The Power of Words:
 A Transformative Language Arts Reader  

edited by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg & Janet Tallman

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION

 “The Emergence of Transformative Language Arts: A New Field of Interdisciplinary Studies” – Dr. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg explores the emergence of TLA as a new field drawing on the spoken and written word, and speaking to social change and personal insight.

 TRANSFORMATIVE LANGUAGE ARTS: A FIELD COMING INTO VIEW

 Essays in this section explore various expressions of TLA through modalities and approaches, including journal therapy, storytelling, poetry therapy, narrative therapy, drama, memoir and writing, and songwriting.

 “The Gate to Heaven: Storytelling and Social Change” – Dr. Caren Neile, MFA, PhD looks at how storytelling can provide important entries into social change issues that arise in particular communities.

 “Emotional Disclosure, Writing, and Healing: Key Considerations” – Dr. Francis Charet investigates the work of key theorists in the areas of emotional disclosure and writing, plus overviews how these theorists come out of an old tradition in the field of psychology. 

 “Poetry as Therapy” – Dr. Perie Longo defines and elaborates upon the potential for poetry therapy.

 “Memoir: An Academic, Democratic, Political and Liberating Framework” – Shelley Vermilya, Ed.P. investigates how using memoir as an educational tool in graduate study can lead to enhanced learning.

 “Giving Voice to Art & Imagination: A Method of Transformational Inquiry” – Shaun McNiff, Ph.D. looks at the purpose of speaking from imagination, drawing from Jungian perspectives and practical tools for opening the channels of such speech.

 “Creating Community through Storytelling: An Act of Approach” – Christopher Maier tells stories of how community can be brought together through specific storytelling approaches.

 “ ‘TLA as a Great Bridge and More Than a Bridge’: An Interview with Allison Adelle Hedge Coke” – Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg interviews this Native American storyteller, writer, mentor and teacher on how language can bring us together across culture.

 “Waking Our Senses: Language and the Ecology of Sensory Experience” – David Abram delves into the sensory aspects of language that can help us connect more deeply with the living earth and our own senses.

WORLDS OF WORDS: REALMS OF TRANSFORMATIVE LANGAUGE ARTS

 This section explores how TLA can be applied to various populations and situations as well as how TLA can be used a tool for deeper engagement with mythology, spiritual growth, emotional healing, embodiment, ecological awareness, and multiculturalism.

“The Long Road Home: 20^th Century American Transformative Language Arts” by Janet Tallman, Ph.D., traces the emergence of wider political movements for liberation in 20^th century America, and the more private voices of people on the margins through the lens of TLA.

 “The Power of Writing to Heal: The Amherst Writers and Artists Method” -- Dr. Sharon Bray tells her story of discovering the Amherst Writers and Artists method, and how this methodology can be effective for various populations.

 “Creative and Expressive Writing as a Coaching Process” – Yvette Hyater-Adams, MA-TLA elaborates upon how TLA can be introduced to the business community, and other populations, through the coaching model.

 “Healing Stories, Healing Songs: Native American Traditions” – Dr. Denise Low studies how native American communities use storytelling to preserve sense of place and sense of community.

 “Venus in Southern Africa:  From the Inside Out -- Performance, Gender and Self-Esteem” – Katt Lissard tells the story of putting on a play about charged social issues of the past in present-day Soweto, Africa, and how this process helped strengthen community and identity.

 “Finding Life-Giving Words in the Life-Shattering World of Cancer” – Nancy Morgan on some of the most pertinent findings of writing for health and healing can be to investigate how they can best be applied to people with cancer.

 “ ‘No Longer a Child, But Not Yet an Adult’: Dramatherapy as Effective Intervention for Adolescents” – Mandy Carr examines dramatherapy as a venue for helping at-risk youth in London find their voices.

 “Three Candles of Hilda Stern Cohen’s Story: An Interview with Gail Rosen” – Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg interviews the founder of the Healing Story Alliance of the National Storytelling Network on her stories about a Holocaust survivor, which Rosen presented in Germany and Israel.

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD THROUGH TRANSFORMATIVE LANGUAGE ARTS

 Essays below elaborate upon the ethical dimensions and right livelihood implications involved in bringing TLA into a community and personal practice.

 “Asking Ethical Questions: A TLA Ethics of Conscious, Connected and Creative Action” – Dr. James Sparrell navigates through the ethical issues that can and do arise when facilitating what is often a healing process outside the realm of licensed counseling.

 “Fine Lines Every Writer Must Ask” – Karen Campbell and Jeanne Hewell Chambers investigate the ethics of writing about real life.

 “The Good Ambush: A Two-Voice Essay on Identity, Experience and Storymaking” –Karen Campbell and Patricia Fontaine looks at what it means to create and hold an atmosphere of safety for dealing with visible and invisible differences between workshop participants so that TLA can be used to explore underlying oppressive cultural norms.

 “Restorative Justice Through Storymaking” – Lana Leonard shares her experience of restoring justice for victims and victimizers through guided storytelling.

 “ ‘It Unfolds Before Whoever Walks It’: Seeking Right Livelihood Through TLA” – Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg writes about various aspects of making a living while serving one’s community in an ethical and life-enhancing way, including elaboration on workshop design, promotion, marketing, assessment, finances, and philosophy.

 “On Starting a Writing Workshop” – Irene Borger offers this guide on facilitating workshops, along with excellent questions to think about regarding the motivation to offer workshops, for both the new and experienced facilitator.

SNAPSHOTS: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF TLA

 This section features vignettes, each focused on a moment of TLA in action.  The essays below, all between one and five pages, cover a variety of writing, storytelling, drama and other expressions of TLA with various populations.  (All vignettes are included.)

 “You Are Already a Writer” – Pat Schnieder, founder of Amherst Writers and Artists, affirms the writer within us.

 “The Wonder of Paradox” – Nancy Shapiro tells of the moment she found writing could transform her life.

 “You Don’t Want to Be a Member,” Carol Henderson reflects on writing through the loss of her son and facilitating writing workshops for other mothers who have lost children.

 “Losing Control and Finding Voice” – Rhonda Patzia, MA-TLA writes about helping others with M.S. write about the dark and sometimes surprisingly funny sides of living with serious illness.

 “First-Time Facilitating Writing with Teens: Hormones, Moods, and Food” – Becci Goodall writes of her first time leading a teen writing group.

 “Battle Pay: Storytelling on a Dime” – Jackson Gillman unfolds a storytelling experience that broke all his rules to show him something new.

 “A National Treasure Hidden in Vermont: A Tribute to Bread and Puppet” – Katherine Towler writes of the famed Bread and Puppet theatre troupe that mixes whimsy, political protest and home-made bread.

 “Bearing Witness to Death, Life and Everything In Between as a Personal Historian” – Jeanne Hewell Chambers looks at the role of personal historians in helping people tell their stories.

 “Making Journals, Making Lives” – Nina Ricker shares her work in helping teens create illustrated journals.

 “God Behind Bars: Facilitating a Men’s Spiritual Writing Group at a State Hospital” –  Scott Youmans tells of facilitating a spiritual poetry group for incarcerated men in a state hospital.

 “More Than Just Our Stories” – Pam Roberts writes of facilitating cancer writing groups.

“Pervasive Caretaking Irony” – Deborah Harris, MA-TLA explores how being writing can help women recovering from pervasive caregiving.

 “A Legacy of Meaning: Writing with Elders” – Anna Viadero tells her story of facilitating writing groups for the elderly.

 “The Surprise of Endings: TLA in a Cancer Writing Group” – Linda Garrett writes of writing while living with terminal illness. 

 EPILOGUE

 “The Art of Self-Care in TLA” – Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg discusses how to facilitate a sustainable right livelihood for TLA facilitators, coaches and consultants.

Contributors

 David Abram, Ph.D. is the author of Spell of the Sensuous, winner of the 1997 Lannan Award for non-fiction, and the author of numerous articles and interviews. A magician, philosopher, writer, father, and bioregionalism, Abram has been cited by Utne Magazine as one of the most visionary people to watch. He is currently at work on another book exploring our animal nature. He makes his home in Santa Fe.

Dr. Sharon Bray is the author of A Healing Journey:  Writing Together Through Breast Cancer.  A new book, When Words Heal, will be available in 2006.  She is also an adjunct faculty member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.  She holds a doctorate in Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto and studied transformative language arts and creative at the Humber School for Writers, University of Washington Writers’ Program and Goddard College.

Irene Borger founded the Writing Program at APLA, the nation's second largest AIDS service agency, and served as artist-in-residence there for ten years. Editor of From a Burning House and The Force of Curiosity, Borger, a former UC Riverside faculty member, teaches at wellness institutes throughout the country. A longtime meditation student, she is working on a book on listening.  She serves as director of the Alpert Award in the Arts.

Karen Campbell, MA has much experience facilitating drama & art workshops with various groups inJapan (where she resided for over two decades) and for the ARC of Arkansas (supporting adults with developmental disabilities), including their annual performing arts camp. She is on the faculty for the Individualized BA Program and the Individualized MA Program at Goddard College, where she specializes in colonial/postcolonial cultural studies, translation studies, gender issues and sexual politics and, more recently, the struggle to create and present authentic research through autoethnography/scholarly personal narrative, and what she would like to call embodied research. www.goddard.edu
 
Mandy Carr is a state registered dramatherapy, supervisor of arts therapists, and teacher who has set up dramatherapy in four schools.  An elected member of the executive of the British Association of Dramatherapists for four years, she currently convenes its Equal Opportunity Subcommittee.

Francis X. Charet, Ph.D. has a background in psychology and religion with a particular focus on Jungian Psychology. He has taught at a number of universities as well as lectured before various Jungian groups and at the Jung Institutes in Zurich and in New York. He is a faculty member in the BA and MA programs at Goddard College and is the Coordinator of the Consciousness Studies Concentration there.

Jeanne H. Chambers, MA-TLA, is the CEO (Cavorting Evolutionary One) of herowntrueself, be that her professional self or her personal self. On any given day, whether she’s writing, acting, or stitching, Jeanne has about as much fun as she can standplowing her life to expose (in no particular order) twisted roots, rutilant rocks, and downright sumptuous relics.

 Patricia Fontaine, MCAP, MA-TLA has been teaching about difference for 20 years. She is a published poet, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Vermont, and a breast cancer survivor. She is in the process of earning a Master’s degree in Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College and making quiet mischief next to Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vermont.

 Linda Garrett is a photographer and writer who has participated in many cancer writing workshops. She is currently writing about her experiences living with terminal cancer.

Jackson Gillman, who refers to himself as the “stand-up chameleon,” has performed as a storyteller at schools, retirement homes, prisons, treatment centers, and other venues.  He was an artist-in-residence at the International Storytelling Center, and was featured several times at the National Storytelling Network festival.

Greg Greenway has performed throughout the U.S., including at Carnegie Hall in the New York Singer/Songwriter Festival which was rebroadcast on NPR's World Cafe, an appearance on nationally syndicated Mountain Stage, and a show at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honoring Phil Ochs. In August of 2000, Greenway was seen world wide on CNN's World Beat in a segment on socially conscious artists. He was filmed at the Clearwater Hudson River Revival Festival performing along with Folk legend Pete Seeger and others. Greenway was recently featured on the weekend edition of NPR's All Things Considered. Greenway now has five critically acclaimed solo releases: A Road Worth Walking Down (nominated for two Boston Music Awards), Singing For the Landlord (top five CDs for 1995 on the Internet Folk DJ list), Mussolini's Head (1998), Something Worth Doing (2001), and most recently, Greg Greenway: Live (2003).

Deborah Harris, MA-TLA is a Goddard graduate and an adjunct faculty member of Hartnell Community College in Salinas, California. She focuses on English language development and literacy for Latino students, emphasizing language as a tool for life enhancement. She reads poetry to her students and requires journals each semester.

Allison Adele Hedge Coke, MFA is Huron; Eastern Tsalagi; French Canadian; Portuguese. She grew up in North Carolina, Canada, and on the Great Plains. Her books include: Blood Run (poetry, Salt Publishing); Off-Season City Pipe (poetry, CoffeeHouse Press); Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer (memoir, University of Nebraska Bison Books); Dog Road Woman (poetry, Coffee House Press, winner of the American Book Award); From the Fields (editor, California Poets in the Schools); They Wanted Children and Coming to Life (editor, Sioux Falls School District Press); Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry/To Topos International Journal (guest editor, Oregon State University), and four other collections. She performs readings, workshops, seminars, talks, and she has created and organized many transformative language arts programs for many populations. She serves as professor of writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is also an accomplished artist who has shown her work throughout the U.S. www.hedgecoke.net and www.hedgecoke.org

Carol Henderson is a writer and writing teacher, and also author of Surviving Malcolm: A Mother’s Journey Through Grief.  Her articles and personal essays appear regularly in many regional and national publications.  She regularly facilitates workshops for parents living through the loss of a child.

Yvette A. Hyater-Adams, MA-TLA is a poet, essayist and transformative language arts practitioner.  She works with people to express themselves in words to help care for emotional wellness, personal growth, and creative voice. Her research and narrative practice focuses on the needs of women, with emphasis on African American women. The core of her work for 20 years has been developing innovative methods to support personal and organizational change.  She can be reached at www.renaissancemuse.com

 Kelley Hunt is a rhythm and blues singer who has three cds to her credit, including the recent award-winning New Shade of Blue. She regularly tours the U.S. and Canada with her band, performing at blues and jazz festivals, on television and radio shows, and at concerts in a variety of venues.  She has been featured six times on National Public Radio’s “Prairie Home Campanion” as well as on “Austin City Limits.”  She also regularly leads workshops on jazz piano, songwriting, and singing. www.kelleyhunt.com

 Lana Leonard, MA is program director of Sedona’s first restorative justice program, the Sedona-Oak Creek Restorative Justice Partnership (SORJ). She and Dr. Beverly Title co-founded the private, not-for-profit agency Teaching Peace; helped create and develop the Longmont community Justice Partnership in Longmont, Colo.; and co-authored Victim or Hero? Writing Your Own Life Story and Civility Rules as well as Restorative Justice in Action, an implementation manual for community-based, restorative justice programs. With her husband Tracy, Leonard lives in Sedona, Ariz., where she also has served as youth commissioner and “Artist in the Classroom.”

 Katt Lissard, MFA is a playwright, activist and teacher.  She is currently working to create a theatre institute in Southern Africa (where she spent 8 months on a Fulbright), bringing together participants from the U.S., U.K., South Africa and Lesotho.  Most recent U.S.-based project:  Co-produced The Republic in Ruins, a performance/installation piece staged to coincide with/counter-act the Republican National Convention in New York City.  

 Perie Longo, Ph.D., is President of the National Association for Poetry therapy, a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice, a Registered Poetry Therapist and Mentor/Supervisor for those in training. She directs the poetry therapy program at Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers of Santa Barbara and is an adjunct instructor for poetry therapy at Antioch University.  She is the author of several volumes of poetry.

 Denise Low, Ph.D., is a professor at Haskell Indian Nations University where she has served as chair of the Humanities Dept.  She is author of over a dozen books, including many volumes of poetry, a biography of Langston Hughes, a collection of personal ecological essays, and several anthologies, including a celebration of the work of Leslie Marmo Silko.  Her awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Kansas Arts Commission Fellowship in poetry, and numerous poetry prizes.

Christopher Maier is a playwright and story-maker with studies in psychology, spirituality, and systems theory who specializes in creating and telling healing stories. He holds a M.A. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, doctoral research in Performance Studies at University of Texas, and another M.A. in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder. His unique approach to re-visioning life stories has been presented in trainings for staffs of drug and alcohol-abuse, hospice and suicide-intervention programs, and storyteller conferences around the U.S.

 Shaun McNiff, Ph.D., is an artist, author, and internationally recognized figure in the creative arts therapies. Dr. McNiff serves as Provost and Dean of Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, and is the president-elect of the American Art Therapy Association. He is the founder of many graduate programs across the country, and teaches extensively in Switzerland and Israel. Dr. McNiff is the author of many books, including Art As Medicine, Depth Psychology of Art, and Trust the Process.

Deidre McCalla is an award-winning singer-songwriter with singer, songwriter, modern-day troubadour and preeminent performer in both folk and women’s music circles, having performed with notables such as Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Odetta, Cris Williamson, and Sweet Honey In the Rock. An African-American lesbian feminist with five albums to her credit, Deidre’s words and music traverse the inner and outer landscapes of our lives, chronicling our strengths and weaknesses and celebrating the power and diversity of the human spirit. www.deidremccalla.com

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D. is founder and coordinate of the Transformative Language Arts concentration at Goddard College where she teaches. She is author of five books, including three volumes of poetry – Animals in the House, Reading the Body and Lot’s Wife – and the award-winning Write Where You Are.  She facilitates writing workshops for many populations, including the cancer community, women in low-income housing, and adults in transitions.  She also co-writes songs with rhythm and blues singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt, with whom she co-facilitates Brave Voice writing and singing workshops and retreats.  See www.writewhereyouare.org, www.bravevoice.com, and www.goddard.edu.

Nancy Morgan has a Masters in Transformative Language Arts, and is the Director of the Arts and Humanities Program at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. She is the writing clinician for weekly expressive writing sessions for patients and caregivers at Lombardi.

Caren Schnur Neile, MFA, Ph.D., is founding director of the South Florida Storytelling Project in the Department of Communication at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Neile is the managing editor of Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies and a recipient of a 2005 Oracle Award from the National Storytelling Network for leadership and service in the Southeast.

Rebecca Noblit-Goodall, MA-TLA, is a writer and facilitator of TLA primarily for children and teens. She received her MA in TLA, and she has published several works of fiction in print and on line.

Rhonda Patzia, MA-TLA, facilitates TLA workshops primarily for women with m.s. A writer and professional photographer, her work has appeared in such publications as The Sun, and she has had numerous gallery shows. She received her MA in TLA from Goddard College.

Pamela Roberts is a writer, artist and healer who leads writing workshops for people touched by cancer, loss or addiction. Pam found writing to be an important part of her healing process when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993. Her course of recovery led her to end her 20-year career as partner in a television production company and become an ordained graduate of the IM School of Healing Arts, NYC. She has two children and lives in western Massachusetts.

 Gail Rosen is a consultant, educator, storyteller, writer, bereavement facilitator and hospice volunteer. Her work serves people in grief support groups and retreats, staff and volunteer trainings, memorial services, and workshops. She has presented at conferences including the Association for Death Education and Counseling, Compassionate Friends, the National Conference on Loss and Transition, and the World Bereavement Conference. Her story tapes include Listening After the Music Stops: Stories of Loss and Comfort and Darkness and Dawn: One Woman’s Mythology of Loss and Healing. With Kathy McGregor, she presents “Healing the Healer,” a burnout prevention workshop for hospice staff. Gail founded the Healing Story Alliance (www.healingstory.org), a Special Interest Group of the National Storytelling Network. Please see www.gailrosen.com and www.hildastory.com.

 Nancy Shapiro is presently in the training program for certification as a poetry therapist, and she has published articles on wellness and the arts in many international magazines.  After personally experiencing the healing power of poetry, she created a workshop called Found Words.  Fascinated by the mysteries of this world, she continues to use poetry and prose as guides toward insight and innovation. 

 Pat Schneider is the founder/Director Emeritus of Amherst Writers and Artists, a poet and author of nine books including Writing Alone & With Others (Oxford University Press), Wake Up Laughing: A Spiritual Autobiography, and five volumes of poems. Pat Schneider’s libretti have been performed and recorded at Tanglewood and in Carnegie Hall by Robert Shaw & the Atlanta Symphony. Her work has been featured on NPR, on National Public Television, and four times on Garrison Keillor’s “Writers Almanac.” Pat is an adjunct faculty member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Her new book is Another River: New and Selected Poems (Amherst Writers & Artists Press). www.patschneider.com 

Jim Sparrell, Ph.D has a doctorate in clinical/community psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He sees his work in clinical psychology as helping people to tell their stories, and to tell them in new ways, with new metaphors, new words, and sometimes, new characters. He completed an internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, worked at an inner community mental health center in East Boston, and currently works with children and their families at a local school district and is in private practice. As a former contributing editor of  Mars Hill Review, he has written and edited personal essays and critical reviews of music, literature, religion, and contemporary culture. 

Janet Tallman, Ph.D., M.L.I.S. is director of the BA Completion Program at Antioch University in Seattle, WA. She previously taught at several alternative education institutions, including John F. Kennedy University, New College of California, and Hampshire College. Her publications and presentations include dozens of articles on adult learning, ethnographic novels, language and consciousness, ethnolinguistics, right livelihood, conversational styles, children’s literature, feminism, and anthropology at home. She’s done anthropological fieldwork in North America, Japan, and Yugoslavia. Her current interest is in the relationship between the writer and the anthropologist.

Katherine Towler, MFA, is author of the novels Snow Island and Evening Ferry. She teaches in the low residency MFA program in writing at Southern New Hampshire University and has received fellowships from the NH State Council on the Arts, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Shelley Vermilya, Ed.D. serves on the faculty of Goddard College and the University of Vermont, bringing progressive and traditional pedagogy into emancipatory praxis. She insists on passionate and persistent inquiry regarding power, race, class, ableism, gender, sexual identity and culture, and her writing has focused on identity development and pedagogy in these contexts. Her constant curiosity is to understand the complexities of prejudice and oppression, and resistance to liberation from these things. This curiosity informs and is informed by her two children, her lover and her gardens.

Anna Viadero is a writer who has been teaching memoir writing to seniors since 1998. She collects their stories and publishes a yearly collection called “Local Color” every June. The first five years of Local Color were collected by Haley’s Publishing and published as “Local Color: The First Five Years.” It is available on amazon.com or through Anna Viadero at writefromlife@yahoo.com.

Scott Youmans, MA-TLA, facilitates writing workshops for men at festivals, conferences, treatment centers and hospitals as well as workshops for adults on myth and writing.  A website designer and business man, Youmans also consults with TLA facilitators designing websites and other projects.