Writing Our Angels, Home and Abroad

Artwork by Tania Pryputniewicz

I could use an angel right now; how about you? I lost my mother in January and I’ve been two months blessed with caring for her with my siblings and four months grieving after her passing. As is always the case during times of intense sorrow, through the tears, many miracles, much beauty. Like this drawing of the angel I did last year for a friend of mine before I knew the cancer was returning, maybe in some kind of instinctive premonition that the ceiling of heaven was coming down a little closer than usual.

If you, like me, are feeling pulled heavenward lately and would like to explore your relationship to angels in writing, join me. I’m eager to get back to my teaching and my life as a writer. It’s just how I function, how I heal, and how I grow.  I’d love to work with you. 

Here’s what I put together for next month:

Writing Our Angels 

Have you ever wrestled with angels? Named an angel? Loved or raged in the absence or presence of an angel? Whether you believe in angels or not, you will find them throughout literature, from Blake’s time to our time in poems like, “Questions About Angels” by Billy Collins and “What the Angels Left” by Marie Howe and “For Each of You” by Audre Lorde and “The Angels" by Fanny Howe: I met them / in the Fields of Mourning.

What do angels give us? Are they to be revered in all their Hallmark glory? Or should we, as Linda Pastan writes in “Angels,” be weary of them? I am tired of their milky robes, / their star-infested sashes.

Whether you’ve had your own encounters with angels or have longed dreamed of meeting your guardian angel or have a question or complaint to lodge with a particular angel, come write with us as we examine our assumptions about angels and look at angel poems together. You’ll come away from our class with reveries and poems towards the creation of a personal Book of Angels. 

All levels of writing welcome; class structure includes weekly prompts and video calls in a loving and supportive virtual classroom environment. We start *note new start date to allow time for enrollment: beginning of this month on Monday, May 7 and run six weeks through Friday, June 15. Cost for the six-week session is $350. Please contact me for more information through the contact form on this website (use the link under my photo, which is accessed by clicking on my full name).

Snow in the morning garden!

My husband the Angel…

…gifted me a trip to Denmark when he heard I was losing my mother. In March, I flew to visit the beautiful host family I lived with as an exchange student when I was just eighteen years old. What a blessing to fall into the arms of my host sisters and host brother and my host mother and to fill in the narrative of the years apart. To sleep in the same house I slept in so many years ago, to wake to the kinship of loving voices, to peruse the home's artwork, to discover the Danish artist, Ovartaci. And to fall in love with of course, the colorful wings of his butterfly woman hanging in the hallway outside my bedroom and the pale blue floating figures and their equally pale blue mystical horses pulling the chariot of his "Tankens flugt" (Thought's flight). 

The Key to the Future

Thanks to poet Cindy Lynn Brown I joined the Odense Lyric 2018 Tech and Tekst poetry festival. I got the chance to hear several hours of Danish poetry and show three poetry movies. My Danish came back (enough) to introduce and read the corresponding poems from November Butterfly (in Danish). But this was largely thanks to Cindy's translations and my host sister Ulla Krogh Henriksen's coaching. Here's a sweet recording of Ulla reading Corridor for me:

Corridor

The Little Mermaid

It snowed while I stayed with Ulla in Copenhagen; we had a beautiful day walking beside the waterway revisiting the Little Mermaid and discovering a fabulous scrap metal figure titled, “The Key to the Future.” He sits on a giant silver key overlooking the water in pensive pose, finger to forehead, reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker. I loved fantasizing about the key to the future, what the door would look like, what massive lock might turn…what threshold we might cross, what angel meet there.

Hospice Angels at Tarot for Two

My tarot co-blogger and dear friend Mary Allen read cards for me several days before I lost my mother in early January. By January’s end, with Mary on the far end of the telephone in Iowa, I was able to write a bit about the long goodbye and the hospice nurse my mother loved so much:

Photo by Robyn Beattie

The day she decided to ask for end of life meds, she named the rose Gabriella after her hospice nurse and I cried with her as I pushed her in the wheelchair to the flower stand on the corner where we could buy Gabriella a “thank you” rose as red as the one we’d name after her and left alive in the garden.

Read the rest of The Hanged One here. 

Mary had travails of her own. She writes about the Two of Wands in relation to her month here:

My first thought about the two of wands is that in the Thoth deck it looks like bones—two bones crossing—even a tiny bit like the shadowy broken bones in the x-rays of my shoulder…I read online this morning that the two of wands is the card for partnerships, two people working together successfully, and that makes sense to me in terms of what’s been going on since I’ve had this broken, trying-to-heal shoulder.

Tania's Tarot Sketchbook

Read the rest of The Two of Wands here. 

Here's my companion post to Mary's; I am still circling grief, and writing here about the Ten of Swords and Four of Disks:

When Mary and I pulled cards in January just two weeks after my mother died, I pulled the Ten of Swords, “Ruin” with its image of ten sword handles ringing the periphery, points poised to pierce a central heart, the main and thickest sword breaking apart. I didn’t want that card for the month and tried a Mary tactic: I chose a second card. I’m grateful Mary has taught me it’s ok to do so.

Read the rest of The Two of Wands, The Ten of Swords, and the Four of Disks here.

Poetry News

This past weekend I made it out to read at the celebration for the Kowit prize, a poetry prize bestowed by the San Diego Entertainment and Arts Guild and given in honor of the late much-loved poet and writing teacher Steve Kowit. I am honored to be one of a group of honorable mention honorees. I dedicated the poem, “Moscow Road” to my mother. 

Can it really be the first poem I’ve ever written with the “f” word in it?  (I reference a phrase in one of the books my mother kept in the house when I was growing up, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying.)  I lost my nerve a bit when I found out my husband couldn't accompany me to the reading, but God bless my teenage daughter. She shook her pony-tailed head at me and said, “Oh Mom, come on, just own it!” 

And so I did. Here’s a link to where you can submit your own poems (June 15-October 15) and order the San Diego Poetry Annual (or you can find a copy of it in the public and college libraries in San Diego ). This volume contains special sections: Poems from Juvenile Hall, Poems by Veterans, Native Poets, and the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize honorees.

I owe the following thank yous:

To the editors of San Pedro River Review and Blue Horse Press, Jeffrey and Tobi Alfier, for publishing "Silhouette" and "Strawberry Wine," in their Spring Music Themed Issue.

Founding editor of the Rockvale Review Sandy Coomer; "The Marriage Counselor Channels King Solomon" and "City Boys" are forthcoming in May.

Poetry editor Lindsay Wilson of The Meadow; "Stupid Californians" forthcoming this summer.

Editor in Chief Matthew Anderson of NILVX: A Book of Magic; "Tower" and "Fortune" linked haikus are forthcoming in Summer 2018 Tarot Series 2 issue.

Rivers, Daughters, and February 2017 Writing Courses from Feral Mom

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Thank you to Andrew Purcell at The Journal of Applied Poetics for running four poems of mine about rivers and daughters. You can read the poems here:  Thirteen, Russian River, Perihelion, My Daughter By Candlelight, and Graduation.

I'm also very honored to report that poems, some of them from the commune manuscript that is now out in circulation, are forthcoming at Whale Road Review, Nimrod International, and Chiron Review.

I also want to thank Robyn Beattie for the beautiful image featured here. It is a detail from one of her clay boats--you've seen so many of Robyn's photos in my blogposts over the years as well as in our collaborative poetry movies. This month Calabi gallery in Santa Rosa is carrying a number of Robyn's beautiful moon and boat sculptures; do stop by (virtually if not in person) to visit her page in order to see her work and read her bio: Calabi Gallery, Robyn's work.

I’m loving teaching my latest course, Election Blues: The Gift of Agency in Poetry. I hope you are finding a way to peace as much as possible in your heart through whatever action you need to take during these tumultuous times in order to make sure your voice is being heard…witnessing and breaking silence are two powerful ways we are blessed as writers to participate. To that end, I hope to be of service to you in person or on-line. Below you’ll find my upcoming courses.

Artwork by Tania Pryputniewicz

Where Is The Love? An On-line Course: Virtual Hearth

Are you overwhelmed living in the stress of the divisive and fractured state of affairs we find ourselves in locally, nationally, and internationally? If so, my upcoming six-week course may offer what you are looking for: I’ve designed it as an intentionally peaceful and loving  virtual hearth. Each week we’ll draw on love-related themes from the Tarot and you’ll have the opportunity to write to poetry, art, music, and meet over Zoom to write in real time and share writing in the presence of a supportive community.  Writers at every level of experience are welcome and the response to the prompts is wide open—I encourage you to write in the genre of your choice (for example, by free-writing, journaling, crafting blogposts, writing poems, or writing non-fiction essays or short stories).

You'll receive a weekly video introduction to the week's theme and the week's poetry, art, and music prompts. Course will be conducted over a combination of email, Zoom, and private discussion forum. Cost for this six-week session is $290; session runs *March 13-April 21, 2017 (note amended dates). Use the contact form on this blog (below my photo in the sidebar) to email me for sign-up details or visit my Wheel of Archetypal Selves Facebook page to IM me there for more information.

SDWI First Tuesdays: Theme Set Go, February Love

My in-person monthly themed poetry workshop continues at San Diego Writers, Ink over at Liberty Station on Tuesday, February 7th. February's theme is....Love, of course...but I mean love in all forms. Come and write a Valentine's Day poem or two--for your Valentine, your child, your pet, your father, your friend. Or write an anti-Valentine's day Ode--we won't turn you away.

Either way, bring your love weary or love enthralled self out to write with me.  We are a dedicated, intimate circle of poets and always welcome a few more bodies. Contact me if you have any questions. Sign up here: Tania's First Tuesdays Theme Set Go Class

Cover Photo and Design Don Mitchell

March Poetry Workshop with Rizzo and Pryputniewicz:

Lisa Rizzo and I will join forces to celebrate the launch of her new poetry book, Always A Blue House (Saddle Road Press, December 2016). I'm over the moon that she's joining the Saddle Road Press family of authors! We will co-teach a workshop titled:

Everyday Pilgrimages: Metaphors, Questions, and Omens 

• Saturday March 4th, 10-12 am
• San Diego Writers, Ink in Liberty Station
• $30 fee includes copy of Lisa Rizzo’s Always a Blue House

In Always a Blue House (Saddle Road Press, December 2016), Lisa Rizzo’s poems range between the earthbound house of human perception and the limitless plane of soul questions elicited by opening one’s heart to the blue angel of poetry. Whether she is listening in the depths of the Oregon Caves for “what had not yet been unearthed” or asking of her readers, “will you follow me?” Rizzo’s questions linger: “What gifts do I give?” “Does faith remain when memory is lost?” In November Butterfly, Tania Pryputniewicz introduces the reader to the lives of iconic women. Through personae poems, she explores metaphors and offers similar invitations:  “Let us begin with the worm / its translucent omen…”

Join us for a two-hour workshop exploring the ways we can use metaphors, questions, and omens to write the poetry of our lives. Class time will allow for a close look at a few poems from each writer's collection as a starting point for creating your own work, writing time, and sharing time. For a full course description and to sign up, visit:  Everyday Pilgrimages: Metaphors, Questions, and Omens 

Sourcing Siapo and Where Hitler Hides at MWM

Mother Writer Mentor (MWM) is pleased to remain active interviewing writers in our ongoing effort to document the matrilineal lineage of writing, writing scholarship and mentorship between women writers (regardless of where they fall on the public spectrum of publishing). Do you write? You qualify--so just know we are always on the look-out for guest posts especially from daughters of writing mothers, writing mothers with daughters, any possible combination or tangential topic. We are eager to support you getting yourself to the page. In the meantime, check out the latest two interviews we posted below.

Sourcing Siapo: A Poem and Interview with Penina Ava Taesali

Samoan writer, poet, educator, and cultural arts activist Penina Taesali, author of Sourcing Siapo, (University of Hawaii, Ala Press 2016) spoke with us and shared an excerpt from her book. Penina describes here for us part of her process: 

I had a vision of a woman walking wrapped in her siapo cloak and descending into the underground. It is a mythic shamanic story of descending and ascending. When I got home I quickly wrote the first draft of what would become the poem that appears on page sixty-four... 

Read the rest of the interview and the poem here: Sourcing Siapo: A Poem and Interview with Penina Ava Taesali

Where Hitler Hides: An Interview and Trigger Story by Marlene Samuels

We honored International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) at MWM by running an interview with writer Marlene B. Samuels, Ph.D. and publishing an excerpt from her new manuscript, Where Hitler Hides: A Memoir in Short Stories, or actually a Trigger Story as she refers to stories that "stem from an experience that triggered memories whose roots are mired in Holocaust related events or damages." When Samuels learned that her mother was experimented on at Ravensbruck (Hitler's concentration camp for women), she told us, 

I do know from being a writer, that the best--perhaps only, way for me to make sense out of what I learned, how and when, is to deconstruct my reactions through the process of research and writing.

Read the rest of the interview and her Trigger Story "My Father's Sidewalks" at Where Hitler Hides: An Interview and Trigger Story here.