In her latest poetry collection, Sara Henning tries to make meaning of grief, after losing her mother to metastatic colon cancer. “I lost my center,” Sara says, and Terra Incognita is her way to regain a firm stance on this earth. In this episode, Sara does a live reading of her poem “Queening” around the 25-minute mark.

 

In the latest episode of the Make Meaning Podcast, host Lynne Golodner interviews Sara Henning about where poetry comes from, how to let the soul speak and how to keep on living after immense grief. Her poems interrogate meaning, and Lynne and Sara discuss how poems – and all literature – can be a companion at our loneliest times.

 

In this episode, Lynne and Sara discuss: 

• Lynne’s essays about losing her father – Swimming, Oysters, Waiting for My Father to Die
• The rituals of mourning
• Research as a defense mechanism
• Confessional writing
• 21st century creative nonfiction and the truth vs. one’s truth
• Writing about parents
• “Doing It Scared”

 

Links and Resources: 

• Tell It Slant

• Robert Lowell

• Anne Sexton

• Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty

• The Crab Orchard Series

• Kevin Young’s The Art of Losing

• Allison Joseph’s My Father’s Kites

• Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler and Incendiary Art

• Marie Howe’s What The Living Do

• Cheryl Strayed’s Wild

 

Find Sara Henning:

Website 

Facebook

Twitter 

Instagram 

LinkedIn

 

If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like these other Make Meaning Podcast episodes:

 

• Episode 127 – Ly Tran – Writing Unapologetically
• Episode 123 – Karen Baum Gordon – On Surviving the Surviving
• Episode 120 – Jacqueline Suskin – A Poem Every Day
• Episode 114 – Nancy Sharp – How to Turn Tragedy into Opportunity
• Episode 73 – Jim Reese – Why Teaching Writing in Prisons Helps Everyone