As those of us in the Northern Hemisphere enter into autumn, this week’s guest Jacqueline Suskin reminds us that the earth gives us dedicated time for reflection. In a conversation that roots deeply into seasonality and life’s rhythms, Jacqueline’s meditations and suggestions feel perfectly timed. 

Jacqueline uses her book A Year in Practice as a practical guide for finding inspiration and meaning throughout the seasons. Detailing her ongoing connection to the earth and the wonder she feels about humanity's place within and as a part of nature, Jacqueline details the way our rhythms are drawn from those of the earth. Even as the climate changes and we are beginning to lose the predictability of earth’s rhythms, our bodies carry the memory and significance of the seasons.

For Jacqueline, poetry serves as a vital foundation to sit with the earth and the seasons as they undergo such significant change. Poetry offers insight into how we might navigate how to change with a changing world. In a time of both endless possibility and the end of possibility, Ayana and Jacqueline contemplate how to address the need for this change with an understanding of the competing pull of patience and urgency. Jacqueline reminds us that to find meaning in the sea of hope and hopelessness within modern movements, we must bear witness to the earth.

Jacqueline Suskin is a poet and educator who has composed over forty thousand improvisational poems with her ongoing writing project, Poem Store. Suskin is the author of eight books, including the forthcoming A Year in Practice (Sounds True December 2023), with work featured in various publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. An ecstatic earth-worshiper, she lives in Detroit where she works as a teaching artist with InsideOut Literary Arts, bringing nature poetry into classrooms with her Poem Forest curriculum.

♫ The music in this episode is “A Host for All Kinds of Life” and “Soft Meadow” by Green-House. We want to extend a very special thanks to Leaving Records for making this music available to us.  

Episode References

“One Poem That Saved a Forest” - YES! Magazine

The Edge of the Continent by Jacqueline Suskin 

A Year in Practice by Jacqueline Suskin 

Every Day is a Poem by Jacqueline Suskin 

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