Emerging Form

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a crystal ball so we could see where our creative road might take us? Or, perhaps as we discuss in this bonus episode of Emerging Form, perhaps what we really want is to just stop worrying where our path might take us. We talk with science journalist Jill U. Adams about her own creative arc and the surprising chat with a college counselor that sticks with her.Jill U. Adams is a science journalist who reports on health, psychology, teens, and education. She lives in upstate New York and tweets as @juadams. She shares her drawings on Instagram: @juadams1.Jill’s essay at Nieman Storyboard, “Jumpstart your writing routine: coffee, journals, sketches and postcards,” in which she explains how her morning writing rituals lifted her out of COVID malaise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Everyone agrees: creative routines can ignite our creative practice. But why are they so hard to maintain? How can we create more sustainable creative practices? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with science writer Jill U. Adams about her morning routine--how she established it, how she changes it, how it serves her, how it pushes it, and how she makes it sustainable. A sweet surprise: How postcards have become a way to engage with letting go of perfectionism. Jill U. Adams is a science journalist who reports on health, psychology, teens, and education. She lives in upstate New York and tweets as @juadams. Check out her drawings on Instagram: @juadams1 Jill’s essay at Nieman Storyboard, “Jumpstart your writing routine: coffee, journals, sketches and postcards,” in which she explains how her morning writing rituals lifted her out of COVID malaise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Early to bed, early to rise, coffee and quiet--these are some of the daily routines that help drive the creative life of poet, editor and writing coach James Crews. In this bonus episode, we talk about life on the farm in Vermont with his husband, the importance of trust in our creative life, how we can sabotage ourselves by trying to know where our creative path will take us, and Crews’ mentor Ted Kooser’s advice about conditioning the mind. James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.Jack KornfieldTed Kooser This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How might stillness and a heightened sense of awareness infuse your creative endeavors? In this episode we speak with poet, editor and writing coach James Crews about how a daily mindfulness practice can help us meet creative stumbling blocks such as self-judgment and writer’s block with more clarity, curiosity, acceptance and even surprise. Can mindfulness be a hindrance to creativity? Are there “rules” for how and when to to do it? Can being quiet really help an art that depends on words? How might your creativity infuse your mindfulness? James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.John Kabat-ZinnSharon SalzbergJane HirshfieldNaomi Shihab NyeDarn Luckyfor James CrewsIt happens, you know—the day opens itselflike a tulip in a warm room, and you meet someonewho amazes you with their willingnessto be a thousand percent alive, someonewho makes you feel grateful to be you.And it’s as if life has been keeping a beautifulsecret from you—like the fact that they makeelderberry flowers into wine. Like muscadine.Like the yellow-green floral scent of quince.Like the perfect knot for tying your shoes.And it turns out life does have wonderfulsecrets waiting for you. Even when the newsmakes you cry. Even when some old pain returns,that’s when you will meet this new friend.Someone wholly themselves. Someonewho makes you smile in the kitchen, a smile so realthat when you go out, the whole world notices.It’s enough to make you want to wake up in the morning.To go into the day. To be unguarded as a tulip, petalsfalling open. You never know who you might meet. --Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

A few words about what happens at a writing retreat. Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Photo: Rosemerry’s altar for her recent writing retreat. What would it be like to give over completely to your creative self? To get away from daily distractions and responsibilities and just write or paint or dance? In this episode of Emerging Form, Rosemerry and Christie talk about writers' retreats--why going away somewhere to write (or create) is so important, what it might look like, and how you might plan for one. From food prep to altars to finding daily rhythms, we talk about some of the ins and outs. Do you need one? Maybe you can’t afford not to have one.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How do we abstract our sense of self-worth from our creative work? That’s one of the themes in this bonus episode in which we converse with writer/artist/poet/editor Sarah Gilman. We learn about her reliance on small blank notebooks, the efficient layout of her office and the importance of having books around.Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, Hakai Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesignshttps://sarahmgilman.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How can working in one art form strengthen our practice in another? Our guest Sarah Gilman describes herself as a “creative smush,” and in this episode, the artist/writer/editor talks about how all these art forms inform each other--how all of them allow her to “think in terms of metaphors.” As she says, by working in multiple fields at once, she can enter into a place where “themes can combine in immersive ways that foster empathy, respect for nuance over polarization, and a sense of awe for and accountability towards the world as it is—still huge and full of mystery and beauty, however threatened or diminished.” We also talk about how to get out of our own way, the importance of going outside, and how community and connections can fuel our work. Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesignshttps://sarahmgilman.com/South America's Otherworldly Seabird, Sarahs’ narrative and illustrations of how scientists are working to save a tiny seabird in the Atacama Desert. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

For Auld Lang Syne         —Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerWe’ll drink a cup of kindness yet,says the song, and I would give youthe cup, friend, would fill itwith whiskey or water or whateverwould best meet your thirst.I fill it with the terrifying beautyof tonight’s bonfire—giant licksof red and swirls of blue that consumewhat is dead and melt the iceand give warmth to what is here.I fill it with moonrise and snow crystaland the silver river song beneath the ice.With the boom of fireworks and with laughterthat persists through tears. WithLilac Wine and Over the Rainbow and Fever.I toast you with all the poems we’ve yet to writeand all the tears we’ve yet to weep,I hold the cup to your lips,this chalice of kindness, we’ll drink it yet,though the days are cold, the nights so long.         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer ____The Next Storm ComesAnd suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.         —Meister EckhartAnd suddenly you know it’s timeto shovel the drive. For though snowstill falls, at this moment it’s onlythree inches deep and you can still push it easilywith your two wide yellow shovels.Yes, it’s time to start something new—though it doesn’t feel new, thisshoving snow from one place to another.In fact, your shoulders still feelthe efforts of yesterday.But with each push of the shovels,the path on the drive is new again. At leastit’s new for a moment, new until snowfills it in. Then it’s a different kind of new.How many beginnings are like this?They don’t feel like beginnings at all?Or we miss their newness?Or they feel new only for a momentbefore they’ve lost their freshness?There is magic in beginnings, says Meister Eckhart,and sometimes we see beginnings all around us,a new path, a new promise, a new meal.A new prayer. New snow fall. A new song.Is it too grand to call it magic, this new calendar year?Too grand to call it magic, this momentaryclearing on the drive? Too grand to be magic,this momentary clearing in my thoughts?Or is it exactly, perhaps, what magic is—something we allow ourselves to believe,despite logic, despite reason, something that bringsus great pleasure, makes us questionwhat we thought we knew, our senseof what is possible changed.—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer_____Watching The Wizard of Oz on New Year’s Eve, I Think of a Resolution toward PeaceAs for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.—The Wizard to the Tin Man, The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. BaumGive us hearts that breakwhen we see how cruel the world can beand hands that extend toward others.Give us eyes that weep when we feelthe beauty of home, andlips to speak love, to apologize.Give us courage to say what must be saidand ears to hear what we’d rather not hearand eyes that will not turn the other wayfrom anyone in need.Give us brains that are wiredfor helpfulness, compassionand curiosity. Yes, let us ask for heartsthat break and break and growbigger in the breaking. Let uslove more than we think we can love.And the cup of kindness, may weever remember to drink of it,let us share it with each other.         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Photo: Christie & Rosemerry shortly before the pandemic began. (Yes, that is one of Rosemerry’s poems on Christie’s tights.)For creatives, the new year is a chance to look back on what we’ve accomplished and how we’ve grown in the past year, and also a chance to dream about our creative endeavors in the future. In this episode, Christie and Rosemerry have a conversation about how to do your own “year end report,” how a magic wand might help you identify your goals, and how two questions from Motivational Interviewing can help you verbalize why your goals are important to you. We talk about bonfires--both literal and metaphorical, a few of our own goals, some of our skepticism around goals, and our mottos and themes for moving forward. Motivational InterviewingA story Christie wrote about how to make New Year’s resolutionsChristie’s 2021 New Year’s resolutionChristie’s Instagram and Rosemerry’sA little new years goal advice from our episode 28 guest, Holiday Mathis. “Do not set targets for results that are beyond your control. Keep asking yourself what can be done to help this along. Set targets for what you can produce, actions you can take, miles you can move.”_____Bonfire in the Heartby Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerI throw in any talliesI’ve been keeping,the ones that recordwho did what and when.I throw in all the lettersI wrote in my head but didn’t send.I throw in tickets I didn’t buyto places I didn’t visit.I throw in all those expectationsI had for myself and the world last yearand countless lists of things I thought I should do.I love watching them ignite,turn into embers, to ash.I love the space they leave behindwhere anything can happen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe