Mindful Poetry Moments Returns for National Poetry Month with Free Offerings

For Immediate Release

Contact: Rowe Schnure (they/them),
Associate Director, The Well
rowe@thewell.world
513-965-1741

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Mindful Poetry Moments Returns for National Poetry Month with Free Offerings

This April, The Well and The On Being Project collaborate for the fourth year to bring Mindful Poetry Moments to schools, individuals, and social service organizations for free during National Poetry Month and beyond. Each week in April, participants will be offered recordings of poems selected from The On Being Project’s Poetry Unbound podcast, read by host Pádraig Ó Tuama and additional poems, read by the poets themselves. 

Mindful Poetry 2022 selections include poems by Alberto Ríos, Roshni Goyate, Brad Aaron Modlin, and Manuel Iris. Each week includes 5 days of audio resources that combine mindful prompts and meaning-making questions such as, “As you listen today, notice what you are curious about in the poem itself. What question comes up for you?” or “How does the poem make you feel? Where in your body do you sense that emotion?”

Mindful Poetry Moments content is free to all schools, individuals, and social service organizations thanks to The On Being Project. All of the content is available in an easy-to-use web app.

The Well and The On Being Project are also excited to offer weekly virtual gatherings for all ages to listen, contemplate, and respond to that week’s poem. This year The Well also adds a LGTBQIA+ focused event called “Poetics of Pride,” hosted at The Mercantile Library. Each gathering will begin with a Mindful Moment, followed by a reflection on the poem and prompts for creative response, facilitated by a different poet in each session. These gatherings are supported by The Hive, The Mercantile Library, and WordPlay.

Participants in last year’s virtual gatherings wrote poems that were included in a Mindful Poetry book. The On Being Project and The Well will publish a third edition out of poems written in this year’s gatherings and school program.

Events:

Wednesday, April 6th, 3 pm EST via Zoom
“December in the Desert” by Alberto Ríos
Spring Pillow and Audrey Symon,a WordPlay student, poem discussion and prompt
Amy Tuttle, opening meditation
Register for free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mindful-poetry-april-6th-gathering-tickets-266388183227

Wednesday, April 13th, 3 pm EST via Zoom
“Coconut Oil” by Roshni Goyate
Roshni Goyate, poem discussion and prompt
Sonya Verma, opening meditation
Register for free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mindful-poetry-april-13th-gathering-tickets-266391372767

Wednesday, April 20th, 3 pm EST via Zoom
“On the Last Day of the Semester, the Library Is So Crowded with Raucous Historical and Literary Figures It’s Hard to Tell People Apart” by Brad Aaron Modlin
Brad Aaron Modlin, poem discussion and prompt
Rana Dotson, opening meditation
Register for free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mindful-poetry-april-20th-gathering-tickets-266396939417

Thursday, April 21st 6-7:30 pm EST at The Mercantile Library (Hybrid)
“Poetics of Pride”
Hannah Simon-Goldman, poem discussion and prompt
Jennifer Howd, opening meditation
Register for free: https://mercantilelibrary.com/calendar/poetics-of-pride/

Wednesday, April 27th, 3 pm EST via Zoom
“Miracle” by Manuel Iris
Manuel Iris, poem discussion and prompt
Stacy Sims, opening meditation
Register for free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mindful-poetry-april-27th-gathering-tickets-266398804997


About The Well and The On Being Project

The On Being Project

The On Being Project is a media and public life initiative. Our mission is to pursue deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy, to renew inner life, outer life, and life together. We make a public radio show, podcasts, and tools for the art of living. Six grounding virtues guide everything we do. We explore the intersection of spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, community, poetry, and the arts.

Poetry Unbound from The On Being Project

Your new ritual: Immerse yourself in a single poem, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Short and unhurried; contemplative and energizing. Anchor your week by listening to the everyday poetry of your life, with new episodes on Monday and Friday during the season.

The Well

The Well holds space for personal, relational and public healing combining mindfulness and embodiment practices with music, poetry, movement and more. Its signature program is Mindful Music Moments where students, teachers and administrators -- take time each morning to turn inward together, listen to a brief mindfulness prompt, classical music and/or poetry. That's Mindful Music Moments, now in 265+ K-12 schools, camps and social service organizations daily and climbing, touching more than 85,000+ students in a calming and focusing ritual.

The Well collaborates with world-class organizations including The Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Cincinnati Opera, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Musica Sierra, Pittsburgh Musician Cares Fund, San Diego Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and The On Being Project to bring daily mindfulness and arts to schools and community places, generally delivered during announcements. The Well is nourished by the non-profit organization, A Mindful Moment.

Facilitator Bios: 

Spring Pillow graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a degree in Musical Theatre Performance and holds masters credits from The University of Cincinnati in Education and Counseling. Through WordPlay, Spring has had the pleasure of working in several CPS schools with the Journey program, Readers Theater, Poet Tree, Project Connect and working with ESL students in multi-genre creative writing programs. Spring also leads Aiken's 7th and 8th grade Writing Lab. Her work with WordPlay has been diverse and wonderful! It is fulfilling in a way that fills her soul, knowing that people are growing and changing through their very own written works.

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Amy Tuttle enjoys supporting communities with creative art-making, story-based practice, trauma healing, energy work, and rites of passage work. Tuttle believes that these practices play an important role in personal growth, community-building, and cultural transformation. With an MA in Arts & Transformation, she has served communities around the globe as a teacher, trainer, and artist. Locally, Tuttle serves as Director of Programming for Wordplay Cincy, a local arts-based organization where “stories write the future.” Additionally, she is a True Body Leadership Alum and a frequent collaborator of The Well.

Roshni Goyate is one quarter of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE poetry collective. Together they have published a book of poetry, a zine of essays, and most recently, a collection of solo works, published by Rough Trade Books, in which Roshni's pamphlet, Shadow Work, appears. Roshni is a Londoner, proud daughter of Indian immigrants and co-founder of The Other Box, an inclusion and equity company.

Sonya Verma MHSA, MBI is the founder of Inner Radiant Life, a yoga and meditation facilitator, Ayurvedic Counselor and Reiki Master Practitioner with a passion for discovering the intersection of creative expression and healing in a community based setting. Honoring her Eastern Indian heritage and Western upbringing she brings a unique approach to her work that is heart-centered, compassionate, and empowering. She weaves her training from different modalities of somatic healing from various yoga traditions with a centralized focus on embodiment practices. Additionally, Sonya is a True Body Leadership Alum.

Brad Aaron Modlin is the Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at University of Nebraska at Kearney. He received an MFA from Bowling Green State University and a PhD from Ohio University. He is the author of Everyone at This Party Has Two Names (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2016), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize.

Rana Dotson has worked for over 20 years on labor and human rights, public policy, and international development. She is a senior international affairs officer at the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), working to fight labor exploitation around the world. Rana is a co-founder and lead organizer for the international human rights collective Border of Lights. She is a fellow with the International Career Advancement Program (ICAP), and National Security Education Program (NSEP) David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship. Rana serves as a A Mindful Moment Trustee. She lives in the DC metro with her family. 

Manuel Iris holds a BA in Latin American Literature from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan (Mexico), an MA in Spanish from the New Mexico State University, and a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Cincinnati, the city in which he lives. He was the Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati from 2018-2020. His last bilingual collection of poems, "The parting present/Lo que se irá", was published in 2021.

Stacy Sims is a mind-body educator, social practice artist, and author. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Well. Sims has produced multiple site-specific performance works as part of her social practive of gathering stories out of community engagement. She is an inspiring speaker and leads workshops on trauma and the body, mindfulness and stress reduction. 

Hannah Simon-Goldman (she/her) facilitates the all-gender "Let's Be Perfectly Queer" writing circle at Women Writing for (a) Change, and during the day works as an instructional designer. This month, she recommends that everyone try out the poetry of Chen Chen, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Mary Oliver, and torrin a. greathouse.

Jennifer Howd is a Cincinnati-based multi-disciplinary artist, producer/editor, and certified mindfulness facilitator through UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center. Jennifer graduated with honors from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, with a B.A. in film and television production. Her eclectic background includes work within feature film marketing, broadcast design/branding, visual effects, television and film post-production, music and podcast production, writing, and indie filmmaking.