One of the most thrilling stories of creative inspiration is that of Rainer Maria Rilke writing Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies following a time of great international and personal upheaval. Translator and poet Mark S. Burrows shares Rilke’s story with us and talks with us about the art of translation–full of creative conundrums and choices and impossible invitations. It’s a heart-opening, deeply compelling episode about how we are all translators, “listening to the deepest voice” and how life itself is our greatest creative act. 

Mark S. Burrows is an award-winning poet, translator, and scholar. An historian of medieval Christianity, he is a much sought-after speaker and retreat leader in the US and Europe. He is a past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality and currently edits poetry for the society’s journal Spiritus. His most recent translation is Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (2024). He recently published You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke (2024), cowritten with Stephanie Dowrick. He lives and writes in Camden, ME. 

https://www.msburrows.com/

www.soul-in-sight.org 

This week, Christie interviews Rosemerry about her new book, The Unfolding, out on October 1st. Do her a big favor and pre-order it now at this link. Rosemerry explains how the poems came together, how she structured the book and why the cover is pink. It’s a wonderful conversation we know you’ll love.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her most recent poetry collections are All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023) and The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, October 2024). In January, 2024, she became the first poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief, bereavement, wonder and love through poetry. One-word mantra: Adjust.

“Invest always in relationships before you need them, be vulnerable with them,” says Courtney E. Martin, journalist, author, podcaster and speaker. In this episode, she shares with us an essential question for all journalists and creatives and discusses how it shaped a specific project, plus she offers advice for living a creative life based on Parker Palmer’s thoughts on “the tragic gap.” This is an episode focused on transparency, vulnerability, community and humility.

Courtney E. Martin is the author of four books, most recently, Learning in Public, a popular newsletter, called Examined Family, host of “The Wise Unknown” podcast from PRX, and co-host of the Slate “How To!” podcast. She’s also a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network and FRESH Speakers, and the Storyteller-in-Residence at The Holding Co. Her literal happy place is her co-housing community in Oakland, Calif. Her metaphorical happy place is asking people questions.

How do we abstract our sense of self-worth from our creative work? That’s one of the themes in this bonus episode in which we converse with writer/artist/poet/editor Sarah Gilman. We learn about her reliance on small blank notebooks, the efficient layout of her office and the importance of having books around.

Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, Hakai Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesigns

https://sarahmgilman.com/

How can working in one art form strengthen our practice in another? Our guest Sarah Gilman describes herself as a “creative smush,” and in this episode, the artist/writer/editor talks about how all these art forms inform each other--how all of them allow her to “think in terms of metaphors.” As she says, by working in multiple fields at once, she can enter into a place where “themes can combine in immersive ways that foster empathy, respect for nuance over polarization, and a sense of awe for and accountability towards the world as it is—still huge and full of mystery and beauty, however threatened or diminished.” We also talk about how to get out of our own way, the importance of going outside, and how community and connections can fuel our work. 

Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesigns

https://sarahmgilman.com/

South America's Otherworldly Seabird, Sarahs’ narrative and illustrations of how scientists are working to save a tiny seabird in the Atacama Desert.

For Auld Lang Syne

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet,

says the song, and I would give you

the cup, friend, would fill it

with whiskey or water or whatever

would best meet your thirst.

I fill it with the terrifying beauty

of tonight’s bonfire—giant licks

of red and swirls of blue that consume

what is dead and melt the ice

and give warmth to what is here.

I fill it with moonrise and snow crystal

and the silver river song beneath the ice.

With the boom of fireworks and with laughter

that persists through tears. With

Lilac Wine and Over the Rainbow and Fever.

I toast you with all the poems we’ve yet to write

and all the tears we’ve yet to weep,

I hold the cup to your lips,

this chalice of kindness, we’ll drink it yet,

though the days are cold, the nights so long.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 ____

The Next Storm Comes

And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

         —Meister Eckhart

And suddenly you know it’s time

to shovel the drive. For though snow

still falls, at this moment it’s only

three inches deep and you can still push it easily

with your two wide yellow shovels.

Yes, it’s time to start something new—

though it doesn’t feel new, this

shoving snow from one place to another.

In fact, your shoulders still feel

the efforts of yesterday.

But with each push of the shovels,

the path on the drive is new again. At least

it’s new for a moment, new until snow

fills it in. Then it’s a different kind of new.

How many beginnings are like this?

They don’t feel like beginnings at all?

Or we miss their newness?

Or they feel new only for a moment

before they’ve lost their freshness?

There is magic in beginnings, says Meister Eckhart,

and sometimes we see beginnings all around us,

a new path, a new promise, a new meal.

A new prayer. New snow fall. A new song.

Is it too grand to call it magic, this new calendar year?

Too grand to call it magic, this momentary

clearing on the drive? Too grand to be magic,

this momentary clearing in my thoughts?

Or is it exactly, perhaps, what magic is—

something we allow ourselves to believe,

despite logic, despite reason, something that brings

us great pleasure, makes us question

what we thought we knew, our sense

of what is possible changed.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

_____

Watching The Wizard of Oz on New Year’s Eve, I Think of a Resolution toward Peace

As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

—The Wizard to the Tin Man, The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum

Give us hearts that break

when we see how cruel the world can be

and hands that extend toward others.

Give us eyes that weep when we feel

the beauty of home, and

lips to speak love, to apologize.

Give us courage to say what must be said

and ears to hear what we’d rather not hear

and eyes that will not turn the other way

from anyone in need.

Give us brains that are wired

for helpfulness, compassion

and curiosity. Yes, let us ask for hearts

that break and break and grow

bigger in the breaking. Let us

love more than we think we can love.

And the cup of kindness, may we

ever remember to drink of it,

let us share it with each other.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Photo: Christie & Rosemerry shortly before the pandemic began. (Yes, that is one of Rosemerry’s poems on Christie’s tights.)

For creatives, the new year is a chance to look back on what we’ve accomplished and how we’ve grown in the past year, and also a chance to dream about our creative endeavors in the future. In this episode, Christie and Rosemerry have a conversation about how to do your own “year end report,” how a magic wand might help you identify your goals, and how two questions from Motivational Interviewing can help you verbalize why your goals are important to you. We talk about bonfires--both literal and metaphorical, a few of our own goals, some of our skepticism around goals, and our mottos and themes for moving forward. 

Motivational Interviewing

A story Christie wrote about how to make New Year’s resolutions

Christie’s 2021 New Year’s resolution

Christie’s Instagram and Rosemerry’s

A little new years goal advice from our episode 28 guest, Holiday Mathis. “Do not set targets for results that are beyond your control. Keep asking yourself what can be done to help this along. Set targets for what you can produce, actions you can take, miles you can move.”

_____

Bonfire in the Heart

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I throw in any tallies

I’ve been keeping,

the ones that record

who did what and when.

I throw in all the letters

I wrote in my head but didn’t send.

I throw in tickets I didn’t buy

to places I didn’t visit.

I throw in all those expectations

I had for myself and the world last year

and countless lists of things I thought I should do.

I love watching them ignite,

turn into embers, to ash.

I love the space they leave behind

where anything can happen.

If you are lucky, as an artist, you have a mentor--someone who recognizes your potential, who offers feedback, who pushes you and helps you grow. In this episode we talk with one of Rosemerry’s mentors, the phenomenal Art Goodtimes, about his relationship with his mentor, Dolores LaChapelle. We cover everything from The problem with the greek alphabet to the mushroom parade down the streets of Telluride and how ritual takes us out of our minds and into our bodies, making us “more than what we are.”

Poet, basket weaver and former regional editor/columnist, Art Goodtimes served as San Miguel County Commissioner (Green Party, 1996-2016) and Western Slope Poet Laureate (2011-13). Former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth and the Mountain Gazette, currently he’s poetry editor for Fungi magazine and co-editor with Lito Tejada-Flores at the on-line poetry anthology SageGreenJournal.org. His latest book out from Lithic Press is Dancing on Edge: The McRedeye Poems(Lithic, 2019). Since 1981 “Shroompa” has been poet-in-residence at the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival in August. A recent cancer survivor, Art serves as program co-director for the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry program, including the national Fischer Prize and Colorado Cantor Prize contests. 

Talking Gourds

Fungi Magazine

Sage Green Journal

Dancing on Edge: The McRedeye Poems

www.facebook.com/art.goodtimes

Dolores LaChapelle

Art Goodtimes (right) with Emerging Form patron saint, Jack Mueller. (photo credit: Jimi Bernath)

In this bonus conversation with acclaimed poet Danusha Laméris, we learn about her nocturnal writing habits, her leap from painting to poetry (and the advice that came with her), and the importance of “belonging” and “the tribe.” 

Danusha Laméris’ first book,The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize. Some of her poems have been published in The Best American Poetry,The New York Times,TheAmerican Poetry Review,The GettysburgReview, Ploughshares, and Tin House. She’s the author ofBonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), and the recipient of the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Danusha teaches poetry independently, and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. 

Danusha Laméris

The Hive Poetry Collective Podcast

“You remind me of my humanness by talking about yours,” says this week’s Emerging Form guest Danusha Laméris. We speak with the award-winning poet about how the small stories--what she calls “the understory”--mean as much, perhaps more, as the big headlines, and the creative process around finding and sharing these stories. We talk about the importance of leaning into the complexity and not needing “to be a motivational speaker.” 

Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize. Some of her poems have been published in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, TheAmerican Poetry Review, The GettysburgReview, Ploughshares, and Tin House. She’s the author of Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), and the recipient of the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Danusha teaches poetry independently, and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. 

Danusha Laméris

The Hive Poetry Collective Podcast

“Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris

“June 20th” by Lucille Clifton

“Bonfire Opera” by Danusha Laméris

_____________________________

Writing Haikus for Rosemerry

—Christie Aschwanden

My dear poet friend

Does not recognize that I

Wrote her a haiku

Photo: A Holiday Mathis horoscope. [This thing you’re trying to accomplish cannot be accomplished as a linear pursuit. It’s a holistic process. So when you' feel yourself drawn “off track,” maybe you’re actually just working things from a different angle.]

**Note: Apologies! We are re-sending this episode, as there was a technical problem in the first audio file. If you haven’t listened yet, this is the better version.

In this bonus episode, we continue our conversation with writer Holiday Mathis, who writes a syndicated daily horoscope column and also happens to be a multi-platinum songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Miley Cyrus, Emma Roberts and many others. We talk about the difference between writing horoscopes and lyrics, more about attending to and chasing the muses, and about the essential quality of openness. 

Holiday Mathis

Holiday’s daily, syndicated horoscopes

Christie’s blog, I know that astrology is b******t, but I can’t stop reading my hororscope

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Rosemerry’s poem about her birthday horoscope last year

Photo: A Holiday Mathis horoscope. [This thing you’re trying to accomplish cannot be accomplished as a linear pursuit. It’s a holistic process. So when you' feel yourself drawn “off track,” maybe you’re actually just working things from a different angle.]

In this bonus episode, we continue our conversation with horoscope writer Holiday Mathis, who also happens to be a multi-platinum songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Miley Cyrus, Emma Roberts and many others. We talk about the difference between writing horoscopes and lyrics, more about attending to and chasing the muses, and about the essential quality of openness. 

Holiday Mathis

Holiday’s daily, syndicated horoscopes

Christie’s blog, I know that astrology is b******t, but I can’t stop reading my hororscope

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Rosemerry’s poem about her birthday horoscope last year

How do you “reduce the drag” and make yourself the most available to daily output in your creative practice? To help with ideas, we turn to Holiday Mathis, who has written over eight million words in her daily, syndicated horoscopes. Talk about learning how to negotiate the daily grind! In this episode, we talk about how improvisation rules help in daily discipline, about Holiday’s muses and how she serves them and great advice from a soap opera actor. We talk ambition, how she got her start, and the role of the reader vs. the process of the writer. It’s a light-hearted, metaphor-rich, treasure trove of advice for creatives of all kinds. 

Holiday Mathis writes the syndicated daily horoscope column for hundreds of newspaper publications internationally including The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and in her hometown, The Tennessean. She is working on the Guinness Book World Record for the most consecutively published words by a single author in newspapers, having currently been published every day since 2005. Mathis is also a multi-platinum songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Miley Cyrus, Emma Roberts and many others. She lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband, daughter and two Shih Tzus. 

Holiday Mathis

Today’s horoscopes by Holiday

Some of Mathis’s songs

Christie’s blog post about Mathis: I Know Astrology is B******t, But I Can’t Stop Reading My Horoscope

Rosemerry’s poem about her birthday horoscope last year

Koko the gorilla muse

image: Eben Pariser and Molly Venter

How do we get in the zone? What does that even mean for creatives? And how do we stay in it? And how do we get back in when kicked out? We speak with musicians and marriage partners Molly Venter and Eben Pariser about using the ancient technologies of poetry and music to help people tap into their subconscious and explore what treasure they have within them. 

Goodnight Moonshine is a guitar and vocal duet, and a musical marriage in all senses. The Duo combines the evocative voice and songwriting of Molly Venter, with Eben Pariser’s adventurous guitar playing. The result is folk music with a depth of improvisation and tonal subtlety usually reserved for jazz. 

Molly is well known for her sublime singing in the prominent female-vocal-group Red Molly, Her voice has been called “biker-chick smoky,” and with Goodnight Moonshine she is in full force as a songwriter with a trance-induced stream-of-consciousness writing style.  Eben cut his teeth as a street performer in New York City, playing guttural music of New Orleans with his band Roosevelt Dime, but he was quickly captured by classic jazz, and his improvisational skills are a hallmark of Goodnight Moonshine’s sound. 

“Marvelous things happen when you follow your heart’s truth … open doorways you can’t imagine.” So says our special guest Kayleen Asbo in this special bonus episode with the amazing Kayleen Asbo, cultural historian, composer, musician, writer and teacher. We talk about her “pillars of the day,” and her “bookends,” plus habits she has for cultivating beauty and creating anchors in an itinerant life, plus things she wishes she’d known before that she trusts now--especially about reckless generosity.

Kayleen Asbo

Christie’s upcoming workshop, Level Up: business planning for freelancers

“Find what you long for and be brave and vulnerable enough to offer it to the world.” So says Kayleen Asbo, our featured guest on this episode of Emerging Form in which we speak about how to foster and shape creative community. Asbo is a cultural historian, composer, musician, writer and teacher who weaves myth, music, psychology, history and art with experiential learning. We talk about passion, about ways to help a group find juice, about how a group leader can encourage trust and intimacy, as Asbo says, by leading “with your own breaking open heart.” At their best, creative communities refresh, encourage, support and inspire us--and offer us discipline. This episode is full of thoughts and tips on everything from creating commitment to how to create intimacy online.

Kayleen Asbo holds master's degrees in music (piano performance), mythology and psychology. She has been a faculty member at the Pacifica Graduate Institute and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Osher Life Long Learning Institutes at UC Berkeley, Sonoma State University and Dominican University. She teaches on a wide array of topics, ranging from Jungian Depth Psychology to Dante to the History of Classical Music. As theCreative Director and Resident Mythologist for Mythica, Asbo used to spend three months a year leading workshops and retreats in sacred sites in Europe and has turned her treasury of pictures and stories from these pilgrimages into online "Virtual Pilgrimages."

Kayleen Asbo

Virtual Pilgrimages

To learn more about Christie’s freelancing workshops, visit https://christieaschwanden.com/workshops/ or email Christie@nasw.org

**

The Hero of the Imogene Pass Race

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When I think of encouragement,

I think of Jack Pera,

who stood every year

at the top of Imogene Pass—

in snow, in sun, in sleet, in fog.

On race day, a thousand plus runners

would reach the top,

weary, having climbed

over five thousand feet in ten miles,

and Jack, he would hold out his hand

and pull each of us up the last foot,

launching us toward the long downhill finish.

I remember how surprised I was

the first time, and grateful,

grateful to feel him reaching for me,

grateful to feel his powerful grip

yanking me up through the scree.

“Good job,” he’d say to each one of us,

cheering us though we were sweaty

and drooling and panting and spent.

After that first race, I knew to look for him

as I climbed the last pitch,

trying to make out his form

at the top of the ridge.

And there was. Every time.

“Good job,” he’d say

as he made that last steep step

feel like flight.

There are people who do this,

who hold out their hand,

year after year,

to help those who need it.

There are people who carry us

when we feel broken,

if only for a moment.

When I heard today Jack had died,

I couldn’t help but imagine

an angel waiting there above him

as he took his last breath,

an angel with a firm grip and a big smile

holding out a hand, pulling him through that last effort,

telling him, “Good Job, Jack. Good job.”

And may he have felt in that moment

the blessing of that encouragement,

totally ready to be launched into whatever came next.

Good job, Jack Pera. Good job.

In this bonus episode of Emerging Form, our guest Amy Irvine surprises us right away when we ask to describe her writing practice. “Erotic,” she says. Find out what that means, and how you, too, might want to find your way toward that answer. We also talk about terrible writing advice from a therapist, Amy’s workspace, and the advice she would give her younger self. 

Mary Carr on Sacred Carnality

Amy Irvine

Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics & Place

Desert Cabal

Sometimes, a project just comes together in the most organic, meant-to-be way, and nothing can stop it. What’s that like? We explore that experience in this episode with our guest, Amy Irvine, who co-wrote Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics & Place with our previous guest, Pam Houston. We’ll talk about how the form emerged--what began as an epistolary exercise became a fully fledged book. We’ll talk about how creative endeavors can create friendships. We also talk about her previous book, Desert Cabal, about backlash against women writers and more. 

Amy Irvine won the Orion Book Award and Colorado Book Award for her memoir, Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land Her next book, Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness, is a feminist response to Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, and one of Orion’s “25 Most-Read Stories of the Decade.” It was also added to Outside Magazine’s Adventure Canon and named by Backpacker as one of its New Wilderness Classics. During the pandemic, Irvine co-authored Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics & Placewith Pam Houston; the book is forthcoming in October 2020, as is Amy’s latest essay for Orion: “Close to the Bone.” Irvine teaches in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University. In addition to frequently teaching for Orion Magazine, she has taught at Western Colorado University, the Free Flow Institute, Whitman College’s Semester in the West, the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Program at Rio Mesa, and Fishtrap’s Outpost. Irvine lives and writes off-grid on a remote mesa in southwest Colorado, just spitting distance from her Utah homeland.

Amy Irvine

Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics & Place

Desert Cabal

Desert Solitaire

Pam Houston

In this bonus episode, Rosemerry reads a poem from our episode 25 guest, Alison Luterman, and then presents a song from The Chain, one of the musicals that Alison discussed on the podcast.

Links:

The Chain

In the Time of Great Fires

Alison Luterman

How can creative practice become a political act? In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with poet, playwright, memoirist and lyricist Alison Luterman. We talk in depth about her musical The Shyest Witch--about how, when you work in so many genres, a form might suggest itself; how the project evolved from being about the 2016 election into broader feminist themes, how she worked with input from collaborators and actors; and how she, too, is evolving as an artist, learning a new skill even as she is at the top of her game in other creative realms. We also talk about artworks that inspired her, including Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and how she deals with her political work becoming a lightning rod for contentious responses--“If I’m not going to speak up now, when am I going to?”

Alison Luterman's four books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires. Her poems and stories have appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Salon, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and elsewhere. She has written an e-book of personal essays, Feral City, half a dozen plays, a song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, as well as two musicals, The Chain and The Shyest Witch. Alison performs with the Oakland-based improvisation troupe Wing It! and has given writing workshops all over the country, including at Omega and Esalen Institutes. She teaches memoir at The Writing Salon in Berkeley, and is available for private coaching in writing or creativity, both in-person or on-line. 

Show notes:

Marie Howe on On Being/Write ten things

Writing Naturally by David Petersen

Alison Luterman

Alison’s poem, “Some Girls” in the New York Times Magazine

A sneak peak of the music video from Alison’s musical-in-progress The Shyest Witch. (Alison notes: The witch, Rebekah Vega, had to be their own cameraperson and used a tripod while filming.)

Photo: Carla Green

In what ways does collaboration strengthen the stories we tell? In this bonus episode, Catherine Saint Louis and Carla Green talk about a recent collaboration for Telescope, a podcast that tells stories about people living through COVID. Both our guests work for podcast production company Neon Hum, Catherine as Senior Editor and Carla as Producer. In the episode we’ll be discussing, “Rubber Bullets.” Catherine reported this story about Derrick Sanderlin and Carla was her editor. The story follows how Derrick--a man who had volunteered to work with the San Jose Police Department about implicit bias-- found himself trying to de-escalate tensions with the same police department during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest and was shot with rubber bullets. We talk about how Catherine and Carla divided work, why trust is so important in collaborations, how details sometimes need to be separated from the dramatic arc of the story, how music can affect a listener and why one might choose not to use it, and how showing our humanness when we tell another’s story might be an essential piece to the story itself.

Carla Green is a Neon Hum producer and journalist. Before coming to Neon Hum, she was the managing producer of the KCRW podcast UnFictional, where she reported and produced a bunch of different stories, including one where she trailed a juggalo across the country on a Greyhound bus. Since she moved to Los Angeles in 2016, she’s covered the city’s homelessness crisis in stories for radio, podcasts, and print.

Catherine Saint Louis is the senior editor of podcasts for Neon Hum Media, an L.A. based podcast house founded by Jonathan Hirsch. Her latest podcast that she's edited is Smoke Screen: Fake Priest, a wild story about a man who pretended to be a priest for 30 years, stealing people's money and their faith. Fake Priest is a Neon Hum original as is Telescope, a podcast that tells stories about people living through COVID and later in our first season, the twin pandemics of racism and COVID. This year, she also edited Murder on the Towpath, an eight-episode podcast set in 1964 that features two women who never met but whose lives become linked one of them is killed. Past projects include: Sonic Boom, This Land, The Thing about Pam, Larger than Life, and Break Stuff. She lives in Brooklyn where she runs with a sweaty mask.

Show notes:

Neon Hum

“Rubber Bullets” episode of Telescope

Catherine wants to encourage more POC to get into podcast editing and would love for anyone who is interested to get in touch. Catherine@neonhum.com

Telling someone else’s story presents a host of pleasures and challenges. In this episode, we interview Catherine Saint Louis, senior editor of podcasts for Neon Hum Media, about “Rubber Bullets,” a podcast episode released on Telescope in early July 2020, about a man who had guided implicit bias workshops for the San Jose Police Department for years, then found himself trying to de-escalate the same police department at a Black Lives Matter protest. He was shot in the groin with a rubber bullet. We talk with Catherine about the process of creating the episode from conception to execution. We discuss how she considers the interview process to be “a journey” that the interviewer and interviewee embark on together, and how Catherine was able to move beyond the facts of Derrick’s story to deliver the heart of it by drawing on her own humanity. 

Catherine Saint Louis is the senior editor of podcasts for Neon Hum Media, an L.A. based podcast house founded by Jonathan Hirsch. Her latest podcast that she's edited is Smoke Screen: Fake Priest, a wild story about a man who pretended to be a priest for 30 years, stealing people's money and their faith. Fake Priest is a Neon Hum original as is Telescope, a podcast that tells stories about people living through COVID and later in our first season, the twin pandemics of racism and COVID. This year, she also edited Murder on the Towpath, an eight-episode podcast set in 1964 that features two women who never met but whose lives become linked one of them is killed. Past projects include: Sonic Boom, This Land, The Thing about Pam, Larger than Life, and Break Stuff. She lives in Brooklyn where she runs with a sweaty mask.

Show notes:

Jill U Adams’s delightful comics

Last Word On Nothing

Neon Hum

“Rubber Bullets” episode of Telescope

Fake Priest

Catherine Saint Louis interview about podcast editing on Servant of Pod with Nick Quah.

Catherine wants to encourage more POC to get into podcast editing and would love for anyone who is interested to get in touch. Catherine@neonhum.com

Hello dear listeners! We are taking a short summer break. We’ve been putting out new episodes every week, and it feels like time to slow down for a moment and reflect. We’ll be back in August with some brand new regularly scheduled episodes. In the meantime, stay well. Thank you for your support.

Christie & Rosemerry

Putting your values into your art can be a courageous act, and in this episode we speak with poet and storyteller Sara Abou Rashed about the vulnerability and rewards that come from revealing our identity in our work. Rashed comes from Palestine but was born and raised in Syria before moving to Ohio in 2013. She is a senior at Denison University of Ohio and has performed her one-woman show, A Map of Myself, all over the country. Her show explores issues of identity, culture, immigration, belonging and finding home. She’s also given a TEDx talk and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. We talk about distinguishing between the self who creates the material and the self that presents it and also how audiences respond. Sara also gives us two “assignments” for how we, too, might find ourselves as we move forward in this time of uncertainty and unrest. We ask her these questions, and invite you to answer them as well on our substack page or our Facebook page:

* How do you align your art with your values? 

* What role does art have in creating “the new normal?”

Sara Abou Rashed’s website

Sara’s show, Map of Myself

Trailer for Map of Myself

Hidden Treasures of a Refugee’s Journey TEDxColumbus

image of Sara via Instagram

It’s all about balance–and in this episode we speak with botanist and writer Erin Zimmerman about choices she made in her new book Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood and the Fight to Save an Old Science. We also talk about the choices she’s made as she balances motherhood and work, being an introvert and finding a writing community, pursuing her passions and finding meaningful ways to recharge. Plus how she was inspired by Charles Darwin’s parenting. 

Erin Zimmerman is an evolutionary biologist turned science writer and essayist. She studied at the University of Guelph and at the Université de Montréal before traveling to South America to collect plant specimens, and then working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in England. In addition to her academic writing, her essays have appeared in publications including Smithsonian Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Undark, and Narratively.

Could a book really save a life? Poet Aaron Abeyta is living proof. In this episode of Emerging Form, part of our miniseries about creativity and COVID-19, we talk with him about how Truman Capote helped transform him from trying to get kicked out of school to being the MFA Poetry Director at Western Colorado University. We also talk about his work as mayor in Antonito, Colorado, and how the pandemic is affecting the small town. We talk about his goal to give voice to others who don’t have one, how Pablo Neruda inspired him to be both poetic and political, and how a story from the Bible has helped guide him in the most difficult times. 

Show notes:  

Aaron Abeyta

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Pablo Neruda

Antonito, Colorado

untitled or breathing in a time of covid

--aaron a. abeyta

dust veils the valley like dust in spring

every day wind

every day this place a personification

of ache aching that is a falling

from this horizon into another

poverty does not create character

this   the myth of some false

lying book whose mirrors do not

shine back at us nor for us

in a denver hospital Robert Limon cleaves

at life this breath then another

breath     his lonely isolation

the machine a dire metronome

perhaps one day   we will

all point back to this isolation

the aloneness that wrought this line

or that line into air   and by air

i mean human hearts   this is a prayer

for change for life and breath

for loved ones to recover   to breathe

without laboring or without thought

i am reading Auden   cross of the moment

he does not include in his collected the line

we must love one another or die the poem

absent altogether this wind

isn’t a lie   what seems broken   is

lies are less expensive

than anything we have saved  

here among our hats and buttons  

gathered then shelved toward what we

know will always come for us  

we survive   our ancestors have made it so

their voices   you hear them too

they ring of fidelity   live

endure be    persist return

breathe yes fill your lungs

let the wind breathe may dust

swing from cottonwoods to water

to meadow   may we be

lifted from our veils   all of them

let   too   the broken

those walking toward home

in their swollen and inebriated day

may they   too here in this isolation

serve as an aspect of truth

why did he write these lines

he wrote them in isolation

in the days where the dead multiplied

beyond the wars of books and story

the dead   the dying the swollen

the broken and the barely breathing

they are a form of truth   the living

ache of this place   yes

the wind too brief breaths

that fluttered then flew

as if being alone was a

breath which formed itself  

out of our requisite and stored faith

into song

Hula hooping story tellers on street corners? That’s one topic of discussion in this episode of Emerging Form, part of our miniseries on how creatives are responding to the pandemic. We speak with our friend, author and adventurer Craig Childs, whose new book, Virga and Bone: Essays from dry places, is a celebration of the primacy of land. We talk about the pleasures and challenges of staying in one place, postcards to our pre-pandemic selves, what earthquakes have in common with pandemics and also how to place our present predicament in big time--both future and past. We talk about how cultures repeat themselves, how to move forward, and how to welcome what comes. 

Craig Childs

Virga and Bone: Essays from Dry Places

Craig’s postcard to his 2010 self on Last Word on Nothing

Christie’s postcard to her 2010 self at Last Word On Nothing

Rosemerry’s poem on resilience 

Christie's 100-mile habitat project

Rose Eveleth’s Flash Forward episode: Imagine Better Futures

Are there any trends in how the pandemic has affected creative output in America? In this episode of Emerging Form, part of our miniseries on how creatives are responding to the pandemic, we speak with Timothy Green, editor of Rattle, one of America’s most popular poetry magazines. Timothy has worked as editor of Rattle since 2004 and is the author of American Fractal (Red Hen Press), a contributing columnist for the Press-Enterprise newspaper, and co-founder of the Wrighwood Literary Festival. He lives near Los Angeles with his wife, Megan, and their two children.

In this conversation, we talk about how the stages of grief seems to be showing up in the submissions Rattle is receiving. We also talk about how for creatives, our name is our brand, how administration is also creative act, how Poe’s poem Eureka predated the Big Bang Theory by 70 years, how it feels to be the one writing the rejections, how even editors can get impostor syndrome for editors, and how to trust a process.

Rattle: www.rattle.com

Rattle’s YouTube Channel

Timothy Green

“Eureka” by Edgar Allen Poe

American Fractal by Timothy Green, review

Rosemerry’s poem on missing touch

Christie’s purple sourdough starter (photo below)

When life gets difficult, how do we bring our best selves to meet it? That’s one of the questions we ask in this episode of Emerging Form. We continue our miniseries on creativity and COVID-19 by interviewing Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars, a best-selling post-apocalyptic novel in which the main character has survived a global pandemic. It’s a little close to home--and we talk with Heller about how it feels to have life now mimic his book. We also talk about some of the silver linings of shelter in place, how Heller weaves poetry into his novels, his most recent books The River and The Orchard and what he’s working on now in his Denver writing studio. 

Heller is the author of seven books. He holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is a former longtime contributor to NPR, and has been a contributing editor at Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure.

Order Peter’s books from your local independent bookstore here.

In Emerging Form’s ongoing series, Creativity and COVID-19, we interview creatives about how they’re channeling their creativity to cope with coronavirus. In this episode, we talk with Helena de Groot, a Belgian radio producer based in New York. She is the host and producer of Poetry Off The Shelf, an interview podcast for the Poetry Foundation. She also produces and sound designs The Paris Review Podcast, and edits the opera podcast Aria Code, produced in collaboration with WQXR, the Metropolitan Opera, and WNYC Studios, hosted by Rhiannon Giddens. We’ll talk about the importance of baths, the healing power of Russian art films, how she and her husband have handled their small apartment and working from home, and the joys of exploring our art forms with no agenda. 

Rosemerry’s Live Poems on Facebook

Helena de Groot

Poetry Off the Shelf podcast

Nostalghia

In this bonus episode, we bring you a special treat: an episode of Shelter in Place, a new podcast created by our guest this week on Emerging Form, Laura Joyce Davis. This episode is titled “The Call to Create.” Enjoy!

Laura Joyce Davis

Shelter in Place podcast

This is the first of a new mini-series in which we explore this weird new reality we’re living in by interviewing a variety of creative makers about how they’re channeling their creativity to cope with the new coronavirus. In this episode, we talk to Laura Joyce Davis, a writer from Oakland, California, host and creator of a new daily podcast, “Shelter in Place: finding daily sanity in a world that feels increasingly insane.” We talk about the challenges of balancing parenting and work; how sheltering in place can change family dynamics; about disappointments and silver linings; about how a daily practice has offered her surprising freedom, trust and a different relationship with daily life; and about how a bike ride the day before Shelter in Place changed her life. 

Shelter in Place Podcast home page and on iTunes

Laura Joyce Davis

Welcome to our extended conversation with Rose Eveleth, the founder and host of Flash Forward, a podcast about the future. In this bonus episode, we talk with Rose about clarity: how she uses it to guide a project through growing pains. We’ll talk about her process for making monthly goals (so much more useful than a single New Year’s resolution!), how she organizes her goals, about her new book, pros and cons of inviting collaborators in, how ego and fear can sabotage a project, how she loves her lawyer, and about the stages of small business growth. 

Flash Forward, a podcast about the future.

Flash Forward’s Patreon page

Christie’s story, Your Inability to Do Pullups Is All in Your Head

Rosemerry’s poem about pullups

The Five Stages of Small Business Growth

In this five-minute bonus, Rosemerry reads four poems responding to the coronavirus pandemic: 

A Change in the Light

The Afternoon the World Health Organization Declares a Pandemic

Staying Home

Tucking in My Daughter in the Time of Corona Virus

Rosemerry’s Daily Poem Blog, A Hundred Falling Veils

At some point, most creatives experience growing pains--when your project is going well and now you have decisions to make about whether to grow it, to bring in collaborators, or to expand your reach. We’ll also talk about avalanches of opportunity and money grubbing poets. Our guest this episode is the inimitable Rose Eveleth. She is the producer and host of Flash Forward, a podcast about the future. We’ll ask her two questions: 1) When do you know your project has grown beyond something you can do alone and you need to bring in collaborators? and 2) When the creative project you’re doing is bringing you new opportunities, how do you decide which ones to take and what direction you want to head?

Christie’s Book, Good to Go, finalist for the Colorado Book Award! 

Christie’s Courage Camps

Rose Eveleth (photo credit: Eler de Grey)

Flash Forward, a podcast about the future.

A Change in the Light

Now while the moon

is hiding behind the clouds

now when the rain

is falling midwinter,

and now that they’ve told us

not to hug or kiss each other

for fear of contracting

and spreading disease,

yes now is the time to find

whatever light we have

been hiding inside us—

whatever measure of brilliance

we’ve managed to conceal

from each other, from ourselves—

now is the time to bring forth

that luminescence and offer it

freely to the world, now

when light matters most.

[image: Christie working with her Scientific American editor, Jeff DelViscio.]

We live in a society that wants to know. And yet uncertainty underlies all of science–one of our most essential tools for understanding the world. What is our relationship with uncertainty? Why is this relationship so important? And what does it have to do with creative practice? In this episode of Emerging Form, Christie Aschwanden talks about her new short-run podcast, Uncertain, hosted by Scientific American. We discuss the genesis of the project, the importance of finding people who are also passionate about your project, being receptive to opportunities, how we can be smart about creating congruent projects, how trying new media can spark our creative practice, and the importance of encouragement.

Uncertain from Scientific American https://scientificamerican.com/uncertain

Christie’s FiveThirtyEight story “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Sound Science’”

In this bonus episode we talk with psychologist and author Scott Barry Kaufman about the imagination network--the default chatter in your brain--and how valuable it is. We also talk about paradox, and the tug between a longing for external validation and the need to look inward for creative growth. We talk about openness to experience as a key driver for creativity, and how a rut can sometimes serve the greater creative process. 

Are you living up to your creative potential? Or are you stuck in a rut? Could it be that the rut is serving you? These are some of the questions we wrestle with in this episode of Emerging Form. We talk about Christie’s sweet spot between struggle and boredom, how fencing (or another new activity) might supercharge your creative process, and LOTS of tips on how to get out of a rut. We finish, as always with a guest. This episode features Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at Columbia University and author of the new book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. We ask him these two questions:

* What does self-actualization look like for a creative person?

* What’s the path to self-actualization in one’s creative life?

Episode Notes

Christie’s review of Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land by Noé Álvarez

Christie’s review of Wired to Create by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire

Kaufman’s NPR interview on Why So Many Gifted Yet Struggling Students are Hiding in Plain Sight

Kaufman’s The Psychology Podcast

Take a Self-Actualization Test

The figure skating routine to lift you out of a rut

En Garde

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Keep distance, the fencing teacher says,

and by this he means, stay close enough

to your opponent that you could, at any time,

extend, lunge and attack with your point.

All my life, I’ve tried not to keep distance.

All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid

the attack—from either side. And now,

with my silver lamé and my one white glove

and my face safe behind metal mesh, I dig

to find the part of me who craves engagement,

who seeks a bout, who wants to threaten

my target and exploit their vulnerability.

Keep distance, he says, and I understand

that this is how I show up for the game.

This is how I meet not only the opponent,

but, perhaps for the first time, myself.

In this bonus episode, we continue our conversation with USA Today best-selling author Sarina Bowen, who has written more than 30 contemporary novels and is cohost of the #amwriting podcast. She tells us the most important thing to remember when we think we are utterly stuck and shares with us tools from her “deep bag of tricks” for how to get unstuck.  We also talk about how genre writers are like chefs, and she shares stories about three collaborative writing projects and what they taught her. 

Sarina Bowen

Like a lot of life plans over the past few weeks, this episode veered from our original schedule. We’d planned to discuss the joys and challenges of creating things with friends, but instead we found ourselves talking about these strange times. In this emergency episode of Emerging Form, we talk about how COVID-19 is changing what and how we write, and how it’s affecting all kinds of creative careers. Warning: we get a bit emotional at times. Topics include toilet paper hoarding, coronavirus anxiety, the importance of the arts, financial insecurity, online alternatives to in person events and how our lives are different now. We check in with our fabulous audio producer, Rob Dozier, and then we talk with our scheduled guest, Sarina Bowen, a USA Today best-selling author who has written more than 30 contemporary novels and is cohost of the #amwriting podcast. 

Read Rosemerry’s daily poems

Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

Rob Dozier

Sarina Bowen

#amwriting podcast

coronavirus image by pixabay

Tonight I Pray for All the Doctors, the Nurses

the Healthcare Workers

And tonight I think

of the seventeen Italian doctors,

dead. And the hundreds

of thousands of people

whose test results were positive.

And all the doctors, nurses,

health care workers—

some right here in our town.

I think of them eating breakfast,

reading the same discouraging news,

then kissing their loved ones,

putting on their shoes,

and walking out the door,

though resolution’s as elusive

as last month’s peace—

the peace we didn’t

even know we had.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In this bonus episode, we talk with memoirist and essayist Claire Dederer about the role of ambition in a writer’s life. She also discusses the different ways she responds to rejection, and how it differs when it comes from a professional source versus from a reader. She also talks about the writer’s imperative to write about difficult subjects, why it’s important it is to have clarity and distance before sharing difficult personal stories, how domestic labor can affect a writer’s work life and how devoting time to her work has, at times, made her feel monstrous.

Claire Dederer (photo courtesy Claire Dederer)

Claire Dederer’s essay “What do we do with the Art of Monstrous Men?”

Claire Dederer’s essay “Eclipsed: In our two-writer household, my husband's literary star shines all too brightly”

“We’re sorry, your work does not suit our needs at this time.” These words are so common. Rejection is a difficult reality for most (all?) writers and artists. So how do we handle rejection? Can we use it to improve our work? What does it have to tell us and teach us? In this episode, we talk about a useful phrase in the face of rejection, Christie’s Southeast Asia Problem, and one of the poetry worlds’ best rejection letter writers. Then we’ll talk with memoirist and essayist Claire Dederer and ask her two questions: 1) How do you process rejection, especially when it’s a work that feels very personal? And 2) What have you learned from rejection? We’re interested in your feedback on these answers, too! 

Episode Notes:

Halcyon Poetry Prize

Christie’s article on mammography in Mother Jones

Christie’s report for the Pulitzer Center on Agent Orange in Vietnam

Colorado’s New Poet Laureate Bobby LeFebre

Most Rejected Books of All Time

Claire Dederer (photo courtesy Claire Dederer)

Claire Dederer’s essay “What do we do with the Art of Monstrous Men?”

Claire Dederer’s essay “Eclipsed: In our two-writer household, my husband's literary star shines all too brightly”

**

Tim Green’s Outstanding Rejection Letter

Dear Rosemerry— 

Thanks for sharing this. The subject matter is perfect for the series, but we receive over 100 poems every week, and I can only pick one (or occasionally two). This week I ended up choosing something else—check our website tomorrow morning to read it. 

This decision is, of course, no reflection on the importance of the event you were writing about, or of your response. It's great to read poets reacting in a meaningful way to current events, and very difficult to choose just one. 

I'm sorry that I can't reply individually, though many poems make me want to—reading all these every Saturday morning is a lot of work! We do have a closed Facebook group, where you can safely share your poems with each other, if you'd like—just join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/poetsrespond/

Anyway, don't hesitate to try again whenever you have another timely one—or to send general submissions any time. 

Best, 

Tim

In this bonus episode, Sarah Knight talks about the four kinds of yessers, how she went from overachiever to having a fully operational no muscle, how to build “the gates of hell no” and then cultivate your own private “okay corral,” the calming effects of pina coladas, how her daily tweets might help you discover and maintain your own boundaries, and more. **Please note that this episode contains language that may not be suitable for kids. (See title of Sarah’s book…)

Guest: Sarah Knight

JUST SAY F*CK NO! No is an acceptable answer. It’s time to start using it.

It’s only two letters long, but the word “no” can be one of the hardest words to say out loud. In this episode, we talk about why no is every bit as important a word for a creative as yes. We’ll talk about earthworms, the trifecta of yes, how to strengthen your no muscle and Christmas candles. Then we interview the international bestselling “anti-guru” Sarah Knight, author of the No F*cks Given guides and ask her these two questions: 1) How do you decide when to say no? And 2) What’s the best way to say no? We’re interested in your answers to these questions, too. 

Episode Notes:  

The Craft of Science Writing: Selections from The Open Notebook

Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems

Rosemerry’s book Charity: True Stories of Giving and Receiving

Rosemerry’s book Celebration: The Christmas Candle Book with Poems of Light

Veronica Dewey, costume designer extraordinaire

David Plotz’s trick for saying no (which he admits he stole from his wife, Hanna Rosin, and her friend, the writer Margaret Talbot)

Sarah Knight (photo of Sarah by Alfredo Esteban)

Sarah’s article Just Say F*ck No!

Sarah’s F*ck No page 

To buy her most recent book, F*ck No: How to Stop Saying Yes When You Can’t, You Shouldn’t or You Just Don’t Want To: visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Indiebound. 

In this bonus episode, we continue our conversation with Thea Deley about creating on emotionally difficult topics. Thea talks about the one woman play she created about her struggles with her family and their religious belief system and about the issues that arise when addressing personal issues through art.

Thea Deley (photo of Thea by Mike Maxwell)

As Mentioned in the Podcast:

In this week’s podcast, we mentioned a poem I wrote about my dear friend Sally Estes when she was told she had three months to live. Here I am reading the poem. It’s also printed below.

They Say It’s the Best Bloom in Ten Years

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

She wants to go see the bluebonnets, she says.

This is after she tells me they’ve said she has three months to live.

And I want to find her vast fields of bluebonnets,

acres and acres of white-tipped blue bloom.

And I want to send her more springs to see them in,

more days to live one day at a time. I want to remove

the pain in her belly, the pain that aggressively grows.

I want to make deals with the universe. Want to say no

to the way things are. I want to tell death to wait.

I want to tell life to find a way. I want to hug her

until she believes she’s beloved. I want to give her

the pen that will write every brave thing

that she’s been unable to say. There are days

when we feel how uncompromising it is, the truth.

How human we are. There are days when the bluebonnets

stretch as far as the eye can see. There are days

we know nothing is more important than going to see them,

a billion blue petals all nodding in the wind, teaching us to say yes.

—forthcoming in Hush, Middle Creek Publishing, 2020

“The day is about certainty, answers, lists, data,” says author Annabel Abbs-Streets. But at night, she says, “I felt I could put my arm through to another world” — a world of creativity, inspiration, open-mindedness and insight. In this episode, we discuss her new book, Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self, which weaves science, memoir, and history into a powerful, intimate conversation about creativity and the night and why we (especially women) might find our empathy, creativity, and connection to the divine might be heightened after the sun goes down.

Annabel Abbs-Streets is an award-winning writer of highly researched fiction, non-fiction and memoir.  Sleepless is her seventh book, and her work has been published in over 30 languages.  She writes regularly for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, and has spoken at literary festivals across the world. She has a degree in English Literature, an MA in Marketing, Research and Statistics, and is a Fellow of the Brown Foundation. She lives with her family  in London and Sussex.

Annabel Abbs-Streets

Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self 

Rosemerry’s album on endarkenment, Dark Praise

Engaging in a creative project can be hard enough when the subject matter is fun. But what about when it’s emotionally taxing, too? In this episode, we talk about many techniques for working with topics that make us uneasy—from changing perspective to creating rituals. Then we talk with Thea Deley, speaker, writer and improviser, and ask her two questions: 1) When do you know you are ready to write about something difficult—what is the role of perspective, and 2) How do you navigate stories that might hurt someone? We are interested in your answers to these questions, too!

Episode Notes

Christie’s farewell to David Corcoran on Last Word on Nothing

Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, by James W. Pennebaker, PhD

Pablo Neruda: Tonight I Can Write

American Psychological Association: Writing to Heal

Harvard Health Publishing: Writing About Emotions May Ease Stress and Trauma

Thea Deley (photo of Thea by Mike Maxwell)

Christie’s ode to Holiday Mathis, “I Know Astrology Is B******t, But I Can’t Stop Reading My Horoscope.”

**

Simple Tools

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I am so grateful for the rubber spatula,

the way it sits quietly in the drawer

yet is always ready for action—

is game to scrape the walls of the blender

or to fold chocolate chips into cookie dough.

It evens and swirls the frosting on cake

and welcomes the tongue

of a child. In a sharp world,

it knows the value of being blunt;

it knows that to smooth is a gift to the world.

Some people are knives, and

I thank them. Me, I want to belong

to the order of spatulas—those

who blend, who mix, who co-mingle

dissimilars to create a cohesive whole.

I want to spread sweetness, to be a workhorse

for beauty, to stir things up,

to clean things out. I want to be useful,

an instrument of unity, a means, a lever for life.

first published in Braided Way, 2019

In this bonus episode, Sherry Richert Belul, happiness coach and founder of Simply Celebrate, talks with us about co-founding Secret Agents of Change, how even the way you walk to the office can be playful, and how it is that she came to find herself a happiness coach. 

Want to make sure you receive every bonus episode? Subscribe to our newsletter!

What does play have to do with creativity? Could a hula hoop help you finish your book project? In this episode, we argue about what is play, anyway—is it something you set time aside for? Or something that is always available to you? And how might it help your creative life? Then we are joined by author and happiness coach Sherry Richert Belul to get her take on our two questions: 1) How does play inform your creative process? and 2) What’s an example of a project that has been shaped by play? We’d love your feedback on these questions, too!

Episode Notes:

Meet our new production wizard, Rob Dozier

Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul by Stuart Brown, M.D.

Playing at Work: Organizational Play as a Facilitator of Creativity, dissertation by Samuel West

Christie’s spam poetry on Last Word on Nothing

Rosemerry’s collaborative book of three-line poems, Even Now

Snark Week: The Wrath of the Sloth on Last Word on Nothing

Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Sherry Richert Belul and Simply Celebrate

Say It Now: 33 ways to say I love you to the most important people in your life

Secret Agents of Change Facebook Group

***

Wild Rose Shops for a Bathing Suit

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Not the full-coverage shorts.

Not the black one-piece

with the ruffle around the hips.

She wants to show off some skin.

She doesn’t care who’s looking.

Or who’s not.

She’s got flesh and a lot of it.

A woman needs weight in the world.

Damn, she is getting hot just thinking

about the way the sun likes to touch her.

She finds a strapless bikini

in her favorite color, brilliant magenta.

Barely a bottom. Perfect.

Another suit in hunter orange.

She plans to be swimming with sharks

and wants them to know she is there.

God, she loves shopping for bathing suits.

She could do it all day with that long tri-fold mirror

that knows she gives squat

about who’s the loveliest of all,

but dang, how could she not notice

how great it is to have hips, like hers,

how fine to have some real meat to swing around.