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. 

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

By Dorianne Laux

I can’t remember the first time I saw it, seems it was

always there, even with me in the womb, the moon.

It must have been night, above the ocean, making a path

on the waves, gilded invitation, the parchment moon.

Or the day moon, see-through-y wafer over desert, caught

in the arms of saguaro, thin-skinned, heart-stuck moon.

Blue as new milk, aquarium water, Mexican tile, blue

as cold-bitten fingertips, nailbeds’ quick-blue arcs, half-moons.

How I felt when I saw my first grown boy, round-eyed,

all sinew and muscle, his calves, his biceps, plump as moons.

Buttons, doorknobs, volleyballs, clocks, egg yolk, orange

slice, violet iris, our planet a pupil, mote in the eye of the moon.

The cell inside me splitting and splitting, worm of the fetus,

tadpole, the glazed orb of the eye, my belly taut as the moon.

The blood-streaked moon of her head pushing through, moons

of the faces above me, urging me, pulling, promising the moon.

There are earthquakes on the moon, water, not geologically dead,

still acting like a planet: upheaval, turmoil, shaking her head, the moon.

When I see the earth of you I still feel moonquakes, even now, after

so many moons my round breasts swoon, your fingertips, small moons.

Source: Poetry (December 2022)

Bonus Prompt 1:

Write your own ghazal for the moon. You can find out more about the ghazal form here on Nynke's class blog (with some student examples) and here (on Poets.org).

The moon is trans.

From this moment forward, the moon is trans.

You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.

You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.

You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is

to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.

She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,

telling you to shut the fuck up already please.

Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth

that broke off when another planet struck it.

Eve came from Adam’s rib.

Etc.

Do you believe in the power of not listening

to the inside of your own head?

I believe in the power of you not listening

to the inside of your own head.

This is all upside down.

We should be talking about the ways that blood

is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon

but we’re busy drawing it instead.

The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.

The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead

for any extended period of time

in all of her existence, but

she is not delicate and she is not weak.

She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.

She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.

She will outlive everything you know.

Prompt:

Write about the moon as metaphor for a part of yourself or for yourself.

You can also write about the moon in a way that is uniquely yours. No one can see the moon quite like you do. Do it so everyone else will see the moon differently, too, after reading your hybrid piece or poem.

The moon is backing away from us
an inch and a half each year. That means
if you’re like me and were born
around fifty years ago the moon
was a full six feet closer to the earth.
What’s a person supposed to do?
I feel the gray cloud of consternation
travel across my face. I begin thinking
about the moon-lit past, how if you go back
far enough you can imagine the breathtaking
hugeness of the moon, prehistoric
solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun
so completely there was no corona, only
a darkness we had no word for.
And future eclipses will look like this: the moon
a small black pupil in the eye of the sun.
But these are bald facts.
What bothers me most is that someday
the moon will spiral right out of orbit
and all land-based life will die.
The moon keeps the oceans from swallowing
the shores, keeps the electromagnetic fields
in check at the polar ends of the earth.
And please don’t tell me
what I already know, that it won’t happen
for a long time. I don’t care. I’m afraid
of what will happen to the moon.
Forget us. We don’t deserve the moon.
Maybe we once did but not now
after all we’ve done. These nights
I harbor a secret pity for the moon, rolling
around alone in space without
her milky planet, her only child, a mother
who’s lost a child, a bad child,
a greedy child or maybe a grown boy
who’s murdered and raped, a mother
can’t help it, she loves that boy
anyway, and in spite of herself
she misses him, and if you sit beside her
on the padded hospital bench
outside the door to his room you can’t not
take her hand, listen to her while she
weeps, telling you how sweet he was,
how blue his eyes, and you know she’s only
romanticizing, that she’s conveniently
forgotten the bruises and booze,
the stolen car, the day he ripped
the phones from the walls, and you want
to slap her back to sanity, remind her
of the truth: he was a leech, a fuckup,
a little shit, and you almost do
until she lifts her pale puffy face, her eyes
two craters and then you can’t help it
either, you know love when you see it,
you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.

-Dorianne Laux, Facts About the Moon: Poem

Bonus Prompt 2:

Research facts about the moon and then write a poem or hybrid piece called "Facts about the Moon." Use Dorianne Laux' poem as an inspiration.