Creative Practice as an Act of Faith

Danusha Laméris on creativity as dynamic engagement with the world

Apr 14, 2025

“We deserve wonder.” —Danusha Laméris

Preview: Emerging Form Episode 136 with Danusha Laméris

“I trust that impulse that comes through on the page,” says poet Danusha Laméris. “I trust it to be more wild and feral than I am, more wise than I am, more patient, more true.” And so begins our second conversation with the award-winning poet. (We also interviewed her in Episode 29 on “the understory”). She reads poems from her newest collection, Blade by Blade, and we talk about how a writing practice can connect us not just with the self, but with the possible self. Also, how writing helps us “salvage time” and preserve the past, even as we make sense of the ways it has affected us and the ways we affect each other. We also discuss the power of a single question and how it might inform a creative practice.

Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. A Pushcart Prize recipient, some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was selected for the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. She is on the faculty of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA program.

What We’re Reading and Listening to:

Rosemerry:

I am just over the moon about the work of neuroscience educator Sarah Peyton, in which she helps people heal their brains from the effects of relational trauma. Her book, Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing is powerful medicine. Steeped in science and written with such great compassion and understanding, this book offers so many tools for meeting the most difficult, frozen parts of ourselves and accompanying them into healing and growth. There’s also a workbook to make the steps even more accessible. As Sarah says, “There is nothing the world needs more than resonance, and there is nothing more abundant, if we only know how to find it. Resonance changes brains, heals trauma, and transforms the world.”
Okay. I admit it. I have not held the poet Charles Bukowski in high esteem. And yet, when I read his poem “Bluebird” recently, I was so moved by the honesty, the willingness to see how we get in our own way. I was so moved, in fact, I wrote a poem letter to him (he died in 2009). I wish I could send my letter back in time … he’s sure got me thinking about what animal might live in my heart—and just how much I had closed off my heart to possible beauty with my own judgementalness.

Christie:

A friend recommended Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor. It’s a sparse, tight little novel in a style reminiscent of Claire Keegan. The narrative follows a young woman, Manod, who has spent her whole life on a tiny Welsh island with fewer than 50 inhabitants. Over the course of the story, a whale washes up on the beach and its slow disintegration serves as an anchor for the story. Shortly after the whale turns up, two English researchers arrive to conduct an anthropological study of the island. They hire Manod to help them translate their interviews with the locals, and their condescension and the manipulations in their storytelling soon become apparent to her. Still, they offer her a window into the outside world and the lessons she takes away are both astute and thrilling.
You really must read this delightful story that my friend Betsy Mason wrote about animal cognition and wild animals playing puzzles that scientists designed for them.

Night Bird

Hear me: sometimes thunder is just thunder.
The dog barking is only a dog. Leaves fall
from the trees because the days are getting shorter,
by which I mean, not the days we have left,
but the actual length of time, given the tilt of earth
and distance from the sun. My nephew used to see
a therapist who mentioned that, at play,
he sunk a toy ship and tried to save the captain.
Not, he said, that we want to read anything into that.
Who can read the world? It’s paragraphs
of cloud, and alphabets of dust. Just now
a night bird outside my window made a single,
plaintive cry that wafted up between the trees.
Not, I’m sure, that it was meant for me.

—Danusha Laméris

Discounted offerings from Danusha through Emerging Form

Coming up on May 22 is a five-day generative class with Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar, Finger Exercises for Poets, based on Doriannne’s book. Here is the link where people can register: https://www.litfieldwriters.com/finger-exercises

Please note there are only a few spots left. If you use the code EMERGINGFORM1 at checkout you can get a $50 discount through April 30.

In summer, Danusha will be teaching a craft class, Temporary Kingdoms. You can find the link here: https://www.litfieldwriters.com/temporary-kingdoms

If you use the code EMERGINGFORM2 at checkout you can get a $30 discount through April 15.

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A Note About Paid Subscriptions:

First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Starting this month, only our paid subscribers will receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support.

This week, we talk with Danusha about why a clipboard is her most treasured writing tool, how she “reads into a state of amazement,” the danger of wrapping things up too tidy in your art, why you might want to consider a daily creative practice, and how to write yourself a permission slip. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com, or by clicking the button below. Thank you!