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Matthias J Barker Podcast

the healing power of literature and poetry

Matthias J Barker Podcast

Matthias Barker

Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Christianity, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Education

51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2022

⏱️ 70 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week I'm joined by my co-author of On Grief. The poet William Bortz and I talk about:

  • The difficulty of putting difficult life experiences into words and the healing power of poetry to help us reflect on what's most important to us.
  • William shares his story of becoming a poet, sharing how he conceptualizes putting complex emotion into words
  • How poetry and writing allows us to have more empathy and how both reading and creating poetry expands our understanding


Touching on substance abuse, trauma, grief, and loss, this conversation is all about grounding in love, art, and vulnerability. I hope you enjoy our conversation!

About my guest:

William Bortz (he/him) is an author and a poet from the Midwest. He volunteers for the curation team for Button Poetry and is a poetry reader for Longleaf Review. Bortz is the author of The Grief We’re Given (Central Avenue, 2021). You can find his poems online at Brave Voices, Okay Donkey, Turnpike Magazine, and others. William lives with his wife and their two cats.


>> William's website

>> Book - The Grief We're Given

>> Find our free e-book On Grief here


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to the Matthiaschibarker Podcast, everybody.

0:06.9

Well, hello, I'm glad that you're here.

0:08.5

I'm really excited to introduce you to a good friend of mine.

0:11.6

His name is William Bortz and he's a poet.

0:13.6

You might recognize him from a project that we did last year together called On Grief.

0:18.8

We wrote an e-book. It was a free e-book. You can get that on my website if you want.

0:22.3

Matthiaschibarker.com. You can just download that for free.

0:25.0

And he did the poetry for the book. So the book was just a short,

0:29.2

almost kind of like a long essay, really.

0:32.0

On grief in the process of recovering from grief, really,

0:35.2

like the trails of grief that can lead to further disrepair,

0:39.9

complex grief and maybe some reflections that were meant to help protect from that.

0:46.1

And William came along and really, I don't know, gave the project a lot of soul,

0:50.9

like brought it down to the heart, not just kind of a series of,

0:57.4

of kind of psychological reflections, but really something artful and deep and meaningful.

1:03.5

And I'm so thankful for his collaboration on that project.

1:06.9

It was great to talk to him here, too, because I kind of take the time with William

1:11.4

on this podcast to explore poetry, the utility of poetry and mental health.

1:16.0

We talk about grief. We talk about the process of grief.

1:18.6

And then also kind of creating arts that's meant to help people process pain.

1:24.0

We kind of take a more broad reflection on that front as well.

1:28.3

It's a really meaningful conversation with someone that is so deep and insightful and wise.

...

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