Newest workshop offering is for Teens preparing College Application essays

“These College Essays Are Driving Me Crazy”

Workshop for Teens

Join this fun and creative group for help developing your college application essays. Find the heart and voice of your writing.

^{Call for more information.}

Collaborative Poem Project at Truckee Thursday 6/16

At the first Truckee Thursday of the summer, I set up a booth for Tangled Roots Writing and asked anyone willing to try for a few words in response to a quote by Jane Hirshfield's quote "Journey far enough into the terrain of language, it seems, and the heart will begin to speak."

So many people responded that their index cards covered my bulletin board three cards deep. Using only their words and phrases, I composed this collaborative poem - I hope you enjoy reading poetry that can only exist through the collaborative efforts of many many Truckee people.


Begin to Speak: a collaborative poem from Truckee Thursday 6/16

Heart pointed to the moon, a friend living close by –
far is far from how far?
When he began to speak
(the first word I understood)
he was emphatic;
a roughness implied, or uncertainty,
perhaps not his first word.
If you are still and can be silent you may start to hear
the words you have been longing.
Scream.
Heart will begin to speak, above ground and below,
places we aren’t familiar with but must cross through.
Lost souls, our purpose, heartreason.

On the other side of any journey
I want to be
waiting for the next step,
filled so big with so much. Every time
I hear of a trip taken far away
I enjoy my town more and more.
How far is far away?
Begin to speak
of the mind where the heart leads;
environment to lose yourself, a road trip
or a relationship. On the other side of the journey
I will be a baby. I am going to persevere
and love. Today is my day.

He rolled the word around
in his mouth, riding on it.
Get back on
into the language within us.
Write mindlessly. Eat another muscateer.
Rise from the wild,
a phoenix.
Journey well
deep and sound, under a tunnel
ride the escalator.
When he knew that I knew what he said he almost cried.

One-on-One Writing Project Coaching

In addition to the writing workshops, I offer one-on-one coaching for writing and book projects. I can help with concept and craft, form and structure, as well as project planning and deadlines. Currently I am working with several writers and the coaching is tailored to each individual project; some writers work remotely and others meet with me weekly or monthly. Email me at tangledrootswriting at gmail dot com if you are interested in discussing whether coaching would help your project.

30 poems in 30 days success!

In November I committed to write 30 poems in 30 days of November to raise money for Center For New Americans, an organization in Western Mass. that helps families with literacy and work training. How often can poetry be so directly connected to outreach?

Along with many other poets, we raised over $20,000 dollars for the Center for New Americans - thank you everyone who donated!

From 30 poems in 30 days

Undercurrent
For Kathleen

If we ever sat on a rock on the coast of Maine
it would be dinnertime -
sunset staining the slate water, waves slapping
the blue painted keels of boats anchored nearby.


Gulls would check us out for sandwich scraps.
Red combed mergansers
would sail past, moving without moving.
We’d chip quartz crystals from veins in the granite
with dirty fingernails, veins darkened red and brown
but the chips milky white,
tiny shards of moon in your hand.
You want to collect a good one for Joe,
talk of places you imagined in your sleep.
You say we have to remember this place.


I memorize your silhouette with
ocean between forested islands beyond,
currents we can’t see making passage uncertain.


The sun has set, dinner is ready -
we’ve missed the laughter in the house.
Alone outside, ducks retreat to safe places, tuck heads beneath wings,
boats bob in silence, the moon casts our shadows
across seaweedy sand, a breeze cuts my neck,
the lobsters are red, their screams
are finished, the butter is melted.


Tomorrow you’ll chase me from dock
to dock as I jump
into the ferry wake after Joe, him yelling
Let’s do it again! Jump
Jump!


In the middle of the night steady rain will fall
on the old roof and the bent apple tree
and the quilt of green
where the baby practiced walking
(something significant that we forget ourselves)
hard rain dappling the flat ocean
while underneath, current cuts
deep channels deeper
as your mind grows deeper –


I wonder
what’s out there
between our island and the mainland.
A minke whale bends,
someone will see it in early morning
like a mirage of night sky.


But tonight we listen to the calming,
grass stems spider webs everything pressed
down, air glistening,
moonlight striated across the heavy ocean like milky crystal.

Aug 4-5: Train back to Prague

rI sat in the dining car with a beer, Gambrino, writing in my journal and reading as the rural rolling Czech Republic flew past the broad line of windows. I read Too loud a solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. I thought about the turning point in growing up at which one realizes it’s not about oneself anymore. It is our responsibility not to be ignorant. Back in Prague for 18 hours, I felt like a local walking the bridge across the river one last time as the sun set. My last morning in Prague I spent looking for the gifts I wanted to buy for John, my family. Then I took a taxi to the airport. While traveling, I needed to create my sense of home wherever I was, even if it's boundaries extended only to the edges of my body. After traveling for two months, I couldn't wait to get back to the place I belong.

Aug 3: Auschwitz

Rooms of eyeglasses, black metal twisted like filament, round lenses crushed. Piles of hairbrushes, shaving brushes, toothbrushes. Children’s shoes, boots, crushed leather, laces removed. Men’s shoes, women’s shoes. Chewing tobacco tins. It’s all about sorting. I’m sick to my stomach on the bus ride back to Krakow. On the bus a group of people are sorting their Ipod music, counting their gigabites. Another woman is removing film canisters, labeling them, Auschwitz. I notice that we count and sort in times of stress. How can our bodies survive for so long before giving in? Who would have imagined standing cells? At the foot is a small door to crawl through. The cell is 1 x 1 meter large, with a tiny bent ventilation hole at head level. Four men would stand in this cell all night, then go to work in the morning, then go back to the standing cell. They would die after a week or two, or not, or suffocate at night. Small gestures of shame by the Nazis; covering the windows of the barracks on the side opening to the execution wall, dispersing the ashes from the crematorium into the river, anywhere, to hide the evidence.

As I left through the metal gates, I saw a man trip over a sparrow he kicked accidentally as he walked. I heard its little body hit the boot, not a sound muted by feathers. The bird fluttered above the pavement, little flights of confusion between his legs and his girlfriend’s feet. Then its mess of wings and feathers and chirps fluttered into the buses and I couldn’t see it. Stillness. Inside one barrack was a drawing of a guard pulling his leg and booted foot back as far as he could before kicking the naked prisoner on the floor before him.

In the crematorium, three rooms, one for disrobing, one for gassing, and then a room with four ovens. Respectful memorial candles have been lit next to placards on a little makeshift altar on the floor in honor of the dead. Gassing took 15 minutes for 1000 people. Special prisoners would remove the gold fillings from the teeth and then put two bodies in each oven. Cremation took about 30-40 minutes so this was the bottleneck. Later on I wished I hadn’t gone entered the crematorium. At dinner back in Krakow, trying to recover in a traditional polish restaurant, I couldn’t shake the ghost of ash from the walls, from the air, from the ovens, all over my body. It felt like white claustrophobic chalk. My meal was very traditional sour crout with lamb and kielbasa, pickles, carrot salad, sacred home-made bread. I couldn’t eat enough.