The Poetry Saloncast

Troublefunk is an American Love story, and it's also about the many things that “push against a relationship and against love.” In his book, Manuel investigates his parents' love story, what brought them together, what pulled them apart, and how music factored into that story. The poems center around two characters, “Damon” and “Denise,” who are based upon the author's parents. Set in the 1970's and 80's the poems tell the story of “Damon,” who was a DJ who knew how to play songs that would make the community feel free. Denise was beautiful, intelligent and hard working. For years they loved each other intensely, but over the years both internal and external forces tore them apart. The book both celebrates their love at the same time it questions the belief that love, on its own, is enough to save.

W. H. Auden says that poetry makes nothing happen. But how do you actually do that? How does a writer embody nothingness? In this interview MT Vallarta discusses her collection What You Refuse to Remember, from Small Harbor Editions. This collection is created of short prose poems separated by large chunks of white space and silence. Vallarta discusses the way that this collection came to fruition as her “real” dissertation that she wrote alongside her scholarly dissertation for her Ph.D. program. This book allowed her to explore things she could not explore in her essays. The poems are lyrical, full of metaphor and simile, and also many pauses where readers can engage in reflection, process, engage with, and even add to the silence.

Why This Poem Matters: Listen to Tresha Faye Haefner discuss Rita Mookerjee's poem, "The Silor Moon Transformation Sequence." Hear her explain why it matters to her personally, and what it teaches her about the craft of writing poems. 

Inspiration, mental health struggles and what to make with a giant bag of tapioca starch, this conversation has it all. Rita tells me about her new book, False Offering, and a bit about her upcoming book, Banana Heart. She discusses the way her partner, Dorothy K. Chan helped her get back into writing poetry after taking a haitus and how important it is for her to see people with her background represented in the art. False Offering navigates much of what it means to be the daughter of Indian immigrants growing up in Pennsylvania, exploring a hunger for culture, and interogating religion. We also discuss the possibilities of finding and creating beauty and strangeness in poetry. As Rita says, poets can write about their trauma if they want to, but they don't owe it to anyone if they don't want to write about it. While she is interested in “burning it all down” she is also interested in growing something new with her writing. We also had a lot to say to one another about how to find that newness through food. So, poets and epicureans both should have a lot of fun listening to this interview and trying out some of the writing practices and recipes Rita recommends here.

“If we can't face it, we can't change it.” In our interview, Sarah Browning discusses her latest book, Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). It tackles subjects such as racism and gun violence, but also memories of being a nerdy girl in high school and the year she was lucky enough to live in Italy. What comes through is Sarah's attention to both the personal and the political realms. Early in her career, one of Sarah's mentors told her not to write political poems because they were propaganda. Over the years Sarah has written to change this dynamic, witnessing how the cannon has changed, co-founding Split This Rock poetry festival and writing poems of witness and self-exploration. Whereas some poems tend to point the finger at others, Sarah writes to explore and understand her own complicity. We end by discussing a funny poem called “Hot Priests,” because, when Sarah does a reading, she wants to include a balance of poems that focus on sex, love, politics, and something uplifting.

Please enjoy our interview with Kelli and Susan on their new book! Here are the key take aways I got from our discussion. You don't necessarily need to go in chronological order. Start with the juciest parts or the most vulnerable poems. Get an outside perspective. It's the best way to be objective. If you can you identify more than one theme, try organizing and titling your book after one sub-topic so that it becomes a main topic. Can you use the same poems to tell alternative stories? Take writing advice from a ghost, not a muse. Make your book talk to another book by an author who has passed away, even if they have nothing to do with you. When you get a rejection letter, it doesn't mean your book isn't publishable. Kelli rejects up to 75 publishable books each year. Small presses can only publish so much. The book you send to the publisher doesn't need to be the finished project. You will edit it even after it is accepted. Your title needs to make people want to read it. Use images that pull people in. Find a title that opens possibilities rather than shutting them down. Don't assume you know what the judges want or don't want. There are no direct rules. Experiment.  The more you say something, the less power it has. Avoid repetition.

Jose calls his book, Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) “two books in one.” The first section is deeply autobiographical, but the second half is truly surreal. Jose and I talked about honoring his writing and life. In the first section the speaker subverts stereotypes around growing up in economic hardship. Jose notes that though his family was poor they were, “Fucking happy, because his parents showed us so much love.” He felt that if he had only collected his surreal poems, people would ask, “Where are your Chicano poems? Where are your poems about social justice?”  Then his book shifts to an impersonal, third person narrator. Many of the poems begin with “A Man Wearing a Rage Against the Machine Shirt…”, creating worlds symbolic of what the poet is going through, but in some instances Jose says, they are him playing with his imagination and world-building. Though the language in all of the sections feels approachable, the surrealism draws out images that are otherworldly, archetypal and surprising. They have in common their use of imagery from Mexican Culture and modern-day pop culture. The “Man wearing the Rage Against the Machine T-Shirt” might encounter a jaguar, an eagle, a pyramid a magician, or he might turn into the same.

Audre Lorde Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown Octavia Butler Chen Chen, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” Khadija Queen's “I'm so Fine”  Take-Away Quotes “I thought about (the book) like a jewel setting. The Gettysburg poems were the center ring. The first and last sections would be the side settings. There are memoriam poems, and then there are love poems and happier poems about children. “You don't have to try so hard to just be yourself. . . There's plenty to write about each day. Just look at the news.” “We're all being trained to be fierce in our writing, but are we doing it safely? Are we taking care of ourselves as we write?”  “As much as I want to be a witness to the difficulty of the world, I also want to be a place of comfort. I think about that when (organizing a book or doing a reading).” “It's about the battles, but it's also about the love. We can't keep going without the love. . . From what I remember about learning of the French Revolution, it started with mothers who couldn't get bread for their children. I realized that revolutions are fought for love, not for ideals, but for love.” 

Can you write love poems during a time of war? What about sex poems or erotic poems about your current “situationship?” In this interview, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo discusses her latest book, Incantation, Love Poems for Battle Sites. She tells us that the book started with an artists grant which allowed her to visit Gettysburg to write about national monuments during a time when many were fighting over the meaning of those monuments and whether or not they should be kept or torn down. These poems became a centerpiece for the book, but around those central poems she also wrote poems about children growing up during this time, about her own love life, about daily life with its anxiety, hope and especially its acts of love. As she points out, the French Revolution kicked off because parents couldn't get enough bread to feed their children. They fought not because of ideals, but because they wanted to protect those they loved. She continues this tradition in her work by providing not only poems of witness, but also poems of pleasure and comfort for all those who read her work. References Audre Lorde Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown Octavia Butler Chen Chen, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” Khadija Queen's “I'm so Fine”  Take-Away Quotes “I thought about (the book) like a jewel setting. The Gettysburg poems were the center ring. The first and last sections would be the side settings. There are memoriam poems, and then there are love poems and happier poems about children. “You don't have to try so hard to just be yourself. . . There's plenty to write about each day. Just look at the news.” “We're all being trained to be fierce in our writing, but are we doing it safely? Are we taking care of ourselves as we write?”  “As much as I want to be a witness to the difficulty of the world, I also want to be a place of comfort. I think about that when (organizing a book or doing a reading).” “It's about the battles, but it's also about the love. We can't keep going without the love. . . From what I remember about learning of the French Revolution, it started with mothers who couldn't get bread for their children. I realized that revolutions are fought for love, not for ideals, but for love.” 

In this interview Nadia discusses her second book of poems, I Say the Sky from published by University Press of Kentucky. You can take Nadia's 7-Day New Year Writing and Meditation Program, starting January 17th, for free when you buy a copy of her book.

How do you process the passing of someone you love? In this interview, Lindsey Royce discusses her latest collection, The Book of John. Already an established poet, when her late husband, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Royce wrote consistently about what she experienced during his last year of life. Her book documents the tender beauty, despair, anger and resilience of that last year and her journey into the next chapter. As the title suggests, The Book of John takes on a magnitude of biblical proportions, though it is not God who cares for John as he passes, but Lindsey. In this interview she discusses her influences, story, and what motivated the title poem of the book. 

Tresha talks with Angela Penaredondo about her third collection, nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press, 2022). Angela discusses how personal and world history inspired her book. She relies on reading and research to generate writing, but sometimes allows another voice, less conscious and more magical. She utilizes different parts of her voice, voices of others, and multiple themes to create a collection that is intricately layered and rewards a second reading. 

We're born in a specific place with a specific history. How do these arbitrary facts affect us as artists? In this podcast I talk with Jane Muschenetz about her collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay Books, 2023). Jane was born to a Jewish family in Lviv, a city once under Soviet control, now located in Western Ukraine. As a resident of the US, Jane wrote poetry about a variety of topics. However, when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Jane wrote about her roots and her experience as a Russian-Jewish immigrant. She writes, "Naming God is an ambition I do not share / I am only trying to unpack one girlhood's worth of beginning". Enjoy this interview with our special guest. 

Can a writer finish a book in time to meet a deadline? In our interview with DeShawn McKinney we discuss the genesis of his first chapbook, father, forgive me from Black Sunflower Press, 2003. Deshawn explains that he wrote a large portion of the book in 12 hours in order to meet the deadline for Black Sunflower. How does this help the process and how can other writers learn to work with these kinds of deadlines to catch and capture the heat of their emotions? Listen to this interview to hear our thoughts on this and other topics. References: James Baldwin, Ajanae Dawkins, Liz Barry, Sherman Alexie, Danez Smith, June Jordan

How does a person deal with grief in poetry? In this interview Joan Kwon Glass discusses her first full-length collection, Night Swim, winner of the Diode Poetry Prize (2021), which explores the death by suicide of both her nephew and sister. Glass believed nobody would want to read her book, but she discovered many with similar issues who craved an open forum to discuss them. These are the "Tribe of invisible people." Kwon discusses the poets she read to give her courage to write her own book, and what she learned about truth-telling along the way. References Black out poems Elisabeth Kubler-Ross TED KOOSER T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound Objective Correlative Diannelly Antigua Eugenia Lee Sparrows and Blood Sparrows Ugly Music Don't speak ill of the dead Spartans How Writing Heals, Hayley Bauman, Psy.D. Chen Chen Don't Call us Dead Danez Smith James Diaz, editor of Anti Heroine Chic Ellen Bass, The Human Line M.T. Vallarda, Harbor Review Kay Iver Mary Jo Bang, Elegy Lois P. Jones Rumi, the Guest House Sonia Greenfield

Do you struggle to make time for your creative self? In this episode, creativity experts and writers Tresha Faye Haefner and Jon Pearson discuss their different approaches to making time and finding motivation for their writing. As Jon notes, the difficulty is not writing but "starting" to write. Get some great tips to use in your creative process, from starting to celebrating, to just making the time! Listen now. 

-"We thought we knew a lot about our history. We were wrong." - Heather Bourbeau How do you write poetry about historical people and events? In this interview, Heather Bourbeau discusses the way she tackles the personal and historical in her new book, Monarch. Broken into four parts, the collection illuminate aspects of history that schools often leave out of their curriculum, like the Miss Atomic Blast beauty pageant held in Nevada to celebrate the creation of the bomb, or the list of items left after Mt. St. Helens exploded. Heather gives tips how to connect with historical events, how to write about sometimes difficult subject matter, and how to do good self-care along the way.

How do we know what other people know? In this interview Douglas Manuel and Tresha Faye Haefner talk with Jessica Cuello about her third collection, Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for the Barrow Street Book Prize. Her book explores issues of childhood trauma that children are taught to lie about or to hide from adults. Jessica discusses her own ambiguous, uncertain relationship with the lyric "I" when writing, and asks the question, "How do we know what others know?" As James Baldwin says, all art is a form of confession. Listen for references to James Baldwin, Dorianne Laux, and Mary Oliver. 

In this interview, host Douglas Manuel gets his chance to interview Lois P. Jones, who interviewed him on Poet's Café. Lois discusses how winter stirs her imagination for poetry (as Wallace Stevens put it, "One must have a mind of winter") because of its mystery. Doug, Tresha and Lois discuss how poems confront readers, challenging them to use their own imaginations, and "complete" the poems as they read. She also references Lorca, Rilke, Neruda, Galway Kinnel and Joseph Fasano. Enjoy.

Get inside the mind of poet-activist, writer, and publisher Edward Vidaurre as Tresha and Douglas ask about his book Cry, Howl from PricklyPear Press and his work running FlowerSong Press. He talks about riding the bus to school and seeing others reading; how that inspired him to seek out authors like Miguel Hernandez, Wanda Coleman, Naomi Shihab Nye, Richard Wright, Claude Brown and others. Now he uses his writing to speak up about issues as a contrary political force in Texas and to use his position as an editor to elevate writers who might not get heard. 

In this interview Kelly Cressio-Moeller discusses how music, art and cinema play into her writing. As a student of art history and a drummer, Kelly describes how she created flow in and between poems to make her first collection, Shade of Blue Trees! When Pulitzer Prize winner Dianne Seuss gave her advice to "build a section" of her book, she had to make hard choices to cut out her darlings. Quoting Yusef Kommunyakkaa, she reminds us, "The ear is the greatest editor," and as a poetry editor who reads hundreds of manuscripts, the hard work that makes things flow can make all the difference. Kelly also relates the story of her "easy poem" dictated to her from the largest moon she ever witnessed.

Does a poem start with an image or with sound? In this interview Douglas Manuel and Tresha Faye Haefner ask Ellen Bass about her writing process. She tells us about ways she uses an image to start a poem and her use of tools like sound to distract her "overly logical mind" while her more intuitive mind goes to work. When things don't go right the first time, though, she keeps trying, reorganizing syntax, talking with friends, etc. She tells the story of writing the title poem of her latest book, Indigo by writing many "failed" poems first, and only being "successful" after seeing the right image one day while out walking. There are good reasons why poets need to get out, she says, even if they are hermit introverts.

How can you cope with anxiety? Try writing a book about it. In this interview Kelli Russell Agdon discusses her latest book. Originally she tells us that the book began with two separate manuscripts melding into one. One book was a collection of poems about the broken world, and another about the broken self. Together they become her manuscript, Dialogues with a Rising Tide, out from Copper Canyon Press. Hear Kelli discuss the way she channels anxiety into writing, how she uses constraint to help her choose titles for her poems, and why she has more fun and ease when writing with friends. 

Were there certain topics that were off limits to talk about when you were growing up? Any words you weren't allowed to say? In this interview Diannely Antigua discusses her book Ugly Music, a book where the speaker explores her complicated relationship to sexuality against a strict religious background. Antigua tells us about her transformation from being a girl who didn't want to fall asleep having impure thoughts to becoming a poet who can use the word p***y and d**k. If you have taboos to break in your writing, you'll be able to relate.  

In this interview Tanaya Winder discusses the way she has combined poetry and performance with social advocacy to help others feel seen in real life and on the page. Once a student at Stanford driven to pursue a degree in law, Tanaya eventually turned to poetry seeing it as a way to help marginalized communities and survivors of trauma find their voices. Coming from a life rooted in music and ceremony she also tells us about the way she uses song and sound to help her access her poems and honor her own heritage. Find out more by listening to this podcast or watching Tanaya's TED talk here. 

In this interview Meghan Sterling, author of These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books, 2022), passionately discusses the complexities of love and how profound that experience is as a mother of a four-year-old girl. She says love is, “An enormous braid of hope, fear, longing, joy, exhaustion, disappointment, exhilaration and feeling like a fraud.” People limit themselves because loving is so frightening. “In the veins of love runs the iron of fear,” but for her, writing poetry keeps her honest. Even in seemingly “mundane” events, there is a voice that says, “This means more than what you see on the surface.” If you give it space, the poem tells you what it means – that the tree is cut down, that your jeans don't fit. The poems are under the surface of your skin. 

In this wide-ranging interview, Kai Coggin tells her story of meeting Sandra Cisneros along with her middle school English class and how the famous author encouraged her to make time for her own writing as well as bringing writing to others. Now Kai Coggin on her fourth book Mining for Stardust, uses poetry to "freeze time", recording the darkness and tempering it with the power of the light. She introduces young people to the kinds of poems that help them find and define their own identity and shows them that poetry is meant for everybody. This interview is packed with wisdom and insight to inspire any writer.

Big Announcement for the podcast:  Kelly Grace Thomas is stepping aside as co-host with Tresha Faye Haefner. Kelly has a new baby! With an infant in the house she's focusing on being a new mother, and stepping into her prodigious shoes is creative powerhouse and high-spirit extraordinaire Doug Manuel, author of Testify.  Join us as Tresha catches up with what Doug has been doing since our interview with him a few years ago, and then the two of them preview the Saloncast interviews ahead! Welcome Doug!

“What does it mean to call every stranger friend?” That's a question poet and innovator Brian Sonia-Wallace asks as he discusses his unusual journey writing spontaneous poetry at events. In his twenties Brian Sonia-Wallace put out a typewriter on the street to write poetry for strangers and has been doing it ever since. He is the founder of “Rent Poet” and travels the world to write for others, including at a residency at The Mall of America. You can read about his adventures in his new book from Harper Collins, The Poetry of Strangers. In this interview, he discusses the ways that he, and others who write poetry for strangers find commonalities with their clients, how they write poems that reflect their feelings and the feelings of their clients. This is a rich interview with intriguing insights from the Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, and one of the more original, poet-entrepreneurs writing today. Recommended readings and Poets Referenced Danez Smith Sam Sax

What does it mean to carry a landscape with you when that landscape belongs to someone else? In this interview, Gustavo Hernandez discusses the way poetry has helped him deal with living as an immigrant, and what it means to have two places always with him - California and Jalisco, Mexico. He talks about using poetry to help mourn his father. He also discusses the way short-fiction helped him create not just individual poems, but a full book with a "coming of age arc". That collection Flower Grand First ends in a vision of the hereafter, in which he notes, "The hereafter is like everything around me, built by my father," and how he set out "not for an ascent, but for a return."

Many poets are beguiled by the fundamental where did I come from question. Much of Lynne Thompson's work traces the threads that influenced her sense of identity and how it interacts with politics and race. At the same time, the job of a poet is to find a new angle on how to address issues that may be “universal” or at the forefront of the zeitgeist. So, Thompson advises, “You need to get outside the frame and try on all the shoes in the story.” This is how you find your way through to something more unique.  In this interview Lynne Thompson walks us through several poems around her adoption, what is known and what is not known, and what the imagination does with each. She talks about how to embrace the not knowing, and how poetry is really everywhere if you're listening for it.

How do you find your voice? What about the voice of a poem or piece? In this interview Kim talks about her influences, and how they have helped her find her own voice. She also talks about getting past her own voice to find the voice of the poem itself, and how she helps support her students in doing the same. You'll also get bonus anecdotes about rhyming in the high desert, writing about a scorpion in an Italian Castle, having her poem printed in the New York City subway, and the really surprising journey she had to go on to get her book, Poet's Companion, published. (If you've never read this book, you can get it through Norton today : )

What can we learn from reading the Confessions of St. Augustin? In this interview Tresha asks Cameron Morse to discuss his latest book, Far Other, titled after a line from St. Augustin. Cameron discusses his interest in the Confessional Tradition, how it began around 300's BC, and what it can still teach us today about the value of an "ordinary" individual telling their personal story. We discuss our evolving understanding of what it means to be born a human being, to search after something greater, to reflect on and tell our own stories. We also discuss the role that "play" has in poetry, and Cameron tells us how using words and finding the pleasure in words themselves helps him find a sense of freedom in writing his poetry. He'll share some samples of his writing, as well as his re-writing strategies that will help you find the play in your poetry too. 

How do you find the place in your poetry for your complete self - the sorrow and the joy, the eventful and the mundane, the gratitude and the grief? Is the balance found in a single poem or across multiple poems? In this interview award-winning poet Sonia Greenfield talks to us about her journey towards finding her voice, and how several teachers helped her along the way. Sonia also discusses her mission to help provide a platform for a diversity of  other voices in Rise Up Review, the political protest journal she started the day Trump was inaugurated. Finally, Sonia and our hosts make recommendations for new poets to read, including Torrin A. Greathouse, Etheridge Knight, and David Hernandez, Fatimah Asghar, Hanif Abdurraqib, and publications such as Best New Poets, Boat Journal, Muzzle, Adroit, The Rumpus, and Button Poetry. 

Do writers have a duty to share their work? In this interview Nancy Lynee Woo discusses what it's like to come out of an Emerging Writers Fellowship, to wrestle with the pressure to become a “literary celebrity,” and the difference between trying to get published by a journal, vs. sharing art more freely on social media and personal platforms. She tells us how writing a mission statement for her life helped her get clear about her goals – what was important and what she could let go of, and when. Nancy also discusses her challenges writing a poem about a family member she never knew, and tells us how she approached the prospect of writing about the mystery of personal history, and the unknowable unknowns. Join us for a very full, enriching conversation.

Prolific writer, cartoonist and public speaker Jon Pearson talks to Tresha and Kelly about unleashing the inner genius of the imagination. Pearson talks fast, draws fast and writes fast, and his ideas about freeing the mind from our adult restrictions have inspired thousands of souls. Hear from him the benefits of not making sense, and allowing the creative child within to run wild. In addition to being a fount of thoughtful ideas and stirring anecdotes, he also happens to be the life-long mentor of The Poetry Salon's own Tresha Faye Haefner who often claims, “It's Jon's fault I'm a writer.” Let it be Jon's fault that YOU become a better writer, by listening to our interview with him here. 

Our second poets panel on surviving 2020 as a writer and poet is chock full of great suggestions and helpful life tips to staying creative and staying sane while keeping your distance from other people. Three amazing talents - Poetry Salon teacher Arthur Kayzakian, creativity coach Jennie Linthorst and cultural writer and critic Brian Sonia Wallace chime in, read some poetry and offer their wisdom on absorbing the news, staying connected and keeping your projects going.

This short segment is an excerpt from last week's interview where Julie Hartley, founder of the Centauri School of Writing and Tresha Faye Haefner talk about narrative types, truth in memoir and expanding that to the poetry field. It didn't fit in with the flow of the epsiode itself, but was too interesting to leave on the cutting room floor, so we're releasing it this week.

 Listen to this bonus episode to hear Julie Hartley talk about how she turned her love of writing into a career. Julie and her husband founded The Centauri School for Writing in Canada, plus a Costa Rica-based camp and retreat center that runs a whole slate of classes for both teens and adults. All genres and mediums are taught to free participants' creative spirits and find their true voices. We end with a beautiful reading from her middle-grade fiction book, The Finding Place. Julie continues to support writers during the Covid Pandemic. Find out more at www.centauriarts.com 

Bonus episode! This week, we gather three amazing poets - Brendan Constantine, Jeannine Hall Gailey and Nancy Lynee Woo - for the first of two panels on how these poets are coping with stay-at-home orders during a global pandemic. Are they reflecting the national scene in their writing? What habits are they forming? Are they able to connect with a writing community? Listen in as Tresha Faye Haefner hosts this fascinating conversation about artists coping with isolation.

We've interviewed some amazing word artists for Season Two - Arthur Kayzakian, Victoria Lynn McCoy, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Antionette Brim, and Dorothy Chan. Kelly Grace Thomas and I review all the lessons we've learned this season and read a couple of poems that were changed fundamentally by the prompts and advice these amazing writers offered us in their interviews. We wrap up the season here.

The COVID quarantine has sent our schedule all higgeldy piggeldy, so this week we grant you, our loyal listeners, with this writing prompt from Tresha that will serve you throughout all your years as a writer. Really, this one's the one. Print it, laminate it and sleep with it under your pillow. Thank us later.

In this episode we interview Iranian-Armenian-American poet, Arthur Kayzakian who has just joined The Poetry Salon as a workshop facilitator! Kazakian talks about what it's like to grow up in a war zone and migrate to a different country, how he learned English as a language of abandonment, and ultimately how he fell in love with poetry as a profession. Listen to us discuss the ways language can infuse energy into a poem and how we can responsibly use poetry to explore the POV of people different from ourselves. 

How do we create a safe space to process our grief through art? Victoria Lynne McCoy discusses Carmen Maria Machado's metaphor of a "house for grief" and how she enters that house to find the material for her poems about the dead, and then finds her way out again, back to her daily life. Listen to her discuss the way writing epistilary poems (poems written as letters to a specific person) help her address both the departed, herself, her reader, and God at the same time. This is indespensable listening for anyone who has loved, lost, and used writing as a way to process grief.  Rewrite strategy: Look at a poem you're struggling with, and instead of asking, "What am I trying to say?" ask instead, "What am I trying not to say?" What fears or insecurities are you afraid to admit or speak openly about that would lead you to finding the juice of your piece?

Can writing poetry make you a stronger person? In this interview Marie-Elizabeth Mali, author of Steady, My Gaze (2011) discusses the ways writing helps her explore her own nature, and come to terms with parts of herself she doesn't necessarily like. Specifically she discusses the way diving into the ocean and exploring nature helps her find images and metaphors to help her connect with and understand different parts of herself. Learn new ways to write yourself stronger by listening to this interview.

Is there a special way poets have of explaining love? What about history? Or the Bible? In this episode, the poet Antoinette Brim discusses the challenges she had in taking on the topic of women in Genesis in her most recent book, These Women You Gave Me. Hear about this and other topics of her work, like how she copes with ageing and how to define the meaning of love.  Rewrite Exercise: Look at the world around you. Check out the news, mythology, science, etc. Is there an image or event that could serve as a metaphor for what you are going through now? Write about the image or event. Write about yourself and what you are going through. Go back and forth. 

In this interview captivating poet Michelle Bitting discusses the connection between movement, mythology, and writing poetry. A trained actress and dancer, Michelle says that writing poetry is a lot like being in a performance, where one needs to generate and sustain a certain mood in which to enter the text and keep the momentum going. Elliptical machines, walking, and everyday rituals can support such endeavors, and help break us open to what the unconscious had been recording all along.  Rewrite exercise: Move. Go for a walk, dance, get the blood flowing before you re-enter the poem. Approach a stubborn piece from the right physical and emotional space. 

Poet Dorothy Chan discusses pleasure, pop-culture, and the addiction she has to writing sonnets. Sonnets, she says, are like appetizers on a menu at a fancy restaurant – small, experimental, and the perfect size to taste without filling up. Unlike traditional sonnets though, Dorothy has pioneered the triple-crown sonnet, a variation that strings three little sonnets into a fuller three-course meal. Chan says, “Three is a lucky number, and I want poetry to make us feel lucky.” See how you can use her method to feel lucky too! Revision Technique: We discuss the importance of line-breaks, and powerful end-stop words. Tresha will discuss how she's never understood line-breaks, and Kelly and Dorothy will clue her in to how to use them to make more effective work. 

Our second season launches next week. Listen to this and find out which poets we'll be interviewing in the coming eight weeks. Plus join our growing community on Patreon to get commentary on your drafts on our private Facebook Group.

What is a “Story Mentor” and how does Terrie Silverman, founder of Creative Rites, make magic happen through her mighty teaching powers? Silverman works with her clients to help them discover and refine their voices in such mediums as memoir, personal essay, storytelling, alt comedy, fiction, and plays/screenplays. She's one of the few facilitators in LA who coach others in creating their own one-person performances. Plus, she's the creator of Goativity, letting your creative imagination flow through interaction with live goats. Yes, goats! The ones who eat tin cans.  Come listen to her wax rhapsodic on her twenty years as a teacher inspiring students to tell their vital, personal stories. 

 How does a former basketball player for the Chicago Bulls wind up with two published books and a writing center in Culver City? How does he keep dozens of writers on track to completing their novels and screenplays? Writer's Blok founder, Paul Shirley, describes his origins as an artrepreneur in the L.A. writing scene and his philosophy of patient, regular practice in small amounts as the key to a writer's success. He parallels his experience training as a professional athlete to the writing process and how both depend on consistent routine and the support of a community with mutual goals. Find out more about Paul and the Writers Blok community on the website https://www.writersblok.org/.