Emerging Form

Noticing and being present are two essential ingredients for creativity, and in today’s episode, writer Laurie Wagner discusses how travel can facilitate creative traits like these and help you connect with your muse. She tells us about how being in a foreign place helps her move slower and see things anew. “Our lives are passing, and we think we are going someplace,” she says, but meanwhile life is passing us by in this present moment, and that’s where creativity lies. PLEASE NOTE: we are taking a short summer break after our Episode 69 bonus next week. If you are a paid subscriber, your subscription will be put on hold (you won’t be charged) until we’re back in late August. Laurie Wagner has been publishing books and essays, and teaching writing for the last 25 years. She is a process guru and has a genius for holding space, helping people unzip what’s inside of them, and get ink on the page. A creative brain-stormer, she specializes in out of the box ways to tell your stories. Her Wild Writing classes are the cornerstone of her live work. She teaches weekly, small groups, and also hosts The Wild Family, a large group of writers from around the world who write together weekly.  She is the author of Living Happily Ever After: Couples Talk about Long Term Love, and Expectations: 30 Women Talk about Becoming a Mother. Check out her blog at: 27powers.org 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 does a book come together? We speak with Rachel Feltman, author of Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex, about the evolution of her book, from first inklings to years of research to organization to completion. She explains how she answered the burning question, “How do I make this a book and not just a pile of words?” Her secrets include A 500-mile ride on a tandem bike, a morning routine, a great agent and editor, the willingness to turn in her “hottest garbage,” and a three-word mantra that will help jumpstart every creative process. Rachel Feltman’s first paying gig was organizing a bookshelf full of textbooks on vulvar disease at the age of seven, and she never looked back. She’s the Executive Editor of Popular Science and hosts PopSci’s podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. In 2014, Feltman founded the Washington Post’s Speaking of Science blog, known for headlines such as “You probably have herpes, but that’s really okay,” and “Uranus might be full of surprises.” Feltman studied environmental science at Simon’s Rock and has a master’s in science reporting from NYU. She’s a musician, an actress, and the stepmom of a very spry 14-year-old cat.Rachel’s website https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/rachel-feltman/been-there-done-that/9781668605042/  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

Need inspiration? Look to other arts. This practice, known as ekphrasis–the art of making art inspired by other art, can “fill the well” and create a rich field of ideas to play with. In this episode, Rosemerry offers a provocative list of specific ways one might engage with another work of art and gives examples from her recent poems responding to the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and the music of our previous guest Kayleen Asbo (episode 27, Creative Communities). And Christie talks about novels she’s read this year by Emily St. John, Anthony Doerr and others that are teaching her new ways to engage audiences around the pandemic, the destruction of the natural world, and how to live in a broken world. Kayleen AsboLove Letters to Vincent Salon with Kayleen and Rosemerry“In the Wheat Field with Crows” by Rosemerry“Wheat Field with Crows” by Vincent Van Gogh“Almond Blossom” by Rosemerry“Almond Blossom” by Vincent Van GoghNovels Christie recently read and lovedEmily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility, Station ElevenBenjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the WorldAnthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo LandRichard Powers, The Overstory and BewildermentLily King, Euphoria 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

Some projects take on a life of their own–what begins as a side project might grow into a life-style change and new career. But how do we know if or when to end it? How do external factors influence it? What do we learn about adaptation and trust? In this episode of Emerging Form, we bring back podcaster Laura Joyce Davis, host and executive producer of the award-winning narrative podcast Shelter in Place. We talk about committing to projects you don’t know how to do, learning from failure, spin off projects, sustainability, finding closure and learning into the next chapter. Laura Joyce Davis is the host and executive producer of the award-winning narrative podcast Shelter in Place. She and her writer husband Nate together created the Social Impact Award-winning mentorship program Kasama Collective, as well as Labs Weekender, a self-paced narrative podcasting course. Podcast Magazine named Laura in their Top 22 Influencers in Podcasting for 2022. A writer for more than twenty years, her fiction has been recognized with a Fulbright scholarship, a Poets & Writers Magazine Exchange Award, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and occasional praise from her 3 children who believe that anything is possible with a good book, a cape, and a crown (she doesn't disagree). 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

Walking. So simple, and yet putting one foot in front of the other is one of the most profound things you can do for your creative practice. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with award-winning poet and painter Valencia Robin about how walking has inspired her practice. We bring in science to support what we all know intuitively–moving the body helps open the brain. And Robin (as we call her throughout the podcast) shares poems by contemporary poets and herself, too, that invoke the art of walking. Valencia Robin’s debut poetry collection, Ridiculous Light, is the winner of Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, a finalist for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and was named one of the best poetry books of 2019 by Library Journal. Robin’s other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Emily Clark Balch Award, the Hocking Hills Power of Poetry Prize and fellowships from Cavé Cahnem, the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the University of Virginia, Bennington College and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A poetry instructor as well as a co-director of the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop, Robin has an MFA in Creative Writing from  the University of Virginia and an MFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan, where she also co-founded GalleryDAAS. Also a painter and curator, Robin’s visual work has been exhibited nationally and supported by the King-Chavez-Parks Future Faculty Fellowship and the Center for the Education of Women’s Margaret Towsley Fellowship.Valencia Robin’s websiteStanford study finds walking improves creativityRebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of WalkingRoss Gay, “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian”Ada Limón, “During the Impossible Age of Everyone” Valencia Robin, “After Graduate School” 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

“You wouldn’t yell at a preemie baby,” says poet, lyricist, playwright and teacher Alison Luterman. In this bonus episode, we talk about Alison’s “coaxing” approach for her new work, about patience, self-compassion, starting the morning without screens, the benefits and detriments of having many projects at once, and, of course, the importance of coffee. Alison Luterman's four books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires. Her poems and stories have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, Nimrod, Salon, Prairie Schooner, The Brooklyn Review, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and in numerous other journals and anthologies. She has written an e-book of personal essays (Feral City, originally published through SheWrites.com, now available through audible.com), half a dozen plays including a musical The Chain about a chain of kidney transplant donors and recipients), lyrics for a song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, and is currently working on two different musical theater projects as well as new poems and a longer version of her recently-published essay about learning to sing as an, ahem!, older adult.Previous episodes with Alison: Creative Practice as Political Action and A poem and a song from Alison Luterman 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

Is talent necessary? Is it possible, with devotion, hard work and help and time, to develop a creative practice that doesn’t come to us naturally? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk again with poet, lyricist, playwright and teacher Alison Luterman. As an exuberant young girl who loved to sing, she was told by a choir director to just mouth the words. For decades the wound festered. “It is hard to do the things you’ve been told you’re bad at,” she says. And yet, we talk with her about her essay in The Sun about reclaiming her joy in a creative practice, about meeting creative shame, about how we might encourage (and not shut down) others to explore creative practices, and about some of the hidden gifts in working hard for something that doesn’t come naturally. If you’ve felt shut out of a creative practice, this is the episode to help encourage you to pick up that pen again or sing again or pull out that oboe or put on those tap shoes. Time to play–and see what happens. Alison Luterman's four books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires. Her poems and stories have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, Nimrod, Salon, Prairie Schooner, The Brooklyn Review, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and in numerous other journals and anthologies. She has written an e-book of personal essays (Feral City, originally published through SheWrites.com, now available through audible.com), half a dozen plays including a musical The Chain about a chain of kidney transplant donors and recipients), lyrics for a song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, and is currently working on two different musical theater projects as well as new poems and a longer version of her recently-published essay about learning to sing as an, ahem!, older adult.Previous episodes with Alison: Creative Practice as Political Action and A poem and a song from Alison LutermanOur first episode on talent 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

Ninety-seven percent of people who begin a novel don’t finish it. But what about all the people who finish it and then set it aside? What happens to that novel in a drawer? Well … sometimes it goes to novel heaven and finds a publisher–and we have proof. In this episode we talk to Holiday Mathis (who was our guest in episode 23, The Daily Grind), and she tells us how she wrote her new novel, why she set it aside, why she picked it up again, what she learned from the experience, how the world changed since it was written, and what she would say to that younger self that hid away the project in the drawer. Other possible titles for this episode were “overcoming creative self-consciousness” and “creative seasons.” It’s an episode for all who doubt their work, for all who doubt themselves, and for all who need that little nudge to put themselves and their work out there again. Holiday Mathis writes the daily horoscope for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and hundreds of newspapers around the world. In her decades-long syndication she's published over 8 million words on luck, the stars and the human condition. She's also a multi-platinum selling songwriter with songs recorded by Miley Cyrus, Emma Roberts and more. Holiday is the author of several books including the upcoming How to Fail Epically in Hollywood.  Holiday MathisToday’s horoscopes by HolidayHoliday’s video Ephemera on the transient nature of horoscopesSome of Mathis’s songsChristie’s blog post about Mathis: I Know Astrology is B******t, But I Can’t Stop Reading My HoroscopeHere’s a Holiday horoscope that speaks to today’s topic: 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 does a poem emerge? So many ways to do it right, says Rosemerry. But in this episode, we take an intimate and critical look at one poem, “For When People Ask,” and talk about the genesis of the poem, how it changed and transformed, how the metaphors grew and how people responded to it. We also talk about saving first drafts–or not, trusting the process, leaning into uncertainty, letting our creative process be led by honesty, getting our egos out of the way, and, of course, paradox. **For When People AskI want a word that means   okay and not okay,  a word that meansdevastated and stunned with joy.   I want the word that says  I feel it all all at once.The heart is not like a songbird   singing only one note at a time,  more like a Tuvan throat singerable to sing both a drone   and simultaneously  two or three harmonics high above it—a sound, the Tuvans say,   that gives the impression  of wind swirling among rocks.The heart understands the swirl,   how the churning of opposite feelings  weaves through us like an insistent breezeleads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,   blesses us with paradox  so we might walk more openlyinto this world so rife with devastation,   this world so ripe with joy. 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 we better navigate difficult topics when telling personal stories? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with podcasting host Arielle Duhaime-Ross about their podcast episode “My Cousin Baptized My Dead Relatives Into the Mormon Church” which aired on VICE News Reports. We talk about steps they took to understand the story from different perspectives, how the narrative form emerged, how the process itself helped Arielle to arrive at a difficult peace, and why having a storyteller lay out their personal views when telling a story can build more trust with the audience than the “view from nowhere” approach. Plus we talk about the idea of our creative legacy–after we die, how is our story told? And by whom?Arielle Duhaime-Ross (They/Them) is a correspondent and the host of two podcasts for VICE News: VICE News Reports, a weekly documentary-style news podcast, and A Show About Animals. Arielle was previously the host of Reset, a podcast about technology, science, design and power, from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Before that, Arielle was the first climate change correspondent in American nightly TV news, reporting for HBO’s VICE News Tonight, and a science reporter at Vox Media’s The Verge. They’ve received numerous  awards, including the 2019 Science in Society Journalism Award, the Silver 2019 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award. Arielle has written for Scientific American, Nature Medicine, The Atlantic, and Quartz. Photo of Arielle By James Bareham 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