said.
In September 1996, I read The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. It changed my life forever. I left my full-time CFO job to start an outsourced finance & accounting company in 1998.
Inspiration
Poetry over the years has provided me with an ongoing spark, the ability to sit with situations, and to then engage in critical thinking. Here are the five poem excerpts that guide me :
Finding Your Own Way:
Traveler, there is no path
The path is made by walking....
By walking you make a path
- From "XXIX" by Antonio Machado
Engaging Questions:
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
- From “Sometimes” by David Whyte
Staying with Questions:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
- From "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke
Taking Action:
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
- From "The Journey" by Mary Oliver
What is Life Calling You to Do?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- From "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver
About the podcast
John Gillespie launched Poetry Medicine for the Soul in 2020, in partnership with Wendy Pearson, Director of the Stockbridge Library in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Together, they produced the first four seasons of online poetry readings as live Zoom sessions, which are available on YouTube.
John transformed the program into a podcast starting in Season 5, after a move to Maine. In its many years as a poetry program (and hundreds of episodes), Poetry Medicine for the Soul has welcomed poets from all over the country and beyond to share, explore, and celebrate their work.