Victoria Lynne McCoy: Processing Grief with Poetry

How do we create a safe space to process our grief through art? Victoria Lynne McCoy discusses Carmen Maria Machado's metaphor of a "house for grief" and how she enters that house to find the material for her poems about the dead, and then finds her way out again, back to her daily life. Listen to her discuss the way writing epistilary poems (poems written as letters to a specific person) help her address both the departed, herself, her reader, and God at the same time. This is indespensable listening for anyone who has loved, lost, and used writing as a way to process grief. 

Rewrite strategy: Look at a poem you're struggling with, and instead of asking, "What am I trying to say?" ask instead, "What am I trying not to say?" What fears or insecurities are you afraid to admit or speak openly about that would lead you to finding the juice of your piece?