Check out Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg's essay, "The Invisible Friend of the Page: Writing as a Transformative Practice" at the website for The Spirit of a Woman, which features stories to empower and inspire women, men, all of us! Here's the first paragraph:

When I was a child, I didn’t have any human friends. It wasn’t that I didn’t want friends; I just didn’t understand how to get them. Hard-wired for interior sound from the get-go and growing up in a tumultuous home, I found imaginary friends for each day of the week. Monday was an older sister, reserved and confident. Tuesday had straight blond hair and a penance for dolls. Wednesday and I were thick as thieves, and she understood me best. Thursday was a standoffish brother, Friday a party animal, Saturday a patient and exhausted mother, and Sunday, a distracted father. More at this link!

In an exciting piece of news from the poetry therapy front, TLA Network Council Member Sherry Reiter shares that she has been invited to the 2010 "Conference on Humanities Therapy," sponsored by Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do province, South Korea. 

The conference organizers there are affiliated with The Humanities Therapy Research Institute, which "aims to study wide-ranging theories, methods, and practices to prevent and cure manetal and emotional problems, seeking to improve the quality of life by integrating the curative contents of humanities and its related fields. The goals of Humanities Therapy are to keep one's life happy, recover peace of mind by preventing and curing mental and emotional problems, and help with quality of life."

Congratulations to Sherry and past Power of Words presenter John Fox, who will also be part of this fascinating gathering. We hope to hear more when you return!

For more on the writing life, visit A Wing and a Page, a blog put out by a group of writers in Lawrence, Kansas, including novelist Lucia Orth, free-lance writer Susan Kraus, travel writer Beth Reiber, poets and writers Denise Low and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, author Pam Grout, writer and web developer Mary Howe, and blogger Mary Margaret Simpson. The women write about everything from J.D. Salinger, the courage of Miep Gies, and various book reviews to blogs on publishing, the lows and highs of the writing life and how to keep on keeping on. Between this group of authors, they have over 50 books published and have endured stacks of rejection slips as well as enchanted little triumphs along the way. Visit and share your ideas and ponderings about the writing life.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness in Howard County publishes a Creative Journal twice a year, and has recently released its Spring 2010 issue, which can be found here.  What's more, they are looking for submission for Inkwell for the Fall of 2010.

Submissions should focus on issues related to mental illness and health, such as the trials and triumphs in recovery, stigma, resiliency, acceptance, or relationships issues. We accept work in the form of poetry, prose, and visual art. The deadline for the fall issue is September 15, 2010.

All submissions should be sent via attachment (as a .doc) to vleatherwood@nami.org accompanied by a short biographical statement. Type “Inkwell Submission” in the subject box. Please include: your name, mailing address, day time phone number and email address. Authors will be notified if a submission will be published. Financial compensation is not available

Thanks to Caryn Miriam-Goldberg who offers us this piece from her own blog. 

A few weeks ago, I had the joy of hearing Mary Oliver read, talk about poetry and life, and simply just visit with some of us. I found her to be exactly like her poetry: clear, precise, kind but unwilling to suffer fools, gracious and as excellent at listening as speaking her truths. Thanks to the Hall Center of the University of Kansas for bringing her in. Here’s some of what she said over an evening and the following morning.

* “Don’t be ashamed of anything. Ever.”

* A writer has an obligation not to miss the marvelous things that happen in the world.”

* A perfect day? A little love, a little work, a good meal.”

* “Now is the only time there is.”

* “We can wonder if trees have a language” (when asked about multi-culturalism and after praising what we can learn from people in different cultures).

” We’re in a terrible, terrible [ecological] struggle now because we’re too inventive.”

* “The only thing we can do as individuals is to believe in community, and communities of all sorts, and remember how much we need the stories that are in poems.”

* “It’s the first time I’ve been in Kansas, and it occurred to me that I had to land in Missouri to do it.”

* “I’ve had people tell me that when they read my poems, it brings down their pressure, so I’m as good as a dog.”

* She says she had “two friends while growing up: the forest and books of poets.”

* “As I age, my heart grows younger.”

* “I love the earth so much, and I am so grateful for my single life that it doesn’t scare me that I would give my life back one day. I would give the earth everything.”

* While writing something new, “I wonder if Yeats would have liked it. I’ve been writing everyday for 60 years.”

* “I believe in doing something in your life that is helpful to someone.”

* When asked how to practice being present, “The most important thing is that it takes a lot of time.”

* “We need our worlds. We need our first worlds around us to even grasp the larger world, not to mention the stars.”

* “You can’t just write about how you feel about things without the world being in existence too.”

* “The natural world is our warehouse of language.”

* When asked about visiting her on the Cape, “You’re all welcome to come visit, but you won’t find me.”

* “Writing is my way of praying. Writing is my way of praising.”