This love letter is to every individual who I’ve worked with over the last 5 years, between 2020-2025
A Love Letter to my Students
The text:
It surprises me, every time, how alive your poetry feels. I wonder if that’s what happens when the body is included and doubt becomes inconsequential — I can see (and I can feel) that you’re not trying to ‘use’ your creativity to show me your worth. You know that you belong. You’re here to play.
Every week, I love witnessing the way you hold this new poem that is yours, this poem that you wrote because you resisted the impulse to step on the breaks and control the language that was pouring out of you.
I also love how often your poetry includes your breath and your body. And how compassionate your poetry so often is (towards yourself, towards the life experience that has brought you to this moment) and how immersed you become when listening to the experience of others.
I’ve always yearned for a space that would allow for this kind of listening, and it has been a such a joy to realize that others feel the same as me.
Thank you for trusting me to create a landscape for you to wander within every week. You remind me: so much creativity exists within every one of us. This may sound cliche, but my god is it ever true. Thank you.
You have added so much richness to my life.
[…] I’d like to take a moment to recognize the pieces of work created by my students during my time running this studio. The books featured here were written by poets after attending one (or in some cases, several) of my workshops. These are also books that I had the pleasure of editing. There are three other collections not listed here that I also had the privilege to work on, but are still in development. Then there are the 100s of poems written by my students over the years that are also deserving of incredible respect and acknowledgement. You can read my love letter to my writing students here. […]
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