Canadian poet Tanya Davis recently put out a new videopoem in collaboration with filmmaker Andrea Dorfman: How to Be At Home. Coming a decade after Davis’s and Dorfman’s award-winning piece How to Be Alone, this more recent adaptation feels just right for these days of quarantine and almost bottomless uncertainty. Her poetry feels so here-and-now that it’s easy to imagine it’s written just for us. Her softly insistent voice is not only deeply soothing, but she offers us sound advice and a boatful of compassion as we live through these stormy times together—even while social distancing.
How to Be at HomeHere are just a few snippets of the poetic wisdom that Davis’s poem offers:
1. Go InwardRight from the start of the poem, Davis doesn’t mince words in addressing the perennial challenge of coping with anxious and fearful thoughts. “If you are, at first, really f*cking anxious, just wait. It’ll get worse. And then you’ll get the hang of it.” Our emotions are a journey, and no matter how bad we feel one moment, we can know they’ll always change. Sometimes, keeping ourselves busy is the best thing to do:…
