Creative Discipline in the Land of No Seasons with Jacqueline Suskin, Poet, Author & Educator

LET IT OUT

Katie Dalebout

Fashion & Beauty, Mental Health, Love, Arts, Self-help, Wellness, Katie Dalebout, Health & Fitness, Well Being, True Crime, Self-care, Society & Culture, Personal Growth, Health

4.9 • 826 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2024

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week’s guest, Jacqueline Suskin, is a poet, educator, and the author of eight books, with work featured in publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. Her newest book, A Year in Practice, is a practical guide for using the natural seasons to inform creative rhythms, and how our rhythms are drawn from those of the earth. She now lives in Detroit where she works as a teaching artist with InsideOut Literary Arts, bringing nature poetry into classrooms with her Poem Forest curriculum. She spent many years living in Los Angeles where she began an ongoing project called Poem Store where she composed over forty thousand improvisational poems. In this conversation, we spoke about her transition from living in a place with very slight seasonal difference to a climate where the seasons are clear; how she protects her creative practice by experimenting with what works for her and developing deep discipline to maintain it; the power of saying no; hingeing on the brink of success; committing to finding sources of energy that feel consistent and fulfilling, rather than draining; the intensity of spring; seasonal transitions and more. She even reads a poem.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Every earthly system always blows my mind with its perfection, and the seasons are like that.
0:09.0	You know, the seasons are constantly suggesting, like, when to say no, when to say yes, when to expand, when to contract.
0:16.0	This book is just kind of like me giving everyone that reminder. Let me let it out. Let it out.
0:36.6	Let it out. Hello, good evening. Hello, good evening. It might not be evening.
0:52.3	Where you are, it might be morning. In that case, good morning, good evening. It might not be evening. Where you are, it might be morning.
0:56.0	In that case, good morning, good evening, good night, as they say in the Truman Show.
1:01.0	Perhaps in the hemisphere that you're in, it's winter or soon to be spring.
1:06.0	Might even be, no, I think it's just, I think it's just just the options are one or the other. It's either winter
1:14.7	in one hemisphere or summer in the other, right? Pretty sure. That's how the globe works. Anyway,
1:22.3	this week's guest is Jacqueline Suskin, a poet, an educator, and the author of eight books. She has been featured
1:30.7	everywhere from the New York Times to the Atlantic to the Los Angeles Times, and her newest
1:37.5	book is called A Year in Practice, a Practical Guide for using the natural seasons to inform
1:44.1	creative rhythms.
1:45.0	She's really cool. She now lives in Detroit where she teaches kids in this really incredible
1:55.0	program that brings poetry into classrooms and she has this curriculum called Poem Forest. And we talk about her work doing that
2:04.5	a little bit. She spent many years living in Los Angeles and I actually met her through my friend
2:10.3	Lauren recently and I got to meet her in person at her book event when she was back in town.
2:16.6	And a lot of the questions during her book signing
2:20.6	from people in the audience were asking her about the transition moving from L.A. to Michigan.
2:28.1	And as someone who did the opposite transition of going from living there and growing up there to living in this
2:38.9	place where the variance in weather is so little and seasonality is so little here.
2:47.2	I really got to scratch a niche by talking with her about that difference.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Katie Dalebout, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Katie Dalebout and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.