Emerging Form

Why invest in your creative life? In this episode of Emerging Form, we continue with our Soul Food Series with poet and teacher Jack Ridl. He talks about how our creative endeavors link us to the big history and reconnect us with what really matters. Then he brings us the news of the heart, reading poems from How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. An episode full of inspiration, invitation and devotion--an episode to send you to the canvas or stage or blank page with a renewed sense of what’s at stake. 

Jack Ridl, Poet Laureate of Douglas, Michigan (Population 1100), in April 2019 released Saint Peter and the Goldfinch. Jack’s Practicing to Walk Like a Heron was awarded the National Gold Medal for poetry by ForeWord Review/IndieFab. His collection Broken Symmetry was co-recipient of The Society of Midland Authors best book of poetry award for 2006. His Losing Season was named the best sports book of the year for 2009 by The Institute for International Sport, and The Boston Globe named it one of the five best books about sports. Jack and his wife Julie founded the visiting writers series at Hope College where he taught for 37 years. The students named him both their Outstanding Professor and Favorite Professor, and in 1996 The Carnegie (CASE) Foundation named him Michigan Professor of the Year. In retirement Jack conducts a variety of writing workshops, welcomes readings, holds one on one sessions, and more. 

Jack’s website: www.ridl.com

How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope

“Learn. Fail. Grow.” That’s part of the creative action plan for award-winning writer and Susan J. Tweit. In this episode of Emerging Form, we continue our Soul Food Series and talk with Susan about the importance of reflection--how writing not only helps us to meet difficult moments, but also helps us to find “deeper levels and better understanding” as time passes. We talk about the process of reflection and how it leads our writing toward the universal. As Susan says, “Without reflection, what’s the point?”

An award-winning writer and plant ecologist, Susan J. Tweit began her career in Wyoming, studying grizzly bear habitat—collecting and dissecting bear poop—coring trees to map historic wildfires, and researching aromatic big sagebrush. Tweit began writing after realizing that she loved writing the stories behind the data as much as collecting the data. She's written thirteen non-fiction books ranging from memoir and nature writing to kids and travel, along with hundreds of magazine articles, columns, and essays. She admits to being a plant nerd focused on the intriguing lives and interrelationships that weave the West’s living landscapes. Her passion is re-storying this earth, and those with whom we who share the planet. When Tweit is not writing, she's most often outside eradicating invasive weeds—restoring nature, plant by plant. As a Quaker, she walks her talk, and she lives with her heart outstretched as if it were her hand, loving this world. Her most recent book is Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying. 

Susan Tweit’s website.

What Does It Really Mean to Show Up? 

In this episode, we speak with Rosemerry’s mentor and beloved friend Judith Jordan Kalush about how the way we meet our daily life intimately informs our creative practice. Are we listening? Are we distracted? Are we opening? Do we feel our connection to the rest of the world? What are we choosing to tune into? It’s a powerful episode with no platitudes, but with hard-earned deep wisdom that comes from devotion.

Jude Jordan Kalush is an unpindownable wonder of a human who was raised in Brazil where her father was a Baptist minister and missionary. In 2005, she received her Master’s Degree in Creation Spirituality from Naropa University. As she says,” As far as I can tell the world is held together by a glue called LOVE. The oneness of everything.” She was the founder and director of Colorado’s performance poetry festival, SPARROWS, which was held 1999-2007 and now creates poetry videos for her youtube channel, PoetJude. For decades, she has led dreamwork circles and classes and in recent years opened a Fair Trade business. She and her wife, Micah, are presently living in California. 

Jude’s You Tube Channel 

Jude’s Go Fund Me for the hungry in Brazil

Dream worker Jeremy Taylor

“In our evolution, we are coming to understand nuances and in betweens are necessary to living a full life,” says poet and painter Wendy Videlock. She quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.” In this episode, we continue to explore how life itself is the greatest creative process and how we are asked to live and create in the messy middle, and how all of us, all of us, are makers.

Wendy Videlock lives in Palisade, Colorado, on the Western Slope of the Rockies. Her full-length books of poetry include Nevertheless, Slingshots and Love Plums, The Dark Gnu and Other Poems. Her blog, Ghost Buffalo explores painting and poeming and life in the west. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Rattle, Terrain, Able Muse, New Criterion and many more. Her artwork, including alcohol inks, is sold in galleries around the West, and she teaches in a freelance capacity across the arts. She organizes poetry festivals on the Western Slope and is well respected in the formalist community.

View Wendy’s beautiful art on her instagram

Wendy’s website

In today’s bonus episode, Rosemerry and Christie discuss the poetry and music that have been getting them through this difficult time.

Fall (Herbst) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing with Feathers by Chris Bursk

Let X=X, Laurie Anderson

No One, Alicia Keys

*Photo by Finn Trommer

This is the most difficult episode we’ve ever recorded. In the span of two weeks, Christie and her family were thrown into a scary state of limbo and Rosemerry experienced an unthinkable loss. In this episode, we discuss what we’ve noticed about our relationship to creativity in this time of upheaval. Rosemerry explains how her 15-year practice of writing daily poems helped prepare her to meet this moment of grief, and Christie discusses her reluctance to solidify this experience by turning it into written words. We also talk about moving toward uncertainty and our heightened sense of noticing in this difficult time, and how to meet the tragedy and find the potential.

Previous Emerging Form episodes mentioned:

Episode 38: Kim Langley

Episode 40: Cheryl Strayed

Episode 45: Catherine Price

*Photo by Finn Trommer

In this week’s episode (recorded in late July), we jump right in with our delightful guest, Andy Offut Irwin. One of the most sought after performing storytellers in the United States, Andy has been a Featured Teller at the National Storytelling Festival more than ten times. He has appeared fourteen times as Teller in Residence at International Storytelling Center. Among other gigs, Andy has been a Guest Artist at La Guardia High School of Art, Music, and Performing Arts in New York (The “FAME!” School); he has been a Keynote Speaker/Performer at the Library of Congress-Virburnum Foundation Conference on Family Literacy; a Guest Writer Performer with the Georgia Tech Glee Club; and a guest composer with the Amherst College Men’s Double Quartet.

Andy has held a few almost-real-jobs that include: Artist-In-Residence in Theatre at Emory University’s Oxford College from 1991 to 2007. (He continues serving at Oxford from time-to-time as Artist-in-Just-Passing-Through). A very long time ago Andy spent five years as a performer, writer, and director for SAK Theatre at Walt Disney World.

Andy is the recipient of many awards, but he is tickled as can be to have received the Oracle 2013 Circle of Excellence from the National Storytelling Network.

It all that weren’t enough, he is also a world class whistler!

Andy Offut Irwin

Sometimes, telling a story can save you. In this episode, we speak with novelist, short story writer and journalist Charlie Jane Anders about her new book, “how writing helps us set rules, create frames, and surprise ourselves with what is possible. “Stories keep us alive,” she says. We also talk about writing and politics, writing the story you want to read, changing gears and creativity as a “saving grace.” 

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in a new young-adult trilogy published in April 2021,along with the forthcoming short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and the book we’ll be talking about today:Never Say You Can’t Survive, which  comes out in August. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

*Please note: this episode was recorded on July 20, 2021.

Shownotes

For All Mankind Apple+ tv series

Never Say You Can’t Survive

Victories Greater Than Death

Charlie Jane’s Ted Talk on Imagination and the Future

Charlie Jane Anders website

Have you ever felt like an imposter in your own creative life? As if you are not truly as competent as others perceive you to be? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk about imposter syndrome with violinist, award-winning author and scholar/associate professor Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman. Imposter syndrome is not always just your crazy brain telling you that you're not good enough — sexism and racism really does hold people back, she says. Her debut book, Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir, explores this theme, and much more that we touch on, including ambition, identity, what is fake vs. real, and what makes good art. 

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

Failure is, of course, a big part of life, and learning how to meet it in healthy ways is a major part of creative process. In this episode, Rosemerry presents six or more ways we might fail, drawing from Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Rosemerry and Christie talk through the different kinds of failure--their experiences and successful ways to move through each kind of failure. They also talk about second chances, change, public vs. private failure, and the importance of humility. Plus the importance of choosing titles and a two-minute creativity test.