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Via the link above you can access all events of the MIU MFA Showcase Residency, Fall '23, which are free and open to the public, offered via Zoom. Registration runs through Eventbrite.

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Join us for our free online MIU MFA Showcase and Fall '23 Residency's readings, master classes, and workshops.

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Bonus Prompt 2:

Read the following poem by James Crews and write about self-care, that most important and revolutionary aspect of connecting authentically to our identity.

Self-Care
by James Crews

Some days it feels like a foreign language
I’m asked to practice, with new words
for happiness, work, and love. I’m still learning
how to say: a cup of tea for no reason,
what to call the extra honey I drizzle in,
how to label the relentless urge to do more
and more as poison. And how to translate
the heart’s pounding message when it comes:
enough, enough. This morning, I search for words
to capture the glimmering sun as it lifts
above the mountains, clouds already closing in
as fat droplets of rain darken the deck.
I’m learning to call this stillness self-care too,
just standing here, watching goldfinches
scatter up from around the feeder like pieces
of bright yellow stained-glass, reassembling
in the sheltering arms of a maple.

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You can hear Nynke's poem "Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics" read aloud during today's session.

Prompt:

Write about disembodiment and dissociation related to trauma or any other form of loss of identity. How do you call yourself back when you don't remember who you are or don't feel you exist anymore in time and space? When is disappearance beyond your body pleasurable, ecstatic even, and when is it numb, scary, lonely, or terrifying? What triggers cause you to dissociate and what brings you back to your body so you can be alive in the moment with all your senses in the here and now?

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Listen to Jennifer's poem "Affirmations" in the session.

Prompt:

Write a poem about an aspect of your identity you’ve struggled to articulate or find the words for.

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Listen to Jennifer's poem "Make-Up Ritual" in the session.

Prompt:

Write a poem about the ways you present yourself to the world and the way your presentation relates to your identity.

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Read Jamaal May's "I Have This Way of Being" in the link or below the prompt.

Bonus Prompt 1:

Write a piece about your own ways of being, using metaphor and imagery to highlight your experience of yourself.

I Have This Way of Being

Jamaal May

I have this, and this isn’t a mouth
full of the names of odd flowers

I’ve grown in secret.
I know none of these by name

but have this garden now,
and pastel somethings bloom

near the others and others.
I have this trowel, these overalls,

this ridiculous hat now.
This isn’t a lung full of air.

Not a fist full of weeds that rise
yellow then white then windswept.

This is little more than a way
to kneel and fill gloves with sweat,

so that the trowel in my hand
will have something to push against,

rather, something to push
against that it knows will bend

and give and return as sprout
and petal and sepal and bloom.

Copyright © 2016 Jamaal May. Used with permission of the author.

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"The poem keeps negating its considerations while essentially building on the first idea, which is also one way to think of struggle and growth. I think the closest anyone could get to an honest answer about who they are is a metaphor that shifts and evolves as they try to express it. In that reach towards articulation we might spark, within ourselves, broader ideas and questions about the world we grapple with."
-Jamaal May

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I Have This Way of Being - I have this, and this isn't a mouth

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This is a prompt in relation to Nynke's poem "the Rise & Fall of Breath's Slim Body" published in Calyx and read out loud in the session.

Prompt:

Write about the awakening of your sexual identity - not the awareness of what others wanted your sexual identity to be, but your own experience, inside-out.

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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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In this generative circle and reading, poets and writers J. Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi offer creative prompts with depth to help you explore your identity through writing, creativity, and healing. They will use their own work and the works of contemporary authors as a leaping off point. This workshop comes with a prompt handout, bonus prompts, plus some resources. We welcome you to join us in this safe circle of exploring and sharing.

About Soul Bone™

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

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In a creative process course, my former student Conner Carey made an art project out of a 1950s handbook on mores for girls, which they bought at the Ottumwa Goodwill. They blacked out words and sentences to create 'found' poems on some of the pages. They cut some pages into the shapes of leaves, others into the shape of eyelids, and yet others into the shape of an eye. The more deeply you read into their book, the more you saw of the eye in all of its water-colored splendor; then you watched it turn into a slit and from there a vagina.

The book had dimensional depth through the layering of the pages. Conner's art book turned into a manifesto of women's strength, autonomy, beauty, and emancipation in the form of poetry, image, prose, collage, and painting. The accompanying found poems were thoughtful, fierce, authentic. It was a stunning work of art. We had it on display at an art show in honor of the 40year reunion of our English department.

In a poetry class, Conner wrote a poem called "You, Woman" for all the women throughout history who did not have a voice. You can watch them perform it here.

You can have a look at Conner's website here.

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Eye book by my former student Conner Carey.