This is one of my visions for an ideal Christmas. It’s a short, happy confection, a dream apart from these dire times. I hope you take some time to imagine your ideal […]
An Ideal Christmas
Katie Riegel
Poet, writer, mentor, workshop leader, teacher.
After the Election: Create to Cope
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale In the wake of the 2016 U.S. election—I was going to write “the election,” which has […]
Starting the Conversation: Speaking Out About Sexual Abuse
Recently the poet Annie Finch posted on her blog a piece called “Things I’ve Been Ashamed to Share About Being a Writer Until Now,” in which she gets specific about what men […]
Meditation for Skeptics
A standard message for motivational speakers and writers of self-help books is to promise that, if you do what the book suggests, you will have success. Often there’s an element of magic […]
Depression is (Still) a Trip
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Week, we are re-posting this. And sending out our wishes for safe weathering of all storms, inner and outer. You stay alive you stupid asshole […]
Cat-Assisted Meditation
Meditation teachers will tell you to find a room and shut your animals out before you sit down to meditate. Too much distraction, they say. You should concentrate on yourself, they say. […]
How Can We Get There?
I recently got back from vacation (see my last post!) and one of my friends, as friends will, asked how I was readjusting to being home. I said, “On vacation, every day […]
Anglophile For Life
Yes, my friends, I went to England this summer. I went during July, when the temperatures in Memphis were sweltering in the humid 90s. I went with my husband, who is English, […]
How else do you want to live?
A Doubter in the Church of Poetry
Originally posted on The Literary Life:
Friends, I have a confession to make: I lose faith. Often. Sometimes multiple times a day. And I’m not talking about religious faith, though I have…
The Gloria Sirens 