In July 2023, I joined the TLA Network and that summer, I signed up for an online course. As an English professor and the major/minor coordinator for the English program, I had been trying to find ways to focus and connect my university’s English program with its Wellness Student Learning Outcome (SLO). I believed that TLA was one of the ways that the major was going– away from the classics and more towards how we can use books and stories for our and society’s health.
SLO Wellness: Recognize how my choices can transform my health, well-being, and ability to thrive; seek support and utilize resources for personal growth; and work collaboratively to promote wellness on campus and within myself.
My first course, “Liminal Spaces: The Poetry of Transitions and Change” with Angie Ebba, revived my own personal relationship with writing poetry. It had been many moons since I had written anything so creative. I vowed then that going forward, my journal entries would benefit from some added poetry. Instead of writing furiously to get my thoughts and feelings on the page, poetry lets me take a sip of tea and reflect. It’s the beauty of time spent with oneself. Writing and reading poetry has helped me feel more connected to my authentic self.
Photo by Sharon Pajka, PhD
I’m currently taking “Kissing the Muse: A Messy, Magical, Creative Adventure (part 1)” with Robbyn Layne. My second week into the course, I learned that my friend’s grave had been moved once again by his family and that it was now in a public cemetery where I would be able to visit after decades. I’m nearly 50 years old and almost immediately I found myself tending to my inner-fifteen-year-old self. I visited his grave but I could not process any of this alone. Fortunately, I was able to call on my Muses and even had a networking session with another TLAN friend I’ve made. My feedback to her on one of her poems was to try going deeper and darker. Talking with her about my assignments in the course and life in general, I discovered that I hadn’t been able to write about or even process visiting my friend’s grave until I encouraged myself to go deeper and darker. So, I did. I applied to the TLAF Certificate program. I was accepted into the program last week. I was able to write a poem about my cemetery visit.
Lakeview Cemetery
Lakeview cemetery has no view of the lake, No resolution or peace Even after thirty-four years.
Your epitaph in the stone Words placed by another Words distinctly not your own.
Your body is buried and then taken Reinterred and reinterred Still played with like a doll.
Trying to control the narrative Fabrications of your final hours I believed but coroners do not lie.
They complete final paperwork Important details condensed to a page And place an X by the cause— Suicide.
I am no longer restricted From accessing your grave No longer required to sit for tea.
I stand in this field No other markers around Staring at a photo that isn’t you.
Lakeview cemetery has no view of the lake No resolution or peace I am standing here alone.
Remembering her pink satin shirt The smoothness of your coffin A funeral without you holding my hand.
I hold my hand up high It’s the only thing I can control While the others make up lies.
Lakeview cemetery has no view of the lake No resolution or peace 34 years to be on the right side of this poem.
Going forward, I have found a place that I want to tap into—TLAN. As the internet, social media, and even my computer can at times have become dreary places, TLAN reminds me that I must be mindful of the places that I visit—virtually and physically. I’m looking forward to future courses and the TLAF certificate program.
Sharon Pajka, PhD, is an English professor and a cemetery historian. Her writing combines her love of words and the stories of those who have come before us. She is the author of Women Writers Buried in Virginia (2021) and The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe: Graves of his family, friends, and foes (2023). She teaches courses in ghost stories and haunted history, dark tourism, literature by women, and media literacy.
Through some happenstance web link, I found TLA, and have become quite the fan girl of their online courses. I’ve taken classes at many places over the years, but only TLA has resonated on such an elemental level. Many of my classmates are like me, female, of periretirement age and still seeking that counter-narrative.
Last fall I took the irresistably titled “Liminal Spaces: The Poetry of Transitions and Change” with Angie Ebba. (Who among us doesn’t wish to be changed by a poem? Who among us doesn’t wish to change their world through their poem?)
The two weeks between when I signed up for the class and when it started turned out to be quite a liminal space for me: a sprained ankle on top of a chronic mobility disorder, the death of my mother and the first time I got Covid. So my attention to the thematic possibilities, new (to me) forms like the haibon and oulipo, and techniques was mutable.
But the Week 4 assignment was on using personification, the literary device that gives human characteristics to nonhuman things or inanimate objects. To my delight, a number of us confessed to be confirmed personifiers, even and especially outside of our writing lives.
The online class thread for this assignment read like a meeting of Empathizers Anonymous. The initials of my classmates and the actual objects personified below have been changed to protect their privacy:
T posted about their mother’s lamp that did not want to be discarded. M couldn’t stand to see the last apple alone on the store shelf. K whose spouse who talked to their favorite stapler.
I commented how, in the early 1970s, my father made me return a midi dress to the store “because it made me look like too much of a hippie.” Never mind that, born in 1961, I had been too young for Woodstock and missed out on the Summer of Love. Even in the dress, no one would have mistaken me for Janis Joplin. Putting it in the bag to be returned, I cried for the dress and the multicolored stripes around its skirt, its hurt feelings.
Five decades later I still glimpse the purple dress, Now, I too am seen.
I am in the midst of a poetry book launch right now, sharing my writing with audiences. It’s a vulnerable, nerve-wracking, and often satisfying emotional experience. And, just like every other stage of the writing process, there is healing and transformation. My published book is giving back to me in an entirely new way.
jinx and heavenly calling––I poached a portion of my mother’s love letters to my father, 1953-1954, my fourth poetry collection, was published in March by Lily Poetry Review Books. As I give readings to audiences and answer interview questions, I’m discovering that writing these poems has fulfilled an unconscious need.
In the late stage of my mother’s life, her late sixties and seventies, she wasn’t particularly well or happy. She struggled with a number of physical and some psychological ailments that made it challenging to care for her. Dementia and COPD made her mood very low and changed her personality. She lost her innate cheerfulness. She was in chronic discomfort and dissatisfaction that we could not solve, as much as we wanted to, as much as we tried. She wasn’t able to keep herself safe or well cared for and we worried about her constantly, and felt helpless much of the time. When my mother aged, we lost her. When she died, we lost her twice.
So, when I found the letters she wrote to my father at such a gorgeous and promising time of her life, aged 26, falling in love with the love of her life, I felt as though I were meeting my true mother for the very first time. Here was the woman I wanted to spend time with.
Her letters were sent to my father during their courtship, from 1953-1954, starting with their first date, and ending soon after they married. Some of the letters were loose––many of them still had their envelopes with canceled stamps so that I could see the exact date the letter went through the post office. Awestruck by this gold mine, I immediately began reading them. First, I did my best to put them in order by date or by weather suggesting a season, or a mention of a holiday. Touching the stiff paper she wrote on with my fingers––moving my fingers over ink from her pen––was a delicious tactile experience.
My mother had lovely handwriting, and I easily recognized it as belonging to her and her alone. But who was she? This young woman falling in love with the man who would become my father, years before I was born. This woman who wrote, playfully, to the man who fathered me, “You’re just too much for me, I guess,” after spending a weekend with him in Cambridge.
The project I began, erasing her letters to make poems that I published in the collection, was my way of having a whole new phase of relationship with my mother. One that, as a poet, and a daughter, has been entirely fulfilling to me. As a daughter who knows the end of the story––a marriage that endured just over fifty years––I was fascinated to have such a direct encounter with the origin story of their relationship, because, of course, it’s my origin story too. Without the exchange of their letters I would never have been born.
As a daughter, I was personally fascinated, and often surprised, by the emotional narrative of their courtship––its ordinary extraordinariness. As a poet, I was intrigued by the universal story of what Amy Lowell calls, the want of you, in her poem, “The Letter””
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.
My mother’s letters document falling in love in a long-distance relationship, and all the risk, beauty and catastrophe of this archetypal journey. Following in the footsteps of the poet Mary Reufle’s work in erasure, I decided to erase the letters and create poetic experiences of each letter, which is presented on a palimpsest, or background, of some visual aspect of the original letter. My publisher, Eileen Cleary, as dubbed them “epistolary erasures.”
Now that jinx and heavenly calling is alive in the world, I have a whole new found phase of relationship with my mother, and she isn’t gone. As I share my book with the world, she’s with me every day, very much alive in my creative life. I feel closer than I ever have to the mother she was––and deeply interested in the woman I uncovered.
Joretta Wallin slid quietly into a seat. While the others laughed and chatted, she sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. When we circled into our introductions, she said she’d written poetry all her life, and her one dream was to have a book of her poems, which she wanted to title “Thoughts from My Heart.” It had been her dream for more than forty years. She said no one even knew that she wrote her poetry. She had written poems on the backs of envelopes, and in two colors of ink because the parts had been written at different times. She had poems on her electric bills, on napkins, on any piece of paper that had been close at hand when she felt an inspiration in her heart. She wrote about things that mattered in her daily life, people she loved, and her faith. After we met that first time, I invited her to bring all her writing to me, so we could look at how to create a book from what she had. Jo didn’t type. I took all the bits and pieces and scraps and typed them up for her, without a single change, and gave them back to her. She chose images that meant a lot to her, and together, we made a book. She wanted it to be on 8 1/2 x 11 paper in color, and she wanted copies to give to her friends and family — so that’s what we did. She had the talent. She had the surge. All she needed was the tiniest bit of time, attention, and encouragement — plus some typing. When Jo passed away, her obituary mentioned that she’d enjoyed three activities most of all: her work in children’s homes, singing, and writing songs and poems. When I think of why this work matters, I often think of Jo. Through writing, she transformed experience into words. With the tiniest bit of support, she created a book of her poetry that she could share, so she could share those thoughts from her heart. Since then, I have helped nine writers bring a book from concept to completion. Jo taught me the power of encouraging words.
Kiesa Kay, poet and playwright, writes works that build resilience. Her plays have been produced in five states, and THUNDER IS THE MOUNTAIN’S VOICE has been chosen by the Fine Arts Guild of the Rockies to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Isabella Bird’s visit to Estes Park, Colorado.
August of 2021 found me deep in the magic of “Future Casting,” an online class offered through the Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN) and facilitated by the astonishingly creative Caits Meissner. In the sixth and final week, Caits suggested we write a statement of poetics. For me, this was a very new and not entirely welcome idea. The following is what I wrote in response to that invitation. (Warning: this piece mentions violence and employs some salty language.)
For most of my life, whenever anyone asked me to summarize myself or my art I panicked, froze, then fled, usually leaving a comet tail of epithets. If cornered, I deflected. “Want to know me?” I’d hiss, “Go read my poems. They’re scraped from the inner walls of my ascending aorta.” Similarly, questions about my writing process often ran into a big old slammed door of “none of your damn business.”
I always thought it was because I’m an introvert with a bit of social anxiety. Lately, though, I’m coming to understand that it’s because writing poetry is how I wrote myself back into a breathing presence in my own mind and trying to codify that feels like I risk diminishing its creative, sustaining, power. Sharing my purpose and process as a poet feels x-ray intimate.
When I was a child, I was in so much pain—so deeply psychically displaced—it seemed I was only holding on to this world by a forefinger and thumb. My seventh grade art teacher tossed me a rope when he asked our class to write a poem in response to an art film of stampeding wild horses. There were foals in that snorting, screaming, rampaging mess. I recognized their terror and out-of-control turmoil. I felt it in my body and then streamed those messy, shouting word-feelings onto the pages of my tidy school notebook. And that, as they say, is where it all started.
I continued writing poetry to locate myself in myself and in the world, to imagine a place where I belonged, to make a space for myself that made sense despite nearly nothing around me doing so. The process of writing poetry—at least the way I interpreted it—let me circumvent my indoctrinated, gas-lit mind and write what my body felt, noticed, and perceived. I could write about the tall white pine tree and how I first, finally, felt real belonging when wrapped in their branches, listening to the wind.
I write because words and images live in my bones and itch. I write so those words detach their atoms from my marrow and coalesce themselves into poems. I write because my arms ache from holding the unflinching truth of violence in one hand and the equally unflinching truth of compassion in the other. I write to make sense of violence: the large and small violences we impose on each other, the cuts and digs we carve into ourselves, the narrow, restrictive, suffocating norms a culture inflicts on its members, the ongoing rape of this planet. I write to find respite in everyday moments of connection and the steady reliability of natural rhythms—small, quiet things like morning following night. I write because my body is etched with violence and betrayal and understands how finding respite in small, everyday beauties helps survival turn the corner into living.
In the beginning, I wrote so I could know I existed. These days, I write because I hold the truth of both violence and compassion in my body and I know there are people who need to hear that is possible. I write because I have lived sixty years of life in the face of a beginning that should have ended me and there are people who need to know that’s possible, too. I write poems to be catalysts. I offer them as seeds. I hope they plant change.
Tracie Nichols is a Transformative Language Artist writing poetry and facilitating writing experiences from under two old Sycamore trees in southeastern Pennsylvania. She is the Co-founder of two writing groups, as well as a board member and newsletter editor for the Transformative Language Arts Network. Putting her master’s degree in Transformative Learning and Change to good use over the past two decades, Tracie has designed and facilitated many virtual and in-person lifelong learning experiences on a truly wide range of topics for small groups. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent and Text Power Telling as well as two anthologies. You can connect with her at https://tracienichols.com/.
I have always loved children’s literature – the illustrations, the simplicity of the language, the uplifting stories. So imagine my surprise when I was triggered by a picture book as I was browsing in a bookstore in my hometown of Houston, Texas in the fall of 2018. I was still carrying that anger when I sat down at a restaurant a short time later. As I waited for my food, I wrote the following on Facebook:
I went to Barnes and Noble this afternoon, and I saw a new children’s picture book called H is for Harvey. It contains sentences such as “H is for hurricane blah, blah, blah” and “H is for hope blah, blah, blah.” The very last sentence is “H is for happy.” Apparently, the home of the author of this book didn’t flood and has her happy, normal life back. How nice! So I’m going to write my own Hurricane Harvey book. It’s called P is for Post-Traumatic Stress. I was playing with that idea as I went across the street to have linner (too late for lunch, too early for dinner) at La Madeleine. When the cashier gave me the “P” spoon, I knew it was a sign! I’ll be posting the story in the comments below…
While not appropriate for a children’s book, what followed was an outpouring of my grief, anger, and confusion.
P is for panic, what you feel when you know for certain that your house is going to flood.
P is for patience, something that you lose.
P is for privacy, something else that you lose.
P is for pain, something that you feel a lot of.
P is for psychiatric, the kind of help you need now.
P is for puppy, like the one who lives in #187 and was able to enter #190 and pee on the floor because we no longer have any walls dividing us.
P is for paper plates, what you have to use because all of your dishes are packed away.
P is for pessimism because it’s been over a year and your house still hasn’t been repaired.
P is for property value, something that has gone down about 35%.
P is for plummet, what happens to your energy level.
P is for pregnant because one of my former students had a baby since Harvey. He and his wife actually produced a living, breathing human being faster than my house could be repaired.
P is for pray, the only thing I can do at this point.
Now I am writing the sequel to this story. It is mid-August of 2022, and the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey is approaching. I’ve been thinking about how to commemorate this event that turned my life upside down on August 29, 2017, and I realize that now I can find comfort in the letter “C.” The book I would write today is called C is for Complex PTSD.
While there are similarities, Complex PTSD differs from PTSD. A simple definition is that Complex PTSD refers to an accumulation of traumatic events that usually occurs in childhood whereas PTSD is the result of a single event. What I didn’t understand at the time is that I was reliving the emotional trauma of my childhood through the events that surrounded Hurricane Harvey.
With this knowledge, I am writing a new story:
C is for clarity, what I have gained since learning about Complex PTSD.
C is for cathartic, the releasing of grief through the infinite number of tears I have cried.
C is for compassion, what I need to give to my inner child.
C is for curiosity, the ability to stay open and continue learning.
C is for consistently, the way I need to show up for myself day after day.
C is for my creative practice, one of the ways that I heal.
C is for change, what I am doing with my life and my outlook.
C is for connection, the healing relationships I forge with people, nature, and myself.
C is for care, specifically self-care, actively taking steps that contribute to my well-being.
C is for calm, what happens after the storm passes.
C is for the courage to heal myself.
C is for the commitment to live my best life.
C is also for closure which I will commence by returning to the letter “P.” This particular “P” was a gift from a friend who added it to my Facebook post back in 2018:
P is for permission, permission to own my feelings and permission to express myself.
Sharon Bippus, PhD, is an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) instructor who finds inspiration in the intersection of creativity, mystery, and synchronicity. As an undergraduate, she was awarded two scholarships to study in Germany which fueled her desire to learn more about the diverse world we live in. Since that time, she has taught English in Slovakia and China and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Western Russia. She currently teaches ESOL at a community college in the suburbs of Houston, Texas where she works with students from all over the world. In her free time, she enjoys mixed media, collage, and photography and has received training in trauma-informed expressive arts and nature-based therapeutic practices. She is a SoulCollage® facilitator, a Veriditas-trained labyrinth facilitator, and a student in the Haden Institute’s Dream Work Program.
Following up on last month’s post about what our staff and board members have been reading, we asked some of the writers, editors, poets, and facilitators who teach for the TLA Network what they are currently reading, and why. We thought you might enjoy getting more of a glimpse into our teachers’ worlds – see their selections, listed below.
We would love to hear what YOU have been reading – share your latest favorite reads with us, and we might just feature you and your favorite book(s) in an upcoming newsletter, or as part of a Network book club! We would love to hear from you!
Jennifer Browdy, PhD – professor, editor, community organizer & group facilitator.
LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven, Chris Bache. The author is a distinguished professor emeritus of world religions, who spent 20 years researching the nature of reality and metaphysics by taking himself on more than 70 high-dose, carefully set and monitored LSD explorations, with fascinating results.
The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science & Spirituality, by Paul Levy. Levy has done an outstanding job of bringing the insights of quantum theory, Jungian depth psychology and mystical spiritual traditions like the Kabbalah to bear on foundational questions of reality and human consciousness.
The Radiant Heart of the Cosmos: Compassion Teachings for Our Time, by Penny Gill. Gill, a retired professor of political science and longtime dean of the college at Mt. Holyoke College, unexpectedly began to channel the voices of two Tibetan deities, Manjushri and Kwan Yin, who taught her about the “tsunami of Spirit” that is accelerating the pace of change on Earth at this time, and how we can learn to keep our psychic balance and ride with it, rather than getting swept up in fear and resistance. This book, written in three voices, tells Gill’s personal journey as well as relating the conversations she’s had with Manjushri and Kwan Yin.
Lisa Chu, M.D.– multidisciplinary artist, illuminator, and community catalyst.
The Apology by V (formerly Eve Ensler). The concept and content of this volume — an imagined apology written to the author in the voice of her long-dead father — are a healing salve to those among us who are still searching for the roots of the harmful, invasive, or violent behaviors of the ones who proclaimed to love us. V’s cleansing work speaks to the heart of anyone who has spent time inquiring into, deconstructing, and reconstructing internal narratives in an attempt to liberate from the invisible yet unmistakable tendrils of these violent inheritances. I take this book in small sips, returning to pick it up again after walking with it in my belly for awhile.
Sara Berman’s Closet by Maira Kalman. This is a short illustrated volume that I didn’t expect to have such an impact on me. At first I flipped quickly through it, but as I neared the end I realized there was a twist, an unexpected turn inside me that planted a seed for reimagining a definition of a well-lived life. Everything by Maira Kalman astonishes and delights me, but this was an added surprise and life lesson inspired by the story of her mother’s closet.
Remarkable Diaries: The World’s Greatest Diaries, Journals, Notebooks, & Lettersby Kate Williams. This one sits on my art desk and reminds me of the long lineage of thinkers – artists, explorers, writers, inventors – whose notebook practices have been reproduced as images with historical context here. I feel like I am in the company of my people whenever I leaf through these pages. I feel grateful for the existence of these notebooks, their preservation, and the fact of the existence of the minds and hands which made them. To me these are as much a product of their lives as any final works published. They are each a piece of multidimensional evidence of the uniqueness of creative process and the shared medium of the notebook across centuries of human existence.
Kimberly Lee – Writer, Editor, Workshop Facilitator.
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. This book’s compelling premise was hard to resist: Four young siblings visit a woman who can supposedly predict the exact date of a person’s death, and as the characters move into and through adulthood, we learn how this knowledge affects their choices and behavior in all aspects of their lives.
Goddesses of Self-Care: 30 Divine Feminine Archetypes To Guide You, by Stephanie Anderson Ladd. This nourishing workbook offers a wealth of information on a wide variety of feminine archetypes from cultures around the world, inviting readers to harness the wisdom and ways of these entities to craft a self-care strategy through reflection, journaling, art making, and other activities.
Infinitum by Tim Fielder. A gorgeous graphic novel that begins in ancient Africa, then moves through history to the present and beyond, spanning the globe as the main character, Aja Oba, seeks to destroy the curse that binds him while finding love and purpose.
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, by Douglas Carlton Abrams, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I’m actually listening to the audio version of this book while I do my daily chores – a simple practice for elevating the mundane into a joyful experience. Two friends, who also happen to be two of the world’s most influential spiritual leaders, come together for a weeklong event to share their thoughts on living with joy, even in the face of adversity. In the audio version, two actors read the parts of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond, as the writer weaves his insights around them. It’s a thought-provoking, inspiring, entertaining, and uplifting read (or listen).
Falling in Honey, by Jennifer Barclay. Inspiring for aspiring memoir writers, and anyone who loves the Greek islands. This book gets some mixed reviews as far as the quality of writing goes, but I am still putting it here for two reasons. One, I’m a huge fan of memoirs about travel and love, and this one is an entertaining story about the British author’s experience of discovering and moving to a tiny Greek island in the Dodecanese (one that I just visited, and also fell in love with), with a twist.
And two, you can learn a lot from the way other memoirists craft their stories – good, bad, and in-between. This was only Barclay’s second book, and she continues to write, improve, and follow her creative heart, so I find that very inspiring.
Storycraft, by Jack Hart. This book brings readers into the process of developing nonfiction narratives by revealing the stories behind the stories. Hart shares tips, anecdotes, and recommendations he forged during his decades-long career in journalism, with examples that draw from magazine essays, book-length nonfiction narratives, documentaries, and radio programs. A great resource but also a fascinating, fun read. It also greatly improved my ability to write blogs, newsletters, and articles for my clients.
Angie Ebba – Writer, Activist, and Performance Artist.
Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlich. This collection of poetry looks at the author’s mental health and her relationship to the medications she takes. I love the raw honesty and vulnerability in many of the poems in this book, and the way that we see the struggles and triumphs that can come with learning how to navigate mental illness.
The Boy With a Bird in His Chest by Emme Lund. I loved how this novel tackled the question of what it means to be different, the cost of hiding ourselves, and the courage it takes to show who we are, even when people don’t like it. This book has great representation with a variety of LGBTQIA main characters. Despite the book being full of surreal elements, I found myself completely believing them, and looking for the birds that may be living in the chests of others.
What the Dead Want Me To Know, by E. Janet Aalfs These poems have a life of their own and speak of justice and inclusivity while whistle-blowing the rich old boys who “behind our backs launder money/fumbling hands in drawers the same old way….” In this collection, lyricism meets reality, crudeness, and injustice with the mastery of great poetry. Aalfs knows that “not looking away” is the “given prize.”
She understands the relationship between body and mind as a continuum. Her white body crosses a black one, breathing in the same lines, knowing that “budding bruises” come up from the breathing ground… healing. She prays and revises her prayer, asking for calm, giving it to us on each line that breathes now and forever.
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, by Jamie Figueroa. Jamie Figueroa gets us into the world of two siblings rooting meaning and a sense of self in this brilliant and well-plotted novel. They meet at the intersection of humor, sorrow, and loss that crosses generations. One can say it is a novel that puts generational trauma into perspective.
Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us, by Lynn Mundell. The collection explores those tender moments in the lives of women and young girls who could not embrace or explore their sexuality. They need to fit but they could not belong. Coming from a culture where women are treated as lesser beings, I felt intrigued when I realized women struggled everywhere.
One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large by Chris La Tray. This is one of those books that I return to over and over as a writer. It is both touchstone and inspiration, reminding me of the power and pleasure of staying curious and writing down what I notice.
The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker by Susan Wittig Albert. A delicious summer read where the characters feel so real I could pop next door for some lemonade and a chat, the setting and history is well researched and accessible and the mystery stays a mystery until the end. I’ve never been disappointed by anything, fiction or nonfiction, that this author writes and she is prolific!
One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large by Chris La Tray. This is one of those books that I return to over and over as a writer. It is both touchstone and inspiration, reminding me of the power and pleasure of staying curious and writing down what I notice.
The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker by Susan Wittig Albert. A delicious summer read where the characters feel so real I could pop next door for some lemonade and a chat, the setting and history is well researched and accessible and the mystery stays a mystery until the end. I’ve never been disappointed by anything, fiction or nonfiction, that this author writes and she is prolific!
The power of words to wound is also a measure of the power of words to heal. – Pádraig Ó Tuama.
Irish poet, author, theologian, and activist Pádraig Ó Tuama has published six collections of work over the years. His most recent, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, was released this past October. Ó Tuama is also the host of a podcast, Poetry Unbound With On Being. The solo podcast explores the meanings, themes, and intricacies of poems written by his peers in beautiful fifteen-minute recordings that let his audience fall deep into the words of these brilliant artists.
In Poetry Unboand’s May 30th, 2022 episode, Ó Tuama discusses poet Andy Jackson’s, The Changing Room, a delicate and alluring eight-stanza prose poem that discusses the themes of self-consciousness. Ó Tuama eloquently unpacks the verses during the thirteen-minute listen. He explains, “It’s a poem that pays attention to an experience of one [body], but really that’s a sleight of hand… Jackson is looking at the attention that [his body] gets and is refocusing it, extending it wider, looking at the deeper question, what does it mean for any of us to be in a body?“
Ó Tuama’s work expands beyond the written page and into his community. From 2014 to 2019, Ó Tuama led the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation group. During his tenure, he wrote Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, a prayer book which draws on the organization’s spiritual practices. Ó Tuama formulated the collection based on decades of work addressing the personal and political conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and other global conflicts.
Under Ó Tuama’s leadership, the Corrymeela Community helped develop school and group curricula to discuss narrative practices, art and conflict, and interfaith dialogue, and his work advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights had impact throughout Ireland and beyond.
A beautiful example of Ó Tuama’s ability to see and understand a wide and wise variety of perspectives is in his 2020 poem, How To Belong Be Alone.
It all begins with knowing
nothing lasts forever,
so you might as well start packing now.
In the meantime,
practice being alive.
There will be a party
where you’ll feel like
nobody’s paying you attention.
And there will be a party
where attention’s all you’ll get.
What you need to do
is to remember
to talk to yourself
between these parties.
And,
again,
there will be a day,
— a decade —
where you won’t
fit in with your body
even though you’re in
the only body you’re in.
You need to control
your habit of forgetting
to breathe.
Remember when you were younger
and you practiced kissing on your arm?
You were on to something then.
Sometimes harm knows its own healing
Comfort knows its own intelligence.
Kindness too.
It needs no reason.
There is a you
telling you another story of you.
Listen to her.
Where do you feel
anxiety in your body?
The chest? The fist? The dream before waking?
The head that feels like it’s at the top of the swing
or the clutch of gut like falling
& falling & falling and falling
It knows something: you’re dying.
Try to stay alive.
For now, touch yourself.
I’m serious.
Touch your
self.
Take your hand
and place your hand
some place
upon your body.
And listen
to the community of madness
that
you are.
You are
such an
interesting conversation.
You belong
here.
Ó Tuama articulates the sensation of anxiety so effortlessly, in a way that allows readers not only to identify this feeling but also experience what this character, whether us, Ó Tuama, or someone else, is feeling as well. The line, “Sometimes harm knows its own healing” encapsulates this fascinating idea of using our perceived weaknesses as new strengths – the idea of taking a part of ourselves that we avoid focusing on, and finding its strength, finding its power and durability, and ultimately, its vigor.
Pádraig Ó Tuama will be featured as one of three keynote speakers at the TLA Network’s upcoming Power of Words Conference, titled, Hope is a Discipline. The conference will be held online from October 13-16, 2022. Along with Camille T. Dungy and Katherine Adams, Ó Tuama will be speaking and presenting on the theme of hope being a discipline. We welcome you to join us!
Gabe Seplow is a Philadelphia native who is studying Contemporary Theatre at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He went to high school at AIM Academy in Conshohocken, PA, where he was a founding member of the Student Diversity Leadership group, traveling the country to different conferences to study and learn to make school a more diverse and equitable place. Gabe has written and directed plays performed at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival addressing social justice, diversity, and equity issues, with the goal of shining a light on gun violence, racial biases, and white privilege. He is currently an Intern for the TLA Network, doing research, assisting with social media, and helping with conference programming.
“Putting to work poetry and gospel, side by side with story and Celtic spirituality, Ó Tuama explores ideas of shelter along life’s journey, opening up gentle ways of living well in a troubled world. The reader can’t help but be drawn in, slip-sliding into the harbor of the author’s soulful words.” —Chicago Tribune
“Probably the best public speaker I know.” —William Crawley, BBC
The TLA Network is pleased to include noted Irish Poet Pádraig Ó Tuama as one of three keynotes at the upcoming TLA Network’s 2022 Power of Words Conference. The conference also features keynotes poet and writer Camille Dungy, and Kathleen Adams, founder of the Therapeutic Writing Institute and the Center for Journal Therapy. The conference will be online October 13-16 next fall, and the super early bird registration fee (20% off the regular price) is available now through December 31, 2021
Pádraig Ó Tuama is a theologian, conflict resolution mediator, and the author of four volumes of poetry, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community (2017), In the Shelter (2015), Sorry for your Troubles (2013), and Readings from the Books of Exile (2012), which was longlisted for the 2013 Polari First Book Prize.
For Ó Tuama, religion, conflict, power, and poetry all circle around language, that original sacrament. Working fluently on the page and in public, Ó Tuama is a compelling poet, teacher, and group worker, and a profoundly engaging public speaker. He has worked with groups to explore story, conflict, their relationship with religion and argument, and violence. Using poetry, group discussion and lectures, his work is marked both by lyricism and pragmatism, and includes a practice of evoking stories and participation from attendees at his always-popular lectures, retreats, and events.
Ó Tuama has been a featured guest on On Being with Krista Tippett twice, and is a regular broadcaster on radio on topics such as Poetry, Religion in the public square, Loneliness, Conflict and Faith, LGBT inclusion, the dangers of so-called Reparative Therapy, and the value of the Arts in public life. In 2011, with Paul Doran, Pádraig co-founded the storytelling event Tenx9 where nine people have up to ten minutes each to tell a true story from their lives. From 2014-2019, Pádraig led the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. Currently, Pádraig guides the weekly podcast Poetry Unbound through NPR’s On Being, which dives and immerses the listener into one poem every week
His poetry collection Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community draws on the spiritual practices of Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community Corrymela—of which Ó Tuama was a leader from 2014-2019. Described by Canterbury’s Poetry Laureate Patience Agbabi as “compassionate, contemporary and formally innovative,” this prayer book was structured over 31 days, offering a daily Bible reading with accompanying prayer. His book In the Shelter interweaves everyday stories with narrative theology, gospel reflections with mindfulness and Celtic spirituality with poetry, ultimately revealing the transformational power of welcome. Network Magazine praised it as being remindful of Augustine’s Confessions and Newman’s Apologia: “It comes from the heart, it recognizes the hurts and the triumphs, and it encourages us to say ‘hello’ to new things.” Sorry for Your Troubles, arose out of a decade of O’Tuama’s experiences hearing stories of people who have lived through personal and political conflict in Nothern Ireland, the Middle East, and other places of conflict. One poem, ‘Shaking hands’ was written when Padraig witnessed the historic handshake between Queen Elizabeth II and Martin McGuinness, who has since used the poem publicly. His first book Readings from the Books of Exile interweaves parable, poetry, art, activism and philosophy into an original and striking expression of faith.
His poems have been published at Poetry Ireland Review, Academy of American Poets, Post Road, Cream City Review, Holden Village Voice, Proximity Magazine, On Being, Gutter, America, and Seminary Ridge Review.
Pádraig Ó Tuama holds a BA Div validated by the Pontifical College of Maynooth, an MTh from Queen’s University Belfast and is currently engaged in a PhD in Theology through Creative Practice at the University of Glasgow exploring poetry, Irishness and religion.
Registration is now open for the 2022 Power of Words conference, which will be held online from October 13-16, 2022. On sale now through December 31, save 20% off the 2022 conference fee!
Editor’s note: Lisa Paige recently completed the TLA Foundations class as part of TLAN’s certificate program. In the class, students are given weekly prompts to which they may respond in any form they feel called to. The following is Lisa’s reflection on both this aspect of the class and the poem it inspired. The poem itself was in response to the July 2021 Oregon wildfires.
Participating in a TLAN course has opened my eyes to the unpredictable responses to prompts; not so much from others, because I expect that, but from myself! Who knew that after a reading for a class on facilitating writing workshops I would write a poem? It flowed like a waterfall when I had believed I was in a drought.
Experiencing the very thing we hope our workshop participants will has been the best inspiration to continue the work I’ve just begun engaging in with TLAN.
And now, humbly, my poem.
Smoke on the Water
The sky turned gray tonight.
Oregon’s smoke reached New England,
lapping at me like a needy puppy or
maybe more a teething bitch.
She stole the sunset,
swirling in secretive
ghostly spirals
atop the pond.
“See me?” she said,
susserating.
Once, the sky looked gray to me even on the sunniest of days.
Now, my bright light shines even in the darkest night.
Once, I had little energy for the troubles of others --
never mind strangers living on a distant coast.
Now, with every leaf that ignites in Oregon,
I lose a part of my soul.
So is this day gray?
Or light?
Through the clouds of Mother Earth,
I reach for hope.
If my life could be saved,
so too can our home.
Lisa Paige’s essays and features have been published widely; she also ghostwrites, edits, teaches writing for wellness workshops, coaches teen writers, and is at work on a YA novel manuscript. www.insightlearning.co
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