The view from one of Rosemerry’s sunset walks during her writing retreat. Report from the trenches: beauty, solitude and self-care can fuel your creative practice!
Preview: Episode 33 on Writing Retreats
Imagine what you could do if you walked away from your regular life for a short time and focused on your creative life. How deep might it go? How much might you accomplish? In what ways would you fuel yourself that go way beyond having “something to show for it”? In this episode, Rosemerry and Christie talk about their experiences with writing retreats—why you might need one, things to bring, how to prepare for it, setting a routine and surprise benefits. Rosemerry was a skeptic and is now a full on convert—amazing what desperation will do!
Things We’re Reading:
Rosemerry:
So much of the poetry for young people is, well, not great. But Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, is a phenomenal book for young readers (12 and up perhaps) and adults, too. She takes Donald Trump to Palestine, writes of Longfellow’s bed and Whitman’s revisions—such a creative premise—listening for other voices. Super highly recommended for anyone looking to get a younger person interested in finding their own voice—and captivating for adults, too.
Could you use a little gratitude? Perhaps in small poetic doses? I recommend Odes to Ordinary Things, a book available online, brought you by A Network for Grateful Living. Heads up: we’ll be interviewing the director of the network about gratitude and creativity in an upcoming episode!
Christie:
I just finished reading an amazing book, Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West by Lauren Redniss. The book uses interviews, documents, oral histories, found poems and drawings by Redniss to the tell the story of several generations of an Apache family who are fighting to save a sacred landscape from being destroyed by a mine being proposed by and to benefit a multinational mining company. It’s a heart-breaking, timely and important story.
A Handful of Very Short Poems Written on Retreat
pulling the short end
of the wishbone—
taking the wish into my own hands
*
in my own once upon a time
surprised to find
I am the stranger
*
cupping the truth
lightly in my hands
wings beating against my palms
*
slipping all these distractions
into a straightjacket—
still they’re able sing to me
*
holding onto this dream--
hugging
a cloud
*
hitting my head
against the wall
until I walk around the wall
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
If you were given a week away from your life, what creative project would you most want to pursue?
If you have a creative altar, what do you put on it?