“But still, you’ll live there beside the ocean”

Even though I’ve said to you that she hardly ever wrote a full-page poem, I know of one that I think relates to writing. And I’d like to read that if I could. I happen to have a copy of it. As far as I know it’s never been published, but I’ve kept Ursula’s poems from our group and I remember this one very well. And I think it relates to our discussion about writing.

It’s called The Practice.

That was writer Molly Gloss introducing and reading one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s unpublished poems that she kept from when they were in a small poetry writing group together. This was in conversation with David Naimon on his podcast Between the Covers in the 10 February 2022 episode “Crafting with Ursula: Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line”, at 42:04.

Check out the podcast to listen to the poem in full.

GC shared this podcast episode with impeccable timing, as always.

Edit 29 Jan 2023: The original version of this post had a transcribed version of Le Guin’s poem. But it was pretty presumptive of me to publish it here considering Le Guin had decided not to publish it in her lifetime. Finally got round to removing it today.

I really recommend listening to the podcast in general, but also of course to hear the poem. If for some reason you can’t listen to the podcast but still want to hear it, just email me. I do still have it written down privately.