In this article, poet and writer Esther Vincent Xueming reflects on the kinship between writing and wandering.
Inspired by Mogli’s “Wanderer,” she explores how poetry mirrors the pilgrim’s path: attentive, open, and tender to life’s mysteries. Through words, she journeys across landscapes of Earth and spirit, seeking presence, meaning, and belonging. She is a National Centre for Writing virtual resident in collaboration with National Arts Council Singapore.
Section art painting for Pilgrims, Red Earth (Blue Cactus Press)
Copyright: Chan Shu Yin (Shucolat)
Oh the wind in my hair
It sings my song
To be a wanderer and to go home
–”Wanderer”, Mogli
I discovered Mogli’s words on Spotify a few years ago and my heart started to sing: I too felt the wind in my hair singing my song, I too felt the cracks of the Earth beneath my feet turning into craters. I yearned to be a wanderer traversing the Earth, like a peregrine falcon migrating in the winter and returning home in spring. Looking back at my poems in my debut poetry collection Red Earth, especially the poems in the last section Pilgrims, I find that poetry for me is very much like wandering, a journeying in search of what it means to live and breathe with attention and presence on this Earth.
What does it mean to be a writer?
What does it mean to be a wanderer?
A writer, I think, has to be in love with words, but more so, in love with life. A wanderer, I think, is someone who is in love with movement and stillness, with leaving and returning, with journeying and seeking, with exploring the Earth on her two feet, walking to discover, walking to feel alive.
A writer is someone who feels the wind in her hair, and closes her eyes and smiles to herself knowing that the wind is caressing her body, singing her a love song. A writer is someone whose heart is open to the many secret whisperings of the Earth, for example, to the tiny frog hopping desperately at the bottom of a school staircase landing. A writer stops in her tracks and observes the tiny creature hopping against the concrete stair, squats down and reaches out her palm with care, bringing it slowly towards the little frog, allowing it to choose to crawl onto her palm, onto her fingers, brings her hand to her face and greets him, hello, little guy, are you trying to get home? A writer will bring this lost frog back to the eco-pond, squat down and place her hands near a wet leaf, and the frog will hop onto this leaf–green, wet and full of life. A writer pauses, listens and observes. A writer cares and pays attention. A writer attunes herself to the rhythms of the universe. In doing so, the world opens itself up to her, revealing great mysteries and simple wonders.
I find that poetry for me is very much like wandering, a journeying in search of what it means to live and breathe with attention and presence on this Earth.
A wanderer is someone who steps into a different time and place, not unlike the writer, and is able to trust and release the need for control and certainty. A wanderer walks the Earth, feels herself grounded and supported by the Earth, but also trusts in being guided when she meets unfamiliar landscapes and strange terrains. A wanderer is prepared to let go of what she knows to meet the world as it unfolds itself to her in each moment. A wanderer journeys in openness–to recycle Jane Hirshfield’s words, a wanderer seeks widened knowledge by standing in the open–and relies on the kindness and generosity of those whom she meets along the way. Beings seen and unseen, from the rhinoceros hornbills honking across the Kinabatangan river to the naturalist tipping you off an orang utan sighting, from a restaurant cat clawing at your thighs to a friendly Luang Prabang hotel staff welcoming you back in surprise and elation, from the dolmen’s reverential stillness to the wild whippings of the wind in your hair on the Aran Islands. Her heart remains curious, open, longing to hold all that she experiences–birdsong, river, forest, night sky. In wandering step by step, the path reveals itself to her beating heart, and she learns truths about herself she would otherwise not have known if she had stayed at home.
A wanderer then, is a kind of writer, writing her life with her two feet, walking the Earth just as a writer is a kind of wanderer, open and curious, travelling across time and space through the landscapes of her mind, her words wandering off the page across oceans and continents into the tender folds of your heart.
Esther Vincent Xueming
Esther Vincent Xueming is the author of two poetry collections: womb song (Ethos books, 2024) and Red Earth (Blue Cactus Press, 2021), and co-editor of two environmental anthologies: Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Ecowriting (2024) and Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore (2021). Her poetry anthologies Poetry Moves (2020) and Little Things (2013) are widely taught in secondary schools in Singapore. Esther has served as guest editor for Mānoa Journal (35.2), University of Hawai’i Press (2024) and as guest regional editor, Asia for a special eco-themed issue of The Global South (16.1), University of Mississippi (2022). Her personal essays have been published in The Trumpeter, EcoTheo Review, Sinking City Review and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. A literature educator by profession, she is passionate about the entanglements in art, science, literature, spirituality and ecology.
Besides teaching and writing, Esther is an Usui Reiki Master and ANFT Forest Therapy Guide whose practice involves relating to the more-than-human world in an embodied, heart-centred way. She can be found on IG @myrtlereikihealing or on Twitter/ X @EstherVincentXM
photo credit Nicholas Yeo
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