After a deer escapes danger, she shakes her whole body before she goes back to grazing. We humans, poet Wendy Videlock says, tend to “build a monument” to our fear instead. What could we learn if we paid closer attention to the wild?
In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun sits down with Wendy, a poet, painter, and teacher. She lives on Colorado’s Western Slope, where she serves as poet laureate of Western Colorado and writes the syndicated column The Barefoot Laureate. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and O Magazine, among others. In this conversation, she reads from her newest book Desert kin.
Wendy talks about the landscape as “the first temple,” how grief holds mixed emotions, the value of releasing fear, and the writing prompts she gives her creative aging students. This episode is for anyone who wants to meet the world with a little more curiosity and a little less fear.
Key Takeaways:
- Write about what you see and it will tell you what you feel. Describing the outer world often reveals the inner one more honestly than writing about ourselves head-on.
- Change the pronoun and tell it “slant.” Writing about yourself as “she,” “he,” or “they” creates distance and can make room for more imagination and compassion.
- Practice and ceremony, not mastery. The joy is in the process of writing and discovering, with curiosity rather than the outcome.
Resources:
Wendy Videlock’s website: https://wendy-videlock.constantcontactsites.com/
Wendy’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wendy.videlock/
Episode 157 - conversation with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:
Apple:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calming-ground-podcast/id1704337948?i=1000785952537
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4XO0qgL0m7cRhtnNSaTBKG?si=frCx4tZxSDGpLaOVVV2e2Q
For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com
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