The Poetry Saloncast

One of the fascinating application of the poetic medium is as a form of healing in therapy. Jennie Chapman Linthorst is a poet, expressive writing teacher and founder of LifeSPEAKS Poetry Therapy. She and Tresha talk in depth about poetry therapy, how she qualified to become one and what the treatment consists of. They explore the difference between the role of a therapist and that of a teacher of...

Tresha and Kelly close out two months of amazing interviews with a discussion of what they’ve learned. They review their biggest takeaways from their conversations with poets Arminé Iknadossian, Hannah Gamble, Douglas Manuel, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Brendan Constantine, Alexis Rhone Fancher,  and one another. Then, both Tresha and Kelly offer a poem they edited over the last two months and explain h...

In this podcast Armine’ Iknadossian and Kelly Grace Thomas ask Poetry Salon founder Tresha Faye Haefner when and how she decided to make a full commitment to her poetry. Tresha discusses feeling out of place in performing arts, but needing to reach out, needing to make sense of silence, mystery, chaos, the largeness of the world and the passage of time. What can we learn from silent animals and wo...

In this podcast, Kelly Grace Thomas discusses how she uses poetry to explore issues that nobody talks about. Her latest book focuses on issues of the body, femininity, and changing conceptions of what it means to be a woman. A poet who has won Rattle’s Neil Postman Award, Kelly discusses how she comes up with metaphors, and how she uses them, not just in one poem, but as a way to hold an entire co...

In this interview Alexis Rhone Fancher discusses the value of a near Pavlovian work-ethic, and the ability to detach herself from her writing, even when writing about very personal subjects. Often referenced as an “erotic” poet, Alexis says she uses sex in her writing to explore power, to write for women who are like herself, and to encourage others to share their stories and poems with the world....

Why do poets still write about the moon? Should we stop? In this interview poet Brendan Constantine discusses the way the moon and the sea and other eternal markers act as a ground zero for discussing poetry. Art is a marker of our mortal consciousness. It is where we go to make mistakes, where we go to get things wrong. Constantine affirms his belief in making big mistakes in poetry, and therefor...

Do you like Persona Poems? Do you like villains? Do you think powerful women are misunderstood or misrepresented in art? So does Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Becoming the Villainess, X, Y, and Z . In this interview we discuss how female authors can use personas to speak up for themselves and others, and how writing from the persona of a villain can be liberating for the poet, the reader and the...

Ph. D. student and teacher Douglas Manual discusses the different stages of writing a poem, from taking notes on his iPhone, to doing free-writes, to editing. He shares how his process has changed over time, why he switched from writing short stories to writing poems, and how he’s become more patient with the work over time.  Rewriting Strategies: Douglas shares the “Tippecanoe" exercise, showing...

What propels you to the page? Listen to Hannah Gamble talk about her creative writing process, how she lets feelings get cluttered until she is too vexed to procrastinate anymore. After that she scrolls through the Rolodex of Delights in her mind, flipping through options, experimenting with different possibilities, and finding the most fun ideas to fill her poems. Sometimes this comes easily. Som...

Does a poet have to write every day? In this podcast, Armine Iknadosian discusses what it means to be a “poet-in-the-world.” For her this means having a “poet-mind” instead of a “practical-mind.” She continuously scrolls through the world around her for stories that want to be told, whether they be her own stories, or stories from voices across the globe. In this way her work is a matter of both i...