My Writing: Essays, Poems,
Podcasts & Videos
Featured Essays & Interviews:
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Yes Magazine — “Love Leads Into Mystery: The Heartbreak and Hope of Raising a Child With Asperger’s”
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SheWrites: Caryn has a bunch of articles about the writing life here, including writing real people, book tours, finishing and starting a book, and cultivating your practice and imagination.
Featured Poems:
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"Things Angels Might Do" in Minyan Magazine (nominated for Best of the Net)
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Three Poems in Wilderness House Literary Review
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“What the Sky is Made Of” and “You Rise Up to Meet the Falling World” in Terrain Magazine
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"True Love" and "We Live in Light" in Half and One Magazine
Featured Songs, Podcasts & Videos:
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Listen to Kelley Hunt performing “You’ve Got To Be the Vessel,” co-written with Caryn. Songs co-written by Kelley Hunt & Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg,: Kelley performing “Land of Milk & Honey,” “Too Much History,” “Love,” and “These Are the Days.“
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Caryn has been featured on KPR Presents several times for her poetry, collaboratives with Kelley Hunt, and other books. You can access programs here.
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New Letters on the Air Interviews and Interviews on KCUR Radio
Reviews
“Caryn Miriam Goldberg gives voice to what can’t be put into words, she sets us free of old paradigms, she writes like a dream.” ~ Julia Alvarez, author, In the Time of the Butterflies
“Caryn’s poems are silver threads that weave through the darkening sky and gates and light unspooling from the heart’s loom a dream of joy and ancestral echoes.” ~ Jimmy Santiago Baca, author, A Place to Stand
“Many thanks to Caryn for these beautiful lessons in living, really living from a poet laureate who reminds you of your best friend. It’s wonderful to feel so deeply inspired by a world that feels so deeply familiar.” ~ Dar Williams, Singer-songwriter
“How any of us weather the darkening climate of these times is a wonder; it is such poetry as this that help us breathe.” ~ David Abram, author, The Spell of the Sensuous
Please see Books for my books of poetry, fiction, memoir & anthologies
Your Writing: Learning From the Page
Poet William Stafford tells us, “Every person, if pitched right, meets things with a song – a just right resonance.” I believe so much that we learn how to write by writing, and as Annie Dillard says, by aiming into what calls us to write:
Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know. The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength; that page will teach you to write. There is another way of saying this. Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block. ~ Annie Dilliard, The Writing Life
Get Started, Keep Going,
and Begin Again
Here’s some tips to get and keep going:
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Remember that writing is a practice more than a talent or lightning bolt. The more you show up to meet your words, the more your words meet you.
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Pick a regular time and place to write — it can be 10 minutes when you wake up or before bed, an hour each Thursday afternoon, or whatever else works for you. Having a regular place to write, even if it’s just a chair in your house or on your porch, will help reinforce the writing.
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Aim for short stretches. You can write a lot in 10 or 15 minutes, even if you’re not particularly inspired at the moment. Or aim for a certain length, such as writing two sentences or filling half a page every three days.
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Make writing dates with others. Meet at a home, coffee shop, restaurant, park, favorite bluff or wherever else suits you. You can each bring one writing exercise to try out together or just work on current projects.
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Create your own writing circle that meets weekly or monthly to write together. Find writing prompts in books (see next bullet point) or have members bring in prompts, drop them in a bowl or hat, pull one out, then write like crazy for 10-20 minutes.
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You can find lots of writing resources at the Transformative Language Arts Resource Page. Look under “expressive and creative writing” for great books. My favorites are Deena Metzger’s Writing From Your Life, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and John Lee’s Writing From the Body.
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Keeping a running list in your journal or in your computer of writing ideas and starter phrases or paragraphs. You can list all your firsts (first kiss, first car, first home, first job), lasts (last house, last love, last miracle), moments of beauty or sweetness, who and what you love most in this life, amazements you’ve seen or catalyzed, great kindnesses, things you’ve lost or released, most precious belongings (material or otherwise), and moments of folly that turned out well.
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Consider taking a writing workshop in-person or online. You can find great online sources at two places where I regularly offer workshops along with other writers: the Transformative Langauge Arts Network and LIghthouse Writers.
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If you stop for a while, start again. Put any guilt or shame on the shelf, and meet yourself through your words. The page is always waiting for you.
