About Me

I am Caroline Dijckmeester, I am Dutch / Argentine, but I dream, think and write poetry in English.  My reporting has been published in the WSJ,  on Times.com, PBS Newshour and VPRO. I make podcasts and offer Human Design and In Your Own Words- Sessions.

When writing,  interviewing people or working with clients, I listen to the language used and things left unsaid.   "Words create worlds" wrote Rabbi Abraham Heschel.  I agree. How you say something and where you are speaking from matters. It can bring something new into existence.

Finding my words has been such a trip. It still is. My relationship to the blank page is contentious. For years I was trying to write from a place of  logic and reason and I would freeze.  I went to journalism school, I worked on a daily news program hoping that a continuous writing deadline would cure me of this fear. It didn't. It exacerbated it. 

After moving close to a Dutch channel, I’d run into metal cargo ships passing by. Etched on their flanks I noticed  names like Matrix, Midlife Crisis, Fidelity. I started to riff on these words.  In journalism I always interviewed others, now for the first time I was exploring my own curiosity.  @Cargo_poetry was born.

It’s become a place where I risk being myself.  A place which is not about making a point, but to be open to what emerges from within.  To be playful with the confusion clouding my thinking.  To trust that following the rhythm of the words, will take me to a new place. I have seen my prose shift to poetry over time. 

Looking back, I realize I had been trying to force a pinhole camera to shoot full color, and getting exasperated with the results.  I’m slowly discovering there was nothing wrong with my writing machine to begin with. It just came with different operating instructions.  Through Human Design and just doing the writing, I continue to experiment with my process.   Writing still causes tension. But for the first time, the blank page is also becoming a place of adventure and joy.

I  believe others don’t always know how to work with their specific wiring either.  So often we judge our writing  and try to push through it.  But have you actually tried to dance with it?  In the different sessions, I make room for that wild exploration.