How was The Good Listening Project created?
I started the initial organization, Poets In Residence, to expand the work that I was doing as a side project at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital. It had started as an art project, writing poems for strangers on the street in Washington, D.C. However, I’d learned quickly that the real gift I was giving people was not the poem, it was the feeling of being heard.
When I met Kay McKean, she helped me articulate that the real foundation of the organization was the culture of listening we were building. She and I created The Good Listening Project together.
About how many poems have you written for people?
Many hundreds.
What’s your writing process like?
I look for a hook in what the person said in our conversation. Maybe it’s a line they said, maybe it’s a feeling they described. I try to pound out the first line instinctively, then build around it. It’s common for me to rearrange the order of lines (and stanzas, if there are multiple). I probably spend too much time retyping to correct typos. I’m pretty sure nobody else minds them, so I’m working on not wasting so muhc time on them (see what I did there?).
What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
Maya Angelou’s advice has been a real lighthouse for me, though I’m far from perfect at following it: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
What’s your favorite poem that someone else has written?
I have a special place in my heart for one of the first poems we did at a hospital. Listener Poet Elle Klassen wrote it for a person who worked in dementia care, and who struggled with the frequent loss of people she’d bonded with. It ends, “and when others talk about the phoenix they forget to say that each time she rises she is stronger.” Damn. Such an inspiring line.
What’s your favorite poem that you’ve written?
The one I’ve reread the most is “This Isn’t Like That,” written for an attendee at the International Integrative Nursing Symposium. It was such a powerful experience that the person shared, and the poem I wrote brings tears to my eyes. Maybe that’s a humblebrag, but I spent a lot of time writing it and it really, really moves me.
What makes you laugh out loud?
My wife. Memes about emus and classical art. Four-year-olds.
