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Listen to Nynke's poem "The Morphology of Compassion & Indifference" read aloud at the end of the session. You can also read it here.

Bonus Prompt 2:

Imagine a cosmic, vast vantage point from which to view your story, untouched by personal fear or pain, personal striving or identity. What do things look like from there? Write a poem from that place, looking back on the incident you wrote about this morning, but now through a cosmic eye that sees everything through a less personal and more expansive perspective.

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Gusts of wind rough up the white hibiscus on the lawn.
Petals tear. The sky looks sad enough to rain.

Leaves rustle requiems for flimsy bird bones,
and under a sleeping pigeon's wing huddles a sliver of silence.

Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo: There is peace
even in a storm. The heart of man, like the sea, hides storms, tides, and pearls.

*

Why does the sea beat itself senseless on rock? Eternity drips
like a leaky faucet. God and little blossom trees bravely try

to manufacture beauty-whether fine art or
cheap mimicry. But look at van Gogh, Pound, Plath:

passion is dangerous business and can induce lunacy.
Akira Kurosawa said: In a mad world, only the mad are sane.

Shadow soils the air's gown. Is there no soap
strong enough to wash out darkness? The moon,

like an Afghan woman, wraps up in thin blue veils.
If the sun covered her face like that, it would always be night.

*

Prayers burn deep inside the throat like votives.
Identity is a peg on which we hang our time.

Plumber Juan Ruiz was arrested in Spain for charging
to keep the devil out of people's sinks and drains.

Souls bend easily like coat hangers. Dreams are pollen,
their weight nearly imagined. People collect love

like lint, then throw love out, even if it sticks.
Bodies can't stop playing dress-up with dust.

*

Is there a language untouched by hate?
Who hears the apology of the rain,

the pizzicato of spider feet playing cobweb harps
up in heaven near the ceiling?

Who notices that grasshoppers pray summer sacred
or that pebbles are soft like a child's wrist?

*

The sun's lips kiss the earth goodbye so fervently they bleed.
The moon rises, a dispassionate saint.

Chinese poet Li Po, journeying by boat, tried to kiss
the moon's perfect reflection, fell overboard, and drowned.

Unflinchingly, the lepidopterist sticks pins through butterflies.
Clouds keep mounting each other, procreating like rabbits.

Dwell on the beauty of life, said Marcus Aurelius. Watch
the stars and see yourself running with them.

But though stars sparkle with glory, they are dead
and don't know anyone's story.

Paradox operates on the same finely crafted hinges
as books or butterfly wings, opening inside out.

-Published in Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of World Peace (Glass Lyre Press)

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The Morphology of Compassion & Indifference - Nynke Passi

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Prayers burn deep inside the throat like votives. Identity is a peg on which we hang our time.

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Listen to Nynke's poem "Tonight My Body is Glass" in the session.

Prompt:

Make a list of images of things in the world and in your life that are both beautiful and deeply painful. Think of the news, of creatures and animals and aspects of nature far away from your life, of people you read about or heard about. Jot down all the vivid imagery of these stories, a concrete image for each, like the crustacean with a blue bottle ring collar. Then weave these together in a poem or hybrid piece where you express something about the incomprehensible co-existence of cruelty and beauty in this world and in your own life. End with a line about yourself and what you do to make sense of the confusion of all of the paradoxes of the world.

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You can read Jennifer's poem "Driving through Fire" by clicking on the link above or here.

Prompt:

Prompt: Write a poem about dying and coming back to life.

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“Driving through Fire,” by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza | Magazine | MoMA

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In a newly commissioned poem, Espinoza meditates on the body—and its survival.

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You can read Jennifer's poem "EVERYBODY AT THE SAME TIME IS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SELF" by clicking on the link above or here.

Prompt:

Write a poem that interrogates healing through a layering of opposites. In other words, write a poem that challenges some kind of given binary, and try to find the healing potential in this. It can also be a poem of self-forgiveness. Incorporate 1-3 moments of self-contradiction within the poem (e.g. “Still, the body is not a failure. / Yes it is. Of course it is.”).

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Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

You love to see it-discrete individual units realizing they are notat all that. Like a grass field caught in wind, finally understanding

its purpose, I breathe with the sound of God breathing.

Fading into obscurity hurts, like dying, and feels good, like dying.

I want to force you to hold two opposing ideas at the same time
until you recognize that nothing is on the opposite side of anything,
and all is violently and beautifully enmeshed.

I don't want to force you to do anything.

I climb back into my body and tell it where to go. What to do. Itapproximates my desires, leaving little ghostly scenes of whatcould've been, what I really wanted, in its wake. Still, the body is

not a failure.

Yes it is. Of course it is.

I wanted to learn forgiveness so I learned to forgive my body for . I
never knowing how to look at itself and see a human. I have
endless memories of being spat upon in the grass, the hot, hot
was with god.
grass. Sunbleached butterflies encircled me. The word faggot

I learned to forgive my body because I wanted to learn to forgive
my father, and his father, and all of history. The lesson of time is a
lesson of bearing witness to the unwitnessable. How I won't truly
be born until the very last star burns out.

Reality:My father destroyed me because he loved me.

My father hated me because he destroyed me.

Do you get it now, how it works?

I write to you from beyond a grave that was prepared for me before
I could form a thought. When I was a silent baby, when I loudly
identified with everything around me, a porous signifier, not yet
differentiated from floor or ceiling or wall or door. I was
everyone's.

I write to you from a time before self.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet. Her work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, the American Poetry Review, Southeast Review, The Rumpus, Poem-a-day at poets.org , and elsewhere. She is the author of (Big Lucks 2019) and THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (The Accomplices 2016). She holds an MFA in poetry from UC Riverside and currently teaches creative writing. Jennifer lives in California with her wife, poet/essayist Eileen Elizabeth, and their dog and cat. I'm Alive / It Hurts / I Love It

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EVERYBODY AT THE SAME TIME IS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SELF

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You love to see it-discrete individual units realizing they are notat all that. Like a grass field caught in wind, finally understandingits purpose, I breathe with the sound of God breathing. Fading into obscurity hurts, like dying, and feels good, like...

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Listen to Jennifer's poem "How I Write a Poem" read aloud at the end of the session.

Bonus Prompt 1:

Write a poem about the relationship between creativity and survival.

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Listen to Nynke's poem "A Sad Story in Black and White Adapted to Technicolor" in the session.

Prompt:

Choose any story from the news or from your life (a local event, an event you remember from your childhood or any part of your life) and weave it through your own memory of losing something or someone you cared about a great deal - a person, a relationship, an experience, an opportunity, an object, it does not matter what. Describe how you changed from the loss in the end through metaphors. What did you lose and what did you gain? Was there a boon you brought back? How would you like to imagine yourself fully empowered after this experience? Imagine and write that down in concrete images.

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Reading List for Trauma and Recovery

Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health & Eases Emotional Pain
by James W. Pennebaker, PhD, & Joshua M. Smyth, PhD

Expressive Writing: Words that Heal
by James W. Pennebaker

Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from trauma & emotional upheaval
by James W. Pennebaker

Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives
by Louise DeSalvo

The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron

Your Brain on Art
by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
by Judith Lewis Herman

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - the Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experience
by Peter A. Levine & Ann Frederick

Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body
by Peter A. Levine

I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Writers of Child Sexual Abuse
Edited by Ellen Bass

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Edited by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis

The Courage to Heal Workbook: A Guide for Women & Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
by Laura Davis

The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

By Bessel van der Kolk. M.D.

The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal

By Christina Enevoldsen

Saved by a Poem
By Kim Rosen

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Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and is a full-time faculty in MIU's MFA in Creative Writing.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of MIU's MFA program and co-chair of the English dept. She is also the founder and director of the Soul Bone℠ Literary Center and Festival. She was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, Life & Legends, and more. Her poetry has been anthologized in Pandemic Puzzle Pieces and River of Earth & Sky (Blue Light Press), Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press), and Oxygen: Parables of the Pandemic (River Paw Press). Together with Rustin Larson and Christine Schrum, she edited the poetry collection Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.

Testimonials

"Every single event [of the Soul Bone Literary Festival] influenced my thinking about my own work. Right out of the gate with Nynke and Jennifer. Holy mother of all things beautiful! I was never so excited and proud to have these two women as my mentors and teachers. I remember after I heard each of them read their poems, I thought 'I hit the jack pot of professionalism!' Immediately, they opened the door of vulnerability for all the students and participants. After that, I felt there was no holding back the flood gates that wished to pour from me."

- Jennifer Sheena

"You two made a fabulous team! Your master workshops on Writing the Wound and Writing toward Healing inspired me to create my own poem concerning a traumatic incident. I had trouble writing about it, but this time, with your positivity and support, I came up with something. I think what really did the trick was y’all saying that all of us have different traumas and it’s ok to feel how we feel. I am so grateful for your supportive space and your grace. You both have an incredible creative energy that is phenomenal to be around (even on Zoom)."

- Jennifer Grant

"Two talented writers who have that rare ability to inspire others to write often and well.."

- Jim Turner

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MIU MFA faculty and poets and writers Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi reprise their generative workshop, Writing toward Healing, which was also offered as part of our last Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival. Nynke and Jennifer will share from their own work and offer suggestions and ideas how you use writing as a healing modality and transform your stories and experiences creatively in a manner that transforms, redeems, and heals. What helps you write toward self-care and a reframing of your own narrative? How do you deal with it when you are stuck in fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode (the amygdala portion of your brain) when you try to tell your story? How do you cope with PTSD or CPTSD? How do you take control of your own narratives? What is an empowered vision for yourself as a writer?

About Soul Bone™ Literary Center

Soul Bone™ intersects writing with creative process, spirituality, social justice, and healing in tiny, winged courses that lift the spirit.