Your Heart Knows the Way, with Meredith Heller
Links in this Episode:
Writing by Heart [book]
Write A Poem, Save Your Life [book]
Yuba Witch [book]
Your Heart Knows the Way, with Meredith Heller: Full Transcript
Intro:
Well, hey there, writer. Welcome to the Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas, and this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills, writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them.
Writers who want to spend more time in that flow, state writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community in this crazy roller coaster ride we call the writing Life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm excited today. I have a poet with me, and I don't think I've spoken to enough poets on the podcast, so I'm really excited for this conversation. We're going to be speaking with Meredith Heller.
Meredith is the author of three poetry collections, Song Lines, River Spells, and Yuba Witch. And she has another one coming out in May, 2025 called Caterpillar Girl, and she's also the author of Write a Poem, Save Your Life, and her most recent book, Writing by Heart. So welcome Meredith.
Meredith:
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you, Rhonda.
Rhonda:
So Meredith, tell me how you began writing poetry. Where does it start for you?
Meredith:
Yeah, thank you so much. Well, I have a little bit of a crazy past. I left home when I was about 12, 13 years old and raised myself living in domes that I built along the Potomac River in Maryland. About 20 minutes outside of Washington DC lived in domes. I built, I lived in old barns and I lived in abandoned houses, and I was very alone. I suffered from horrible depression. I had a lot of trauma in my life and I was very confused. I was so young, 12, 13 years old, living by myself.
Rhonda:
That's very young. Yeah, very young.
Meredith:
And all my friends were dying of suicide and drug overdose, and I wasn't far behind them and poetry found me. I'm also a singer-songwriter. I would get the first line of poetry or song in my left ear, like a lifeline, like a work permit that said, stay here, find the words that name the overwhelming feelings of loss and longing and everything in between.
Rhonda:
I love that idea of poetry as a work permit. We've got to come back to that. So you were a teenager when you started writing poetry? Yes. And when did you decide to, I don't even know if this is the right language, but take it seriously and send it out, get it published, seen by other people that kind of sort of going public with it?
Meredith:
It's a great question because I didn't share my writing or my music with anybody for about 20 years. It was my own private refuge. It was how I prayed, and I didn't want anybody in there except me and life force. So it took me about 20 years.
And I think the way I started was I did an open mic with music, voice and guitar. And what I learned when I shared a song, which was, I mean, my hands were shaking, my voice was shaking. If you asked me my name, I would not even have been able to tell you.
People came up to me after I shared the first song or the first couple of times in tears that my words had named for them what they were feeling, but couldn't find the words for that kind of thing. And that's when I realized that it's mine, but it's also bigger than me.
Rhonda:
And when you wrote a book called Write A Poem, Save Your Life, that was kind of dedicated to teens and teachers, really, right? Teens, teachers, writers. But what is it you were hoping to say to teens and teachers with Write a Poem, Save Your Life?
Meredith:
Well Write a Poem, Save Your Life came out of, I was a poet in the schools for 30 years, first in Boulder, Colorado and then in Marin County, California. And so the poems in that book document those kids that I worked with, the teens that I specialized with for over 30 years.
So my message to teens is what I had found for myself as a teen, if you can name it, it becomes something you can work with rather than just this amoebic overwhelm of feeling, which so many of us go through. So find a way to name it, put it on the page, which gives you one degree of separation and becomes like a mirror through which you see yourself more clearly.
And then you can arrange the pieces on the page metaphorically, where do I want to point the compass of my heart in the midst of this storm or this thing I'm going through? And so it gives you a way to tune in more deeply to what's bubbling up in you
Rhonda:
Love that. And that's what…
Meredith:
I was inviting teens into that book. And then the example poems saying, look at these kids went through all this. This is not pretty yellow flower and blue sky. This is deep, gritty poetry from kids who have been through hell and back.
Rhonda:
Right. So poetry as a tool for healing, understanding, and healing.
Meredith:
Yeah, I think that,
Rhonda:
Right? Yeah.
Meredith:
The kind of writing that I'm inviting people to do, this personal, reflective, self-expressive kind of writing where writing becomes a practice of presencing with ourselves. What's bubbling up here right now in my belly, in my heart, and how do I tend to it?
How do I give my attention to what is really here? Give my attention to it with kindness, curiosity, courage, and then write it in a way that it feeds me back with insight and understanding and a way of making room for the wholeness of me.
Rhonda:
Do you make any distinction, Meredith, when you are, you've been in the classroom teaching, I don't know if you've made any distinction between poetry on the page versus spoken poetry, spoken word. Do they feel the same to you? Do they have different rhythms? Do you write more in one than the other? Do you see any distinction at all?
Meredith:
Such a great question. Thank you. Yes. For me, there's a great distinction that when I am, for me, it's more I'll read a poem that I've written. I don't tend to do improvisational poetry, but when I read a poem that I've written or I'm coaching kids, or now I work with women adults to read their pieces, it's about finding the musicality and the rhythm, and there's so many great ways to do this.
I invite people to take the skeleton of a poem and take it for a walk and begin to feel into the rhythm of your own walking and movement and stride and heartbeat and breathing. And that's going to give you your own unique rhythm that is really you. And where this piece comes from, I have so many people who hear me read a piece of mine and they're like, oh, now I get that piece. Whereas when it's just on the page, it's not alive in the same way.
Rhonda:
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So do you have a piece of your own poetry that you could read? And that way we'll get that sense as well?
Meredith:
Sure.
Rhonda:
That would be great.
Meredith:
I would love to. Thank you. I'm going to read from my collection, Yuba Witch.
Rhonda:
Oh, I love the art on the cover.
Meredith:
This is an Australian artist named Arna Barts, and I fell in love with this drawing of hers. It's in a kind of a chalk pastel. The woman with so many colors in her face and a little bit of sadness in her eyes and the open heart at her throat to me spoke so much.
I saw myself in it and had one friend who said, oh, Meredith, you can't put that picture on the cover of your poetry book. It's too sad. And I said, do you have a problem with sadness? Because in my world, sadness is allowed here too. So many of my earlier poems came out of really deep depression and sorrow, and I always say, it was much later that I learned my vocabulary of rapture. I'm going to read to you. Is it okay if it's a little bit long or do you prefer a shorter?
Rhonda:
Yeah, that's fine. I mean, not like 20 minutes, but yeah.
Meredith:
Okay, great. So I'm going to read you a piece. I haven't read this one for a while. It's called Lady J, and it's about a dear friend of mine, Jennifer, who passed in 2010 of pancreatic cancer.
[Please see Meredith’s collection, Yuba Witch, for the text of this poem.]
Rhonda:
Thank you for that, Meredith. So I see what you mean about the rhythm, right? And how you lean into it. Yeah. Can I ask, so your most recent book is Write by Heart. So where did writing by heart come from? What is it that, and what makes it different from Write a Poem, Save Your Life? How do you feel like they have their different trajectory, if you like?
Meredith:
So Writing By Heart, the book that just came out, was born out of the workshops that I've been doing with adult women since the pandemic. So after teaching in the schools for 30 years, specializing in working with teen girls for empowerment and self-expression, when the pandemic hit us, all of my classes in the schools and all of that aliveness that I brought, getting kids up out of their seats and into their imaginations and out their voices, all of that got squished into my laptop screen.
And after a few years of teaching five and six classes a day on Zoom, the kids burned out. I burned out one of the mothers of one, the teen girls that was in my private poetry classes asked if I would do a class for her and a few of her female friends. And I said, I don't know if I know enough to teach adult women. And she said, oh, Meredith, I've been sitting outside my daughter's door for years listening in on the workshops, doing the writing. You definitely know enough.
Rhonda:
Oh, that's great.
Meredith:
And I thought so much for confidentiality, but okay, so I did the first workshop for women with eight women in October of 2020. And we have grown since then. We now have five cohorts. The beauty of Zoom is that we have women from all over the country and a few women from around the world.
So the way that it differs is the content, the depth, the subject matter, the audience, the writers themselves, the place that the poetry comes from. Two things that I think are important is, one, I'm using poetry these days as an umbrella term to hold space for this kind of personal self-reflective, expressive writing that we're doing in a workshop or that you'll do along with writing by heart.
And so all forms of writing are welcome. Poetry, prose, story, mind spill, heart spill, song lyrics, make up your own form. Just write. And all of you is welcome. Your sadness, your depression, your lethargy, your anger, your hot mess, your longing, your beauty, your bravery, your brilliance, your longing, your love, your desire making room for all of you, the wholeness of you.
This is how we heal, being totally honest with ourselves in the writing as a refuge, as a sanctuary, as a place of learning and discovery. Deep communion with self, with deep psyche, with our muse, with our angels if we have them with life force.
Rhonda:
Okay. And so Writing by Heart is on paper what working with you via Zoom in these groups would be otherwise, is it?
Meredith:
Yeah, great way to say that. Yeah.
Rhonda:
Okay, cool. Well, we'll put a link in the show notes so people can find it. And I love the cover for that one too. You've got a gift for great covers with really fabulous art on them.
Meredith:
Thank you.
Rhonda:
So as you know Meredith, this is The Resilient Writers Radio Show, and we are, I'm really interested in what keeps us going as writers. So I wanted to close by asking you, what does it mean to you to be a resilient writer?
Meredith:
Thank you. I love just sitting with that question. It's so evocative to me. Being a resilient writer is willing to show up and not know to show up and make room for the unknown.
Trusting in creative process, trusting that the poem or the peace or the story knows the way that there is a deeper force and intelligence that I become a part of when I'm in the creative process and when I'm writing. And what keeps me coming back to my writing is that I learn things I didn't know I knew, but I do.
Rhonda:
I love that. That's a really interesting way of looking at it, that sort of deep, deep knowing that that is vested in the process. Yeah. Thank you so much.
So we'll put some links so that you can connect with Meredith online, some links in the show notes when they go out. Thanks so much for being with me today, Meredith. I really appreciate it.
Meredith:
Thanks so much for having me.
Outro:
Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoy today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes.
Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers, and that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it, and I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.
