Meredith Heller - Write a Poem, Save Your Life: A Guide for Teens, Teachers, and Writers of All Ages

This is more than a book. It is a doorway, a trail guide, a muse, a container of magic treasures, a friend. One you will want to keep close to you. From her own humble beginnings, Meredith Heller gorgeously invites us into the creative process of becoming human by learning to attend to and celebrate the full range of our life experiences through the extraordinary alchemy of poetic writing.

SARK, artist, author, and inspirationalist, PlanetSARK.com

Poetry isnt just art; its essential medicine. Poetry gives shape to our longing and invites us toward a novel encounter with our deepest and most soulful desires. In this stunning ode to everyones inner poet, Meredith Heller offers a timely and extraordinary gift to anyone seeking to explore poetic writing. Heller writes, I dont really believe that we can teach creativity or poetic writing, but I do believe that we can hone our ability to notice what moves us. Heller invites the reader to begin with what moves them, however raw and unpolished that beginning might be. And this to begin is the bravest and most vulnerable work a poet might do.

Danielle Dulsky, author of The Holy Wild, Woman Most Wild, and Seasons of Moon and Flame

This book is perfect for anyone who dreams of writing poetry. In these pages you will find everything you need: tools, examples, prompts, suggestions, and most important, inspiration from a teacher and writer for whom poetry has been a salvation.

Jane Anne Staw, author of Small: The Little We Need for Happiness

Poetry is language that whispers and shouts and dreams, rants and chants. In Write a Poem, Save Your Life, Meredith Heller provides an abundant variety of invitations and open-ended questions so we can translate the truths and textures of our lives into poems. Write a Poem, Save Your Life is a guide for teens, teachers, and writers of all ages to write their way into greater clarity and wholeness. Brava.

Ruth Gendler, author of The Book of Qualities and Notes on the Need for Beauty

For anyone who has ever declared, I have nothing to say, Meredith Heller invites you to embark on a brave adventure into the magic of poetry and the tools for finding your truth, lifting your voice, singing your personal song.

Sophy Burnham, author of For Writers Only and A Book of Angels

What an inspiring guide to writing poetry! Meredith Heller weaves her teaching, her prompts, and heartfelt poems into a book that calls all of us to find and celebrate our words. Write a Poem, Save Your Life teaches us that through poetry our difficulties can be endured, the unspeakable can be spoken, and both truth and beauty can be shared.

Sandra Marinella, author of The Story You Need to Tell

In her generous, soulful book, Meredith Heller reminds us that happiness is an inside job, that the deepest sense of belonging is to ourselves, and that our own poems can be trusted to take us there. With moving personal stories and inspired student poems, Heller invites us to a banquet of step-by-step tutorials in such life-changing, neglected arts as shape-shifting, ranting and raving, inner shamanism, and so many other writes of passage. I invite young people (and anyone else whod like to write themselves home) to dive into this curriculum of wonders; it may very well save your life.

Prartho Sereno, prize-winning poet, Poet Laureate Emerita of Marin County, California, and founder of the Poetic Pilgrimage: Poem-Making as Spiritual Practice

Meredith Heller has written her book Write a Poem, Save Your Life with both passion and compassion. She invites everyone to the party, telling us that each of us has a poem and each of us can write it. She follows this up with coaching that is both careful and enthusiastic. Read this book, and you will learn to believe in yourself.

Kevin Fisher-Paulson, author of A Song for Lost Angels and How We Keep Spinning!

We need poetry in our schools and our lives. Academia places far too much emphasis on brain only, but other modes of learning are essential to well-being. Write a Poem, Save Your Life teaches the reader, step by step, how to use poetry to talk about lifes struggles, pain, joy, and transformation. Its the perfect resource.

Kristi Hugstad, author of Beneath the Surface and Be You, Only Better

Without rigid rules or tedious tenses, the poet Meredith Heller has written an important, readable book; it is especially useful for adolescents during their ups and downs. Fortunately, Heller invites everyone to participate in the art/therapy of making poems, to work to formulate their feelings, and to create something that matters.

David Bruce Smith, founder of the Grateful American Foundation

During my senior year of college, I took my first and only poetry class, with the poet and professor Hugh Ogden. That class changed my life as a writer and a human being. Hugh passed away a few years ago, so his brilliance is no longer available to the world. Write a Poem, Save Your Life is for anyone who wasnt fortunate enough to spend the spring of 1999 with Hugh. It teaches you to love poetry, to write poetry, and ultimately to love yourself. Its a big, heady book filled with lots of tangible, specific strategies to make your poetry come alive in the way Hugh taught me. If you love poetry, this book is for you. If you dont love poetry, this book is even more for you.

Matthew Dicks, author of Storyworthy and Moth GrandSLAM winner

Meredith Heller invites us to share and speak using words to tickle our fancies and find our own word-ways. Even the table of contents is intriguing. Heller shares her own wending path from disenchantment to depression to the alchemical process of poetry. We hear her move from speechlessness to humming to out-loud song to authentic voice. Heller is vulnerable and inspiring. She speaks with the truth of a guide who has traveled and continues to travel. She brings us the clarity and simplicity of the poetry toolbox and invitations to write our own perspectives. Savor every delicious bite of this book!

Wendi R. Kaplan, Poet Laureate of Alexandria, Virginia, 20162019

In Meredith Hellers bold new book, she shows us how poetry offers a powerful tool for processing and sharing the joys and pains of being human, as evidenced by her own experiences. Her writing invitations are specific and helpful starting points, as are the examples shared by her students. Poets and writers of all ages and experience levels will benefit from her seasoned, savvy, sage advice!

Rebecca Pollack, creative writing teacher, Marin School of the Arts, Novato, California

Copyright 2021 by Meredith Heller

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.