The Poetry Saloncast

In this wide-ranging interview, Kai Coggin tells her story of meeting Sandra Cisneros along with her middle school English class and how the famous author encouraged her to make time for her own writing as well as bringing writing to others. Now Kai Coggin on her fourth book Mining for Stardust , uses poetry to "freeze time", recording the darkness and tempering it with the power of the light. She...

Big Announcement for the podcast:  Kelly Grace Thomas is stepping aside as co-host with Tresha Faye Haefner. Kelly has a new baby! With an infant in the house she's focusing on being a new mother, and stepping into her prodigious shoes is creative powerhouse and high-spirit extraordinaire Doug Manuel, author of Testify .  Join us as Tresha catches up with what Doug has been doing since our intervi...

“What does it mean to call every stranger friend?” That’s a question poet and innovator Brian Sonia-Wallace asks as he discusses his unusual journey writing spontaneous poetry at events. In his twenties Brian Sonia-Wallace put out a typewriter on the street to write poetry for strangers and has been doing it ever since. He is the founder of “Rent Poet” and travels the world to write for others, in...

What does it mean to carry a landscape with you when that landscape belongs to someone else? In this interview, Gustavo Hernandez discusses the way poetry has helped him deal with living as an immigrant, and what it means to have two places always with him - California and Jalisco, Mexico. He talks about using poetry to help mourn his father. He also discusses the way short-fiction helped him crea...

Many poets are beguiled by the fundamental where did I come from question. Much of Lynne Thompson’s work traces the threads that influenced her sense of identity and how it interacts with politics and race. At the same time, the job of a poet is to find a new angle on how to address issues that may be “universal” or at the forefront of the zeitgeist. So, Thompson advises, “You need to get outside...

How do you find your voice? What about the voice of a poem or piece? In this interview Kim talks about her influences, and how they have helped her find her own voice. She also talks about getting past her own voice to find the voice of the poem itself, and how she helps support her students in doing the same. You'll also get bonus anecdotes about rhyming in the high desert, writing about a scorpi...

What can we learn from reading the Confessions of St. Augustin? In this interview Tresha asks Cameron Morse to discuss his latest book, Far Other, titled after a line from St. Augustin. Cameron discusses his interest in the Confessional Tradition, how it began around 300's BC, and what it can still teach us today about the value of an "ordinary" individual telling their personal story. We discuss...

How do you find the place in your poetry for your complete self - the sorrow and the joy, the eventful and the mundane, the gratitude and the grief? Is the balance found in a single poem or across multiple poems? In this interview award-winning poet Sonia Greenfield talks to us about her journey towards finding her voice, and how several teachers helped her along the way. Sonia also discusses her...

Do writers have a duty to share their work? In this interview Nancy Lynee Woo discusses what it’s like to come out of an Emerging Writers Fellowship, to wrestle with the pressure to become a “literary celebrity,” and the difference between trying to get published by a journal, vs. sharing art more freely on social media and personal platforms. She tells us how writing a mission statement for her l...

Prolific writer, cartoonist and public speaker Jon Pearson talks to Tresha and Kelly about unleashing the inner genius of the imagination. Pearson talks fast, draws fast and writes fast, and his ideas about freeing the mind from our adult restrictions have inspired thousands of souls. Hear from him the benefits of not making sense, and allowing the creative child within to run wild. In addition to...

Our second poets panel on surviving 2020 as a writer and poet is chock full of great suggestions and helpful life tips to staying creative and staying sane while keeping your distance from other people. Three amazing talents - Poetry Salon teacher Arthur Kayzakian, creativity coach Jennie Linthorst and cultural writer and critic Brian Sonia Wallace chime in, read some poetry and offer their wisdom...

This short segment is an excerpt from last week's interview where Julie Hartley, founder of the Centauri School of Writing and Tresha Faye Haefner talk about narrative types, truth in memoir and expanding that to the poetry field. It didn't fit in with the flow of the epsiode itself, but was too interesting to leave on the cutting room floor, so we're releasing it this week.

 Listen to this bonus episode to hear Julie Hartley talk about how she turned her love of writing into a career. Julie and her husband founded The Centauri School for Writing in Canada, plus a Costa Rica-based camp and retreat center that runs a whole slate of classes for both teens and adults. All genres and mediums are taught to free participants' creative spirits and find their true voices. We...

Bonus episode! This week, we gather three amazing poets - Brendan Constantine, Jeannine Hall Gailey and Nancy Lynee Woo - for the first of two panels on how these poets are coping with stay-at-home orders during a global pandemic. Are they reflecting the national scene in their writing? What habits are they forming? Are they able to connect with a writing community? Listen in as Tresha Faye Haefne...

We've interviewed some amazing word artists for Season Two - Arthur Kayzakian, Victoria Lynn McCoy, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Antionette Brim, and Dorothy Chan. Kelly Grace Thomas and I review all the lessons we've learned this season and read a couple of poems that were changed fundamentally by the prompts and advice these amazing writers offered us in their interviews. We wrap up the season here.

The COVID quarantine has sent our schedule all higgeldy piggeldy, so this week we grant you, our loyal listeners, with this writing prompt from Tresha that will serve you throughout all your years as a writer. Really, this one's the one. Print it, laminate it and sleep with it under your pillow. Thank us later.

In this episode we interview Iranian-Armenian-American poet, Arthur Kayzakian who has just joined The Poetry Salon as a workshop facilitator! Kazakian talks about what it’s like to grow up in a war zone and migrate to a different country, how he learned English as a language of abandonment, and ultimately how he fell in love with poetry as a profession. Listen to us discuss the ways language can i...

How do we create a safe space to process our grief through art? Victoria Lynne McCoy discusses Carmen Maria Machado's metaphor of a "house for grief" and how she enters that house to find the material for her poems about the dead, and then finds her way out again, back to her daily life. Listen to her discuss the way writing epistilary poems (poems written as letters to a specific person) help her...

Can writing poetry make you a stronger person? In this interview Marie-Elizabeth Mali, author of Steady, My Gaze (2011) discusses the ways writing helps her explore her own nature, and come to terms with parts of herself she doesn't necessarily like. Specifically she discusses the way diving into the ocean and exploring nature helps her find images and metaphors to help her connect with and unders...

Is there a special way poets have of explaining love? What about history? Or the Bible? In this episode, the poet Antoinette Brim discusses the challenges she had in taking on the topic of women in Genesis in her most recent book, These Women You Gave Me . Hear about this and other topics of her work, like how she copes with ageing and how to define the meaning of love.  Rewrite Exercise: Look at...

In this interview captivating poet Michelle Bitting discusses the connection between movement, mythology, and writing poetry. A trained actress and dancer, Michelle says that writing poetry is a lot like being in a performance, where one needs to generate and sustain a certain mood in which to enter the text and keep the momentum going. Elliptical machines, walking, and everyday rituals can suppor...

Poet Dorothy Chan discusses pleasure, pop-culture, and the addiction she has to writing sonnets. Sonnets, she says, are like appetizers on a menu at a fancy restaurant – small, experimental, and the perfect size to taste without filling up. Unlike traditional sonnets though, Dorothy has pioneered the triple-crown sonnet, a variation that strings three little sonnets into a fuller three-course meal...

Our second season launches next week. Listen to this and find out which poets we'll be interviewing in the coming eight weeks. Plus join our growing community on Patreon to get commentary on your drafts on our private Facebook Group.

What is a “Story Mentor” and how does Terrie Silverman, founder of Creative Rites, make magic happen through her mighty teaching powers? Silverman works with her clients to help them discover and refine their voices in such mediums as memoir, personal essay, storytelling, alt comedy, fiction, and plays/screenplays. She’s one of the few facilitators in LA who coach others in creating their own one-...

 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...