How Your Creative Practice Makes a Difference
Editor and writer Phyllis Cole-Dai on Mindfulness, Creativity & Social Justice
“Who I am, what I do … there is a purposefulness there. If we approach our creative lives with an awareness of that, a deep and unconditional gratitude for that, we find ourselves changing and the world changes with us.” —Phyllis Cole-Dai
Preview: Episode 91 Phyllis Cole-Dai on Showing Up in Life and Creative Practice
“Every choice is generative,” says Phyllis Cole-Dai. “Every choice has outcomes, consequences. When we are paying attention to the kind of energy we send out, the words, the actions, we are helping to build the world and heal the world and move the world.” In this episode we speak with the acclaimed editor, musician, maker and community leader about how mindfulness and social justice can fuel a creative practice, and vice versa. We talk about paradox, personal growth through practice, how community builds creativity, and the role of joy in creativity.
Phyllis Cole-Dai, co-editor of the acclaimed Poetry of Presence anthologies, began pecking away on an old manual typewriter in childhood and never stopped. She has authored or edited books in multiple genres, “writing across what divides us.” Originally from Ohio, she now resides with her scientist-husband and two cats in a 130-year-old house in Brookings, South Dakota. She invites you to join The Raft, her online community on Substack, where members ride the river of life, buoyed by the arts and spiritual practice.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
I love Diane Averil’s poem “Signs,” which I found on James Crews’s beautiful blog “The Singing Bowl.” The poem is powerful, in part, because it’s so quiet. It feels haiku-ish in its description of the natural world, but what pulls me in deeper is how quietly, how tenderly it explores the inner world.
I’ve just finished reading The Burning Light of Two Stars by Laura Davis, our next guest, and it’s so powerful. Such a difficult and transformative story of reconciliation between mother and daughter. Not only do I admire this book for the story itself and the ways Laura shares with such honesty and vulnerability, I admire the heck out of its storytelling. Such interesting devices for shaping the story—including a countdown to the day when her mother would die, something knowable only in hindsight. And small sections that span the book that offer insights about the writing itself and insights available only in hindsight. It’s a masterfully written story of struggle and release, and ultimately, love.
Christie:
I loved this multimedia story about the digital fragments that deceased loved ones had left behind. One woman tells of finding a note her beloved had sent himself the night of their first kiss. “Eli knew it was me from the beginning. What a gift to receive from him in the early weeks of grief.”
How can a tree make you feel at home? Rebecca Boyle explains why she feels this way about Ponderosa Pines. “They are my ur-trees and the hiraeth trees of my heart’s home. They are wild and unassimilated and free, and they’re the trees that make me think of home, and where I was when I became me, and where I longed to be when I was stuck among the stately sycamores.”
This Rainesford Stauffer piece making the case that we should be ambitious about our friendships really resonated with me. “While I knew how much my friends mattered to me, learning to be ambitious about friendships required not just that I show up, but that I practice letting other people in. It meant embracing the fact that I’m inherently needy, even when the faulty self-reliance of one kind of ambition tells me I should be able to do it alone, or that I’m overstaying my welcome by asking too much of my friends.”
You Are a Poem with Feet
—Phyllis Cole-Dai
Look how you move in space,
as at home on a fresh page
as upon the lips that speak
the gift of you into waiting air.
The poem you are is more
than text that can be read.
Every line of you,
every word and syllable,
every comma and period and dash,
arises from breath,
takes the shape of breath,
falls back to breath.
What is breath born from?
Where stands its house?
You begin where you do
without knowing how.
You end where you do
without knowing why.
Between beginning and ending,
you lay yourself down
on the white ground of being
and rise up to meet the world
wandering through.
If one of your lines breaks
in the middle
it is
because it must.
In this life you will often change
and be changed. This is the nature
of ink being spilled, dark
upon light, that something
unseen might be seen in relief.
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, you can hear Phyllis talk about ways to protect your creative space and time, how to become our own creative “gate keepers” and her new definition of success. 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!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
What does “creative success” look like to you?
How do you definite creativity?
Thanks for reading Emerging Form! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.
Emerging Form is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.