# data[].attributes.body
Listen to Nynke's poem "Tonight My Body is Glass" in the session.

Prompt:

Start with your body and describe what is happening around it on this day. Where is it? What did you read or see or think about today? What does that make you think about bodies or about being human in this world?

# data[].attributes.headline
MIU MFA Showcase (in conjunction with Soul Bone Literary Festival Fall '23)

# data[].attributes.subject
MIU MFA Showcase (in conjunction with Soul Bone Literary Festival Fall '23)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Join us for our free online MIU MFA Showcase and Fall '23 Residency's readings, master classes, and workshops.

# data[].attributes.body
Bonus Prompt 1:

Write about a time you felt at odds with your own sense of embodiment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I am afraid to own a Body by Emily Dickinson

# data[].attributes.body
Here some resources used by our MIU MFA in Creative Writing students on the healing power of writing:

William Stafford's "A Way of Writing"

"Writing Exercises Scientifically Proven to Redirect Your Life." (Fastcompany)

"Science Shows Writers Have a Serious Advantage Over the Rest of Us" (Arts Mic)

"The Elephant in My Living Room" (The Writer Unboxed)

"Writing Your Way to Happiness." (NY Times)

"To Poets of Color Whose Work Has Been Called 'Healing': It Is Not Your Job to Fix White People." by Shayla Lawson (LitHub)

"Why Talk Therapy is on the Wane and Writing Workshops are on the Rise" (New York Times).

"Bringing My Daughter Back from the Brink with Poems." by Betsy MacWhinney (New York Times).

"This is Your Brain on Writing" (New York Times)

"Why We Should Read Literature" (Time)

Saved by a Poem by Kim Rosen

# data[].attributes.body
Before we begin, a note on self-care:

if any writing prompt or sharing pushes you to relive unpleasant aspects of your history, grief, trauma, pain, or loss, whether you know what your feelings relate to or not, we have a few pointers for you that may help you work with your own creativity and process while regaining your voice and power as a human being.

As we said, listen to yourself with the prompts today. If you ned to turn off your camera, walk around a bit, get some air, do some stretches or yoga, cry, pet a furry family member, snack, or doodle, it's all OK. You are in charge of your own self-care and we encourage you to listen to yourself first and foremost.

We also want to give you a few SELF-CARE PROMPTS to bolster your strength and help you reframe your trauma narratives:

1. Talisman Exercise: Write down 10 things that help you cope when you are stressed from foods you like to eat, friends you like to call (add their number), walks in nature, time with pets, your favorite tea, a bath, a bike ride, or anything else that helps you calm down. Make your list simple but specific and hang it in a prominent place so you can see it and have it as a crutch when you need it!

2. Take a walk in nature or in a place that is soothing and beautiful to you. Try to be mindful of the moment.

3. Do some stretches or yoga exercises, breathing exercises, or any other movement-related activities that help you once you get stuck. This will help you re-embody and connect to yourself if you feel dissociated.

4. If you feel stumped, doodle, write "I don't know what to write" or "I feel scared" or pull out a coloring book and do some coloring instead. That can be very soothing and integrating.

5. Have alternate writing projects that you can turn to when you feel stuck or triggered: something humorous or happy, something empowering, something light, something expansive. The shift from difficult subject matter to light subject matter can help you integrate and get back to your center during your writing process.

6. Have an alternate writing project about yourself as a superhero/heroine who has powers. you wish you'd had at the time of abuse. Imagine yourself so empowered, you can avert all problems for yourself and others. You can also reframe your story and rewrite the ending - or maybe your life has already rewritten your ending because you have done a lot of healing since you were living through abuse. Again, humor, strength, empowerment, and reframing can be powerful tools to reclaim your voice and self!

7. Work in images and don't feel you have to do more than record things your senses picked up at the time, or metaphors that stick. You can be cryptic! That is fully OK. Saying the unsayable is hard work.

8. Come at the subject slant and work from the periphery toward the center, only writing about what you are ready to write about. One day you'll be able to tell the whole story. Don't ever pressure yourself! Go at your own comfortable pace.

9. Don't compare your trauma to anyone else's! Trauma is not logical and many factors (external and internal) determine the impact of trauma. Statistically, the symptoms of many types of abuse are similar if not the same - whether we are talking sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, domestic violence, combat trauma, war trauma, refugee trauma, or more. We refer you to the resource text at the end of this hand-out if you want to learn more. Your feelings are valid, and please remember: you were never responsible for the abuse someone else inflicted upon you!

10. Practice self-care during your entire writing process: walks, exercises, good nutrition, rest, naps, fun activities, baths, and anything else that helps you nurture yourself back to full strength over time.

11. Recognize when you are simply not ready to tell a story, then back off and let it be. Maybe jot down some notes for later. A time will come when you are ready. When you are ready to tell a difficult story it can be painful, but it's also empowering and helps you get your voice back! It can even be triumphant.

12. Start with the images, metaphors, and memories that you feel ready to tell, that you remember, that you can handle telling. If you feel overwhelmed and get stuck during the process, you may be in a trigger mode (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). That is a time to stop and do something else: take a walk, do yoga, organize or use your frontal lobe to pull out of your amygdala trauma trigger responses, make something with your hands, do repeated simple tasks that are grounding and embodying, call a friend, make tea, have a bath, write about something light and happy or something empowering, or do things that make you happy.

# data[].attributes.body
Above and here you can find our upcoming offerings in Eventbrite! We have partial and full scholarships for every session for those who register early. If you really want to attend and can't afford the fee, contact us at soulboneliterary@gmail.com.

For those of you in attendance tonight, you may also have the coupon code for the next session, "Writing the Wound," so you can get 10 dollars off the admission price. The coupon code for this event is: HEALING.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Soul Bone℠ Literary Center Offerings, Summer 2023

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Soul Bone℠ intersects writing with creative process, spirituality, social justice, and healing in tiny, winged courses that lift the spirit. Connect with us at soulboneliterary@gmail.com.

# data[].attributes.body
Listen to Jennifer's poem "Biography of a Snowstorm" read in the session.

Prompt:

Write a poem about your body an element of nature.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a prompt in relation to Jennifer's poem "Makeup Ritual" read in the session. You can read the poem here (second poem down).

Prompt:

Write a poem about one or more ways you’ve learned to feel safe in your body.

# data[].attributes.body
Recommended Books:

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

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
by Pete Walker

# data[].attributes.body
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

# data[].attributes.body
In this generative prompt circle and reading, poets and writers J. Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi will help you anchor with your body - and re-embody - through sensory writing while you explore the intimate relationships between writing, creativity, and healing. They will share from their own work while talking about creative process in terms of healing and talk about the emportance of grounding and embodiment in great writing. Sensory writing helps you be in the here and now, enjoying the moment. It also re-embodies you after traumatic experience, and it translate your difficult experienves in a manner that they can bring transformation and healing to others. This workshop comes with a prompt handout and bonus prompts.

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.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is the Soul Bone℠ website.

Here you can find the Soul Bone℠ Literary Center's full summer schedule of upcoming workshops, generative circles, and events.

You can contact us via email: soulboneliterary@gmail.com

Here we will notify you of the upcoming MIU MFA Residency, a literary festival with free events offered via Zoom and open to the public. Our Fall '23 residency will run from Aug. 21 - Sept. 4 and will be an MFA Showcase residency with master classes, panels, and readings by alumni and English dept. faculty, plus a few special guests. Nynke founded and directs both the MIU MFA in Creative Writing and the Soul Bone℠ Literary Center and Festival, so there is overlap between events. In our Soul Bone℠ spaces, you'll often find some of our MFA students and alumni, who are always welcome to join! You will love hearing their amazing work. Soul Bone℠ exists as a creative, diverse community for poets and writers of all skill levels and in all phases of their careers. Our aim is safe space, connection, healing, and transformation.

# data[].attributes.body
Bonus Prompt 2:

Write an homage to your hips or another body part.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
homage to my hips by Lucille Clifton | Poetry Foundation

# data[].attributes.body
Bonus Prompt 3:

Write a song for your feet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Song of the Feet by Nikki Giovanni | Poetry Foundation

# data[].attributes.body
Listen to Nynke's poem "Study of Death with Soap and Water" read in the session.

Prompt:

Write about the body and death or aging. What have you noticed or learned about aging - or death - in your life, your own or someone else's close to you?

# data[].attributes.body
Read Tracy McMickle's "10 Things I learned from Cinching Up a Drag Queen" from Rattle, Summer '23.

10 THINGS I LEARNED FROM CINCHING UP A DRAG QUEEN
by Traci McMickle

1.A drag show dressing room
smells like Urban Decay
and two-buck ’80s hair shellac.

2.Queens live under layers.
Every surface a swap meet
of things that hide other things.

3.Pee before you tuck.
Tuck before you cinch.
Go to the bathroom in pairs.

4.Fake nails will fight you.
No matter how early you are,
you won’t start on time.

5.There’s no such thing
as a dress rehearsal. Do it
on the night or not at all.

6.Photos must be high-
angle with flash.
Facetune is not optional.

7.Whole queens bewitch
audiences. Half a queen
scars Taco Bell workers.

8.Your fuckups are yours.
Smile, honey. Even
if you dance out of your tits.

9.Do not touch
the queens. Their paint
is always wet.

10.Taking off makeup
is just as hard
as putting it on.

—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023

Traci McMickle: “I read my earliest poems at a sweaty bookshop in Missoula, Montana, over protesters yelling out on the Higgins Bridge. A fellow poet, late to the party, hollered back in blue language. My own phone went off as I read, and everyone laughed, stamped, and booed in turns. Afterward, real poets told me I was good, even though the writing was baby stuff. I knew I’d found my people, and I keep writing in order to deserve them.”

Prompt:

Write your own "Ten Things I Learned" poem or freewrite or hybrid essay about something to do with the body - yours or someone else's.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Description

The Summer 2023 issue of Rattle features a Tribute to NFT Poets. NFTs are non-fungible tokens, using a blockchain to make a permanent, collectible digital record of something-in this case poems. Turning poems into collectable art opens up many new opportunities for creating and sharing poetry, and the dozen poets in the issue are at the cutting edge of introducing poetry into this technology. In the conversation section, we talk to Sasha Stiles, who trained an AI language model on her own poetry, creating "Technelegy," a transhuman alter-ego and writing partner. The interview attempts to explain the blockchain and explore the places poetry might go in the future. The open section, meanwhile, features the usual eclectic mix of poetry on any topic, from sugar to Shaq, from drag shows to Vietnam.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tribute to NFT Poets| Conversation with Sasha Stiles Continue reading →