Join Teresa Jordan and Kim Stafford in an ongoing conversation about practice. They talk about the benefits of cultivating a daily practice, not just for the purpose of becoming a better artist or writer, but also because it can improve one’s life. As Kim puts it, you may not write something good every day, but if you write every day “it will be a better day.”
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, where he has taught writing since 1979. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and A Thousand Friends of Rain: New & Selected Poems. His most recent books are 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared, and Wind on the Waves: Stories from the Oregon Coast. In 2016 the 30th anniversary edition of his collections of essays, Having Everything Right, came out from Pharos Editions. His most recent book is Singer Come from Afar (Red Hen Press, 2021). From 2018-2020 he served as Oregon’s Poet Laureate, and he has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan.
Teresa Jordan is an artist, author, and storyteller who grew up in a house full of books on an isolated ranch in Wyoming. The love of learning she acquired in the local one-room school carried her to Yale and into a lifetime of inquiry.
Her books include the memoir Riding the White Horse Home and two illustrated journals, Fieldnotes from Yosemite: Apprentice to Place, and Field Notes from the Grand Canyon: Raging River, Quiet Mind. Her first book, Cowgirls: Women of the American West, was one of the earliest books to give voice to contemporary women working on the land. Her newest book is The Year of Living Virtuously, Weekends Off, inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s list of thirteen virtues and the seven deadly sins. It was awarded the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, the Utah Book Award and the da Vinci Eye Award for Cover Art, and is being translated into both Hindi and Korean.
The recipient of several awards including a literary fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Western Heritage Award from the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Teresa lives in a historic pecan orchard in southern Utah where she and Hal raise a small band of Navajo Churro sheep.
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Show notes
Two poems by Kim Stafford
A Breakfast for the Ages
When I make breakfast, I do not
make a breakfast for the ages—
I seek to sustain this glorious day
by oatmeal thick with blueberries.
Ah, what’s finer, steaming, hot?
And when I write in the early morning
and then send forth my little spell
by Instagram, there to seek those few
precious readers I will never meet,
may I be like weather in a life—
various, generous, more timely
than timeless, affectionate in mist
and rain, written on water, not
in stone, a moment’s blessing
simple as oats for you.
Dew & Honey
Sip by sip in thimble cup
the meadow bees will drink it up
then ferry home to bounty’s hive
by flowers’ flavor hum and thrive
to show us how through word and song
by gesture small and patience long
in spite of our old foolish ways
we may fashion better days.
So, my friend, come sip and savor
syllables as crumbs of pleasure.
By sunrise, in our conversations,
we begin a better nation.
credits
Theme music by The Observatory
Transition music by Andrew Endres