Practice reading 
your work aloud

This page was last updated on: August 29, 2017


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Practice reading 
your work aloud
from Northwest Writers.com
Interview with Esther Altshul Helfgott
Marlene Moore, interviewer
March 1, 2006 Newsletter Vol 3 


Q: You said your husband has Alzheimer's and that you are his caregiver. Did you begin writing after he contracted the disease?

A: No, I've been writing all my life, not just to survive a particularly traumatic time but in order to know what I am thinking and feeling, to know who I am. Writing has always been my way of figuring out how environment and familial context, say, work for me. When I'm stuck on a problem, I dialogue with myself; record my dreams, dialogue with others on the page, and record my interaction with other writers' words on the page. I respond to my reading in my journal. I love that; it helps me know the author better and myself in relation to what I'm reading. I complain on the page, I complain a lot but nobody sees that part of me. Not that I don't complain off the page, in real life, but not as much. I get my complaints and anger out in my journal/diary, whatever you want to call it.In the case of my husband's illness, my writing saves me, probably both of us, because it calms me down, centers me to do the hard stuff I have to do, whether I like it or not. You have to take care of someone you love and the tasks are not always easy or fun. So in order to do them, to get some release from the mean stuff that life divvies out, I write write write and write some more. It's all I know to do. Perhaps if I could sing or dance I'd be doing that but writing is all that comes naturally to me, so that's what I do. I really wanted to learn to play the piano and to tap dance but I don't have the patience anymore than I have the patience to cook or sew. I have patience to write and read, that's all, and more patience to write than to read.My writing about my husband's illness has taken the poem form, as it often does, because in poem I am able to write out my fears and sadness. The Alzheimer's poems are very sad but as I told someone in one of the writing groups I'm in, if I couldn't write my sadness out in poems, I probably wouldn't be able to laugh when I'm not writing. I do my crying in the poems, then I can move on, do what I have to do.

Q: What type of writing do you do? 

A: I write non-fiction and poetry. My most recent publications include an essay, Irena Klepfisz, Loss and the Poetry of Exile, which appears in the Sept 2005 issue of The Journal of Poetry Therapy, It stems from my doctoral dissertation on Klepfisz who is a Holocaust poet and Jewish feminist activist. In this same issue of the JPT is my review of Maxine Kumin's memoir, Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery. A poem about my father, Iser, 1899-1964, appears in Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature (Fall 2005) , a beautiful tome which includes writing from writers and poets from around the globe. A creative non-fiction essay about my relationship to psychoanalysis, "Analytic Entrapment," appears in American Imago (Oct 2005), a journal of psychoanalysis and the human sciences. It was started in 1939 by Freud and Hans Sachs, and I am especially honored to be included there. I don't generally like the term creative non-fiction (because so much of what is written under its umbrella is not particularly creative, meaning exciting, imaginative and new), but I use it here because this particular essay is an interspersing of commentary, memoir and poetry unlike the Klepfisz piece, which is straight literary criticism.A poem called Ellen's Good Day was recently printed in Real Change, Seattle's paper on homelessness. Ellen is a character in my poetic docu-drama The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices, published in 2000 by Kota PressDiary Entries concerning my mother's death are forthcoming, as Anna's Last January, in In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing edited by Olivia Dresher of Impassio Press (May 2006). Poems will also appear in The Laundromat Anthology, Chrysanthemum and The Alzheimer's Anthology.

Q: I would like to talk to you about the Cancer Lifeline Women Writers' Reading Series. How did you get involved with the group? 

A: I created the reading series so that the participants in my writing groups could have the experience of speaking their words in a public space. Writers tend to become isolated, ghettoized. I encourage the people I work with to come out of their shells and expand their writing environments. I taught writing in a senior adult Ed program for many years. Mostly women, of course. Men rarely place themselves in situations where they may need to reveal information about their personal lives, at least in my experience. And it's a shame really. One gets so much in these groups. They're gifts reallyto the self and to others. At any rate, when I was teaching seniors, I could see that they saw themselves only as seniors who happened to be writing. Now this was twenty or so years ago. I'm older now than many of the people who were in my classes were then. So I created the It's About Time Writers Reading Series so they would read their work to other writers and perhaps they would begin seeing themselves as writers instead of seniors. I also wanted them to interact with literary folks in the community. Well, that was almost 17 years ago and the series is still going strong. I hope the same will hold true for the Cancer Lifeline Reading Series.

Q: Please tell us what your [Cancer Lifeline writing groups are] about.

A: All my writing groups are about building community, whether at Cancer Lifeline or elsewhere. I like teaching and facilitating at CLL because it is a healthy environment where participants are nurtured and appreciated for their specific needs and individuality. This is not true in all learning environments, especially in institutions where competition and egoism get in the way of humanitas and real learning.

Q: Do you meet at the Greenlake site and the Northwest Hospital? If so, what is the criteria for joining the group and do you want new members? If so, who do they contact? 

A: All women are invited into the groups based on Cancer Lifeline's underlying mission: Optimizing the quality of life of all people affected by cancer-- patients, survivors, family, friends, caregivers and coworkersUnfortunately, cancer is indigenous to our society so virtually everyone has a connection to the disease, some more, some less than othersMy Monday and Thursday groups are at the Green lake site and the Friday group at Northwest Hospital. (The Mon group will be changing to Tues the next session which begins in March)

Q: How does writing help the members to deal with their Cancer?

A: Well, first of all not everyone has cancer. Some do, some don't. Writing helps all members of the group confront their grief and sorrow, learn how to place it on the page and then walk outside the door and go on with their lives. Whether they have cancer or not, whether they are dealing with the loss of a breast or a sister who just died, a husband who just had a stroke or a mother who lost a son to suicide. Of course, the groups don't work for everyone. Some people want critiquing which they will not receive in my classes at CLL. Here we find our authentic voices, connect with the interiority of our lives.I will introduce you to two long-time members of the groups and let them tell you, as they have told me, how the writing groups have helped them:Jeanne RoweThank you, Esther, for a marvelous class. You have helped me discover my voice in poetry. I also appreciate your encouragement and your gentle facilitating. You have created a very "safe" environment for exploration and learning. Relationships "happen" in your classes, and we get to know one another in very special ways. Oh, if all education were only like this "The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery," a wise person once said.Peggy SturdivantThe writing workshop for women with you, Esther, has filled a need in me. Although I have been writing for years, and thought that I had been dealing "just fine" with issues of grieving, it turned out there were more layers trapped below. The small supportive group with its continuity has allowed me to go places I never could have ventured into alone.

Q: Do you want new members?

A: Everyone is invited into the groups. To join, just call 297-2100 or sign up on-line at www.cancerlifeline.org 

Q: Are any of the members published?

A: Yes. A number of participants have worked as writers a good portion of their lives. Some are poets or memoirists who have published in literary journals and anthologies; some have published books and essays; many keep diaries or are letter writers (we still have them, people who write letters instead of email); and some of the women write only when they are in class. Although I encourage publishing for those who are interested, to publish or not to publish is not the point of my work in the healing arts.

Q: Please feel free to add any information that I may have not covered? 

A: For one of my writing exercises that I especially love for the way it brings people closer together, I pair participants up to interview each other. Afterwards they return to the group to introduce their partners. Sometimes there is an odd number so I become part of a pair. This time I was asked: how did you develop into the teacher you are? You are a very gifted teacher. How did you become so? 

It hasn't been overnight. I've had to learn where I feel comfortable in a teaching situation, what kind of teaching I like to do. I hate to lecture, though I like to read papers and poetry, but reading isn't teaching; it's reading, more talking to myself than interacting with others. And that's what teaching isinteraction and communication. Which isn't to say lecturers don't teach. Some people do a great job at presenting themselves and their material while interacting with an audience, but that's not me. I wish it were, I'd love to stand up in front of a group and be theatrical, teach in a theatrical sort of way. I admire people who do that. I learned a long time ago that I am much better at sitting around a table or in a circle of chairs listening very hard to people's words and ideas. I love that, hearing what they have to say as they are learning, especially from each other.

So the biggest job for me has been to find the environment where I can interact with small groups and share with them what I know about writing, creativity and art, bringing these components together in order to find more of the self, the authentic self, for the page. I'm concerned with helping people who want to write, especially women, find their authentic voices, those that come closest to reflecting the truth of their inner lives. It's not hard to do. I just spend my time listening to what group participants have to say. They're the ones who really do the teaching, not me. I am merely a facilitator who helps people formulate ideas and words to place on the page and/or to hear themselves speak out loud.

To the question: What can I expect to find in your healing arts groups? I answered:

In my healing arts writing groups women find a space for confidence- building and community formation, a place where self-esteem and courage blossoms. Here we come to celebrate our lives.

My goal is for women to find a place of strength and non-marginality. No one is on the edge here, on the outskirts looking in. We are all, each one of us, smack in the middle of experience and knowledge that we lend to each other -- through non-competitive discussion, writing, and sharing of work, if and when we are ready.

We use writing, mostly poetry, to trigger imagination, memory, friendship, love, hate, ambiguity, fear, whatever comes along, even secrets we didn't know we had.

My goal is for women to use writing to discover their authentic voice(s) on and off the page and to develop the confidence to use their voice(s) with determination.

I am most concerned with writing process and writing as process; and though we may work toward making our words clearer for others to understand and to understand ourselves better, production, rather than process, is not an ingredient of the healing arts space, all the while we take pride in our accomplishments and in each other's accomplishments.

In all of my classes, we listen to each other so we can hear more of ourselves; and we quiet ourselves so we can hear that much more of all those others who share our writing/living space with us.
                                                                                                                          -Esther Altshul Helfgott


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