The Poetry Saloncast

 How does a former basketball player for the Chicago Bulls wind up with two published books and a writing center in Culver City? How does he keep dozens of writers on track to completing their novels and screenplays? Writer’s Blok founder, Paul Shirley, describes his origins as an artrepreneur in the L.A. writing scene and his philosophy of patient, regular practice in small amounts as the key to a writer’s success. He parallels his experience training as a professional athlete to the writing process and how both depend on consistent routine and the support of a community with mutual goals. Find out more about Paul and the Writers Blok community on the website https://www.writersblok.org/. 

One of the fascinating application of the poetic medium is as a form of healing in therapy. Jennie Chapman Linthorst is a poet, expressive writing teacher and founder of LifeSPEAKS Poetry Therapy. She and Tresha talk in depth about poetry therapy, how she qualified to become one and what the treatment consists of. They explore the difference between the role of a therapist and that of a teacher of workshops, as well as how Linthorst has been uniquely successful in gathering clients and maintaining a thriving art therapy practice. 

Tresha and Kelly close out two months of amazing interviews with a discussion of what they’ve learned. They review their biggest takeaways from their conversations with poets Arminé Iknadossian, Hannah Gamble, Douglas Manuel, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Brendan Constantine, Alexis Rhone Fancher,  and one another. Then, both Tresha and Kelly offer a poem they edited over the last two months and explain how using one of those techniques helped them put their poem in a new light! 

*Poem mentioned by Tresha in this episode, “How I Knew Harold” is written by Deborah Harding 

In this podcast Armine’ Iknadossian and Kelly Grace Thomas ask Poetry Salon founder Tresha Faye Haefner when and how she decided to make a full commitment to her poetry. Tresha discusses feeling out of place in performing arts, but needing to reach out, needing to make sense of silence, mystery, chaos, the largeness of the world and the passage of time. What can we learn from silent animals and wordless artifacts? How can we react, what can we say about all this mystery? In terms of rewriting poems she shares the value of using “how to” books, and looking for the right form to fit an idea. 

Rewrite Strategy: Try using different forms to address the same subject. Everything from sonnet, to the modern forms of Structure and Surprise. And don’t be afraid to use How to Books for new ideas. They’re cheaper than an MFA.

In this podcast, Kelly Grace Thomas discusses how she uses poetry to explore issues that nobody talks about. Her latest book focuses on issues of the body, femininity, and changing conceptions of what it means to be a woman. A poet who has won Rattle’s Neil Postman Award, Kelly discusses how she comes up with metaphors, and how she uses them, not just in one poem, but as a way to hold an entire collection together. 

Rewrite Technique: Listen to many poems. Listen to them being spoken out loud, or else read them, in large groups, in a row. Then go for a walk, preferably on a beach or somewhere in naturem and let the language continue to wash over you until you feel it in your body. Then rewrite the poem you're stuck on again, from scratch.

In this interview Alexis Rhone Fancher discusses the value of a near Pavlovian work-ethic, and the ability to detach herself from her writing, even when writing about very personal subjects. Often referenced as an “erotic” poet, Alexis says she uses sex in her writing to explore power, to write for women who are like herself, and to encourage others to share their stories and poems with the world. There may not be a lot of money in poetry, but there is a hell of a lot to be gained from building a community around one’s art. 

Rewrite Strategy: Think about other people who might need to hear your work, people who will feel empowered to tell their own stories after they’ve heard your work. Write to and for them. What do they need to hear? 

Why do poets still write about the moon? Should we stop? In this interview poet Brendan Constantine discusses the way the moon and the sea and other eternal markers act as a ground zero for discussing poetry. Art is a marker of our mortal consciousness. It is where we go to make mistakes, where we go to get things wrong. Constantine affirms his belief in making big mistakes in poetry, and therefore making a public discussion possible through art. Art does not resolve our problems or disagreements, but it makes discussions of challenging subjects possible. 

 
Rewrite Strategy: Brendan shares some re-writing tricks he uses to find and create momentum around his subject matter. One strategy is to try explaining the poem to someone who doesn’t have a lot of time, the “elevator pitch” of a poem, instead of the poem itself. The other is to put the poem in different forms, such as couplets, quatrains, etc. He suggests reading the poem several times over, then trying to rewrite it from memory. What comes out? What do you naturally forget to put back in? Let your unconscious mind sort through it, separating the vital lines out from the chaff. 

Do you like Persona Poems? Do you like villains? Do you think powerful women are misunderstood or misrepresented in art? So does Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Becoming the Villainess, X, Y, and Z. In this interview we discuss how female authors can use personas to speak up for themselves and others, and how writing from the persona of a villain can be liberating for the poet, the reader and the “character”. 

Rewrite Strategy: Show your poem to a workshop or a few friends. What feedback do they give you? What questions do they ask? Try incorporating feedback, criticism, and questions into the poem itself, or integrate your response to what you hear. 

Ph.D. student and teacher Douglas Manual discusses the different stages of writing a poem, from taking notes on his iPhone, to doing free-writes, to editing. He shares how his process has changed over time, why he switched from writing short stories to writing poems, and how he’s become more patient with the work over time. 

Rewriting Strategies: Douglas shares the “Tippecanoe" exercise, showing us how rearranging sentences can create new associations that often work in unexpected ways. The same goes for a ruthless revision, taking out pieces we think we need and letting the rest collide into place. Basic take-away - you should edit until it really, really hurts. Then you know you’re done. 

What propels you to the page? Listen to Hannah Gamble talk about her creative writing process, how she lets feelings get cluttered until she is too vexed to procrastinate anymore. After that she scrolls through the Rolodex of Delights in her mind, flipping through options, experimenting with different possibilities, and finding the most fun ideas to fill her poems. Sometimes this comes easily. Sometimes it takes years to grow enough feeling to fully follow the impulse. 

Rewrite Strategy: Read the poem out loud to a group or a friend. What parts are you excited to say? What parts feel stale or boring? Keep what you like and cut what doesn’t bring you delight.