Press Release by Pia Lopez A celebration of crime fiction, mystery and thriller with local authors Susan Sink and Jessie Chandler When: 6pm-7:15pm, Thursday, June 22 Where: Minnesota Street Market (back lot)
This event offers an opportunity for local authors to take center stage in a lit fest setting — and for people from the local area to connect with some great local authors they may never have heard of. The program features short readings and dialogue — with authors of different backgrounds to create a varied, rich experience for our community. It also will have live translation in Somali.
Minnesota Street Market in St. Joseph is partnering with poet/writer Tracy Rittmueller, Director of Lyricality to present an intercultural literary conversation in memory of Charles Wm. Preble, Thursday evening June 23, 2022 (rain date, June 30).
LyricaliTea Circles are a thoughtfully designed response to the letter published on April 11, 2021 in the S C Times by 70 local leaders in which they called for people and organizations to “create safe spaces for brave conversations.” Circle Keepers have been trained to create a culture of connection, mindfulness and presence. They share writing practices that silence inner criticism and enable participants to access their creativity, compassion, and wisdom.
Vatsalaa Jha graduated from UW-Madison in 2014, where she studied Art and Honors in the Liberal Arts. She is originally from India. She immigrated to the United States in 2001 with her family. Her art always ends up having flavors of intended concepts, deeper meanings, and perhaps overall truths about herself.
This article interviews James Alberts, who is leading the St Cloud Safe Spaces Conversation Project, to explain why your participation will strengthen your empathy muscle and help create an inclusive, hopeful future for central Minnesota.
On August 26 at the Paramount Center for the Arts Theatre, audience members heard the debut of a new poem. Tracy Rittmueller read this collaborative communal work sponsored in part by Bill and Linda Henrichs and Gate City Bank. This article discusses the history of collaborative communal poetry, the general and specific artistic process that made this commemorative poem, names the collaborators, and shares a dream for preserving this history-making commission.
Now We Will Speak in Flowers by Micki Blenkush does not candy-coat or sentimentalize the nature of human experience. Instead, she boldly explores human vulnerability and themes of connection/disconnection, and how extreme disconnection may lead to extremely altered states of perception. And it is exactly this sense of actuality that fosters the art of empathy.
Hedy Tripp was born and educated in Singapore. A Saint Cloud elder with the Minnesota Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL) and retired professor/lecturer, she came to her identity as a poet late in life, she says, “Because I never had time, earlier, to say, ‘I am a poet.’”
This article explains briefly what empathy is, some general ways people cultivate it, and why poetry fosters the art of empathy.
Coming into conversation with “Face | Off” by Su Hwang, Alison Hendley unearths buried, devastating violence, reminding her of traumatic experiences in her own childhood. In doing this, she reveals the healing power of poetry.
What would make Minnesota nicer? What would make Minnesota authentically nice? How might we create meaningful connections between diverse people? What can we do to strengthen our communities? Life seems
Poetry is not just one thing, and talking about why it matters is akin to talking about why everything matters. poetry matters because living matters. But a lot of people aren’t able to recognize the beauty and consolation and celebration available through poetry because, as poet Mark Conway said, poetry suffers from several problems right now.
Slowly and thoughtfully reading Simple Attendance by Charles Wm. Preble,
I’ve discovered that contemplating these poems is like folding down the hurricane shutters and making myself cozy. Yes, the pandemic-storm is raging, but these poems muffle the howl and minimize breakage.
On a bright morning in early December, 2019, I visited with Mary Willette Hughes at her Waite Park home. We had come together to talk poetry. The living room was pleasantly warm and bright, the house was filled with rainbows cast by the prisms hanging in every window, and my body and soul were flooded with calm. I had crossed a threshold from the busy, demanding world into a place of peace.
Laura Hansen’s recent collection of short-form literature, The Night Journey: Stories and Poems, is an invitation to wander through the realms of legend, myth, dream, memory, and encounter, in search of the heart’s home.
In a conversation with Lyricality Director Tracy Rittmueller, St. Paul Poet Mike Finley discusses the hobby of poetry as a loving encounter with the world outside of oneself.
Abdi Mahad is a poet, editor, and instructor. His wife, Hudda Ibrahim, is an author, founder and president of Filsan Talent Partners and faulty member of SCTCC. In a conversation with Tracy Rittmueller, director of Lyricality. they consider how poetry might heal people and communities.
TJ Larum is a behavior analyst who works in Waite Park, Minnesota, providing therapy for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, mostly 4 and 5 year olds. He is also a drummer and a songwriter, striving to create a culture in central Minnesota where everyone feels connected to their creativity, either as a maker of a creative product, or an appreciator of what is made in their community.
Karl Johnson is a regular performer in the central Minnesota spoken word community, where poetry been helping him speak his truth and tell his story.
Mara Faulkner is a poet, literature and writing instructor, and author of the book Going Blind: A Memoir. In her essay “Memoir’s Arrogant I/Eye and How to Teach It Humility,” Mara Faulkner questions the purpose of writing and publishing contemporary memoir.
Brendan D. King brings his knowledge of poetic forms together with his understanding of history, culture, and several languages, to access the ancient power of incantatory language. He is a man with a far-reaching, wide-ranging mind, who brings honed passion to his poetry.
Juliana Howard is a songwriter and poet living living in St. Joseph, MN. Her poetry practice and her spiritual practices (which often overlap) are helping her face the vulnerabilities created by aging, a process she refers to as unraveling and undoing.
Bill Meissner talks with Lyricality’s Tracy Rittmueller about his latest book, The Mapmaker’s Dream, and the ways poetry connects us.
For Adam Hammer, songwriting is necessary because he simply cannot not do it. Although his recently released single “The Love You Take” is finding significant airplay on Minnesota’s public and independent radio stations, and that’s exhilarating, of course, success or popularity is not what drives him to write. “Songwriting is just something I can’t seem to put down,” he said.
There’s a truth out there, a reality that wants to be expressed.Delores Dufner, OSB “The soul wants heart knowledge, a felt sense of the truth that we register not just