The Art of Loving Poetry*

by Teresa Mei Chuc

In the summer of 2011, during my second year studying in Goddard College’s Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program (poetry) in Plainfield, Vermont, I was sitting at my desk in Pasadena, California one night and decided to start a press, Shabda Press.

The journey began in the dark, perhaps in the darkness of an egg, a woman’s womb or the womb of the earth. I had no idea how to start a press but my fingers searched for the path and I began to feel my way in the dark, researching different options and learning as I went along while fueled by the love of writing poetry and the love of sharing poetry that I loved.

I created an account for a free website and then proceeded to send out a call for submissions. My idea was that this was a labor of love and I wanted to put my attention into taking care of each poetry book I would publish, so I wanted to keep things small. I started with the idea of publishing one book a year, used InDesign (the trial version) for the first time while creating the cover for Shabda Press’s first book. I had no previous training, but taught myself. I received quite a few submissions for the first call and published Goddard alumna Sayra Pinto’s poetry book, Pinol : Poems (2012).

By 2016, Shabda Press had published poetry books by poets around the country and world, including Joan I. Siegel, Michael Shorb, Jennifer Clark, Nahshon Cook, Lowell Jaeger, Michael Rothenberg, Mariko Kitakubo, Deborah P. Kolodji and books by three Goddard College alumni – Pinol : Poems by Sayra Pinto (2012), Hunger Moon by Susan Deer Cloud (2014), A Slow Education by David Giver (2013) and I Still Remember the Last Time You Held My Hand by David Giver (2015). At the end of 2016, Shabda Press published its first full-length anthology of poetry, Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands.

In 2014, in order to share poetry and spread the word, Shabda Press joined forces with three other small presses to create the Coast to Coast Poetry Press Collective (c2p2). The Coast to Coast Poetry Press Collective consists of four small presses, Shabda Press (Pasadena, California), Many Voices Press (Kalispell, Montana), Hummingbird Press (Seattle, Washington & Madison, Wisconsin), and FootHills Publishing (Wheeler Hill, New York). Hummingbird Press is co-edited by CX Dillhunt and Drew Dillhunt, a Goddard College MFAW alum (Port Townsend, WA campus). c2p2 is another Goddard College alumni collaboration. For the past few years, c2p2 has had a booth at the AWP Bookfair selling books published by all four presses and has hosted readings around the country.

I came to understand that the network of poets, publishers and friends that I work with are like a subterranean mycelium network; we nourish each other, communicating with each other in our ancient language of kindness and humanity, creating the foundation of life. We decompose, we make what seems impossible, possible. We are an important part of the literary ecosystem. Importantly, through writing and poetry, we take or absorb the poison out of the system similar to the role of mushrooms saving the world by absorbing the toxins and even radiation from the environment.

The journey has been and continues to be one filled with work, struggles and joy. I am grateful for the presence of my Goddard family in friendship and in spirit.

My journey in writing and publishing has been about connecting with humanity through poetry, connecting with each other in community. I remember the words Elena Georgiou gave us at graduation, I hang them on the wall of my room:

January 2012 Graduation Gift: * You have the right to write. * You have the privilege of being a writer. * You have the responsibility to write. Never lose faith in the power of words.

May our words continue to be our medicine and light.

I suppose you want my poems to be
about dancing in feathers at powwows
or hiking up to some generic
purple majesty mountaintop out West,
fasting on long freezing nights and
crying for a vision. Here is the vision
I am crying for in my dump of a freezing
apartment in Binghamton, New York …
enough to cover rent plus cable television
so my cat and I can watch our nature shows
loud enough to block out the gunshots
on this street the city plows last.

--From Hunger Moon by Susan Deer Cloud:

Shabda Press had the honor of publishing the anthologies Altadena Poetry Review 2019 and Altadena Literary Review 2020 both edited by Teresa Mei Chuc and Hazel Clayton Harrison during their term as co-Poets Laureate of Altadena.

A few collections are forthcoming from Shabda Press:

A renga collection by Goddard alum Drew Dillhunt and his father CX Dillhunt, Pasadena Rose Poets Ten-Year Anniversary Collection, and the anthology Poetry of Place: Neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Shabda Press Website

Teresa Mei Chuc (Tuệ Mỹ Chúc) was born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam and fled her Vietnamese homeland in a refugee boat with her mother and brother shortly after the American war. Her father, who fought in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, was imprisoned in a Vietcong reeducation camp for nine years. Teresa grew up in Pasadena and Altadena, California. Former Altadena Poet Laureate (2018-2020), Teresa is the author of three poetry books, Invisible Light (2018), Keeper of the Winds (2014) and Red Thread (2012). Her poetry chapbook, Incidental Takes, was published by Hummingbird Press in 2023. Teresa’s poetry was recently published in the anthologies– Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2025), Colossus: Current, The Ways and Workings of Water (Colossus Press, 2025), and Here Was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Ecowriting (University of Hawaii Press, 2023), and in About Place Journal, “On Freedom” Issue (2025). Teresa is co-editor of the anthology, Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2026). Teresa has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Goddard College and is a public high school English teacher in Los Angeles in her twenty-first year of teaching. In 2011, Teresa founded Shabda Press as a labor of love.

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*Originally published in The Writer in the World, March 30, 2016.

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"I refuse to let my heart and brain be polluted or hijacked... I just refuse and resist." — Elena Georgiou, on protecting her creative capacity during political crisis

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into Writer in the World: Create to Survive, with , , and ! This is a special presentation from , where is a weekly section featuring essays on the writing life by MFA faculty and alumni.

Here’s who’s talking:

• is the award-winning poet and fiction writer who formerly directed Goddard’s MFA in Creative Writing Program and currently teaches in the PhD program at the Rubenstein School at the University of Vermont.

• is an award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels for young adults and kids, and a faculty member of Hamline University’s MFA in Children’s Writing. www.sherrilsmith.com

• , author, publisher of the Substack MFA Lore, and former colleague of Elena & Sherri in the sorely missed Goddard’s MFA program.

Scroll down for key quotes, takeaways, and more info about the Two Trees Writers retreat that Sherri and Elena will be leading this summer.

Retreat Info

NEXT Wednesday, February 18 at 6:30 pm PT

Telling Family Secrets Author Panel

Does your writing suffer from Fear of Family (FOF)? If so, you won’t want to miss this free online panel with , , , and .

Free! RSVP

Create To Survive

A few highlight & takeaways from the video

1. Writing as Medicine in Crisis

Our central premise is that creative writing serves as an essential survival tool during times of political and social turmoil. Engaging with creative work isn’t self-indulgent escapism but a necessary practice for maintaining mental health and capacity for activism.

2. Balancing Art and Commerce

Sherri shared a particularly revealing struggle: her climate-focused and American mythology projects—conceived as “medicine for the world”—were rejected by publishers as either “too pedantic” or unsellable. This highlights the tension between creating work that addresses urgent social issues and market demands. She noted having to balance “healing the world with making a living.”

3. Finding Your Writing Community

It’s critically important to have a supportive writing community. Sherri credited her recovery from creative paralysis to meeting with a writer friend who could see clearly what she couldn’t. The discussion repeatedly returned to the value of shared creative space, whether through MFA programs, retreats, or informal writing groups.

4. Documentation as Resistance

Elena’s experience teaching after 9-11 demonstrated how urgent the need for creative expression becomes during crisis. She taught a poetry class in New York then, and students were desperate to complete assignments—”chomping at the bit”—because they needed to document what they were experiencing. One student wrote poems about her brother’s death. Elena emphasized: “Creativity was their survival strategy.”

5. Strategic Retreat and Renewal

“Step aside so that you can breathe.” A Hedgebrook retreat gave Sherri space to dream new ideas, even though market forces later rejected them. Sherri and Elena, with , are organizing a Two Trees Writers retreat at the reimagined Goddard College campus (now “Creative Campus at Goddard”) specifically to provide writers this restorative space.

Retreat Info

6. Permission to “Lean into the Woo-Woo”

The retreat will incorporate tarot readings and other less conventional creative practices to help unlock creative work. Sherri recalled ’s tarot readings “helped me turn messes into successes with my own novels.” Non-traditional methods can break through creative blocks.

7. Using Creativity as Empathy Practice

Elena argued that if we don’t use creativity as a form of resistance and self-care, and don’t use “our own empathy and sympathy, community to help one another, then what are we going to be doing instead?” The implication is that creative practice keeps us emotionally healthy enough to sustain whatever activism we choose.

8. The Goddard Legacy

Throughout the discussion runs a thread of grief and gratitude for the closed Goddard MFA program, which created a lasting community of support. We are committed to continuing this community through , , and the Two Trees Writers retreat to preserve and extend what the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing created.

Practical Wisdom

• When overwhelmed by current events, don’t try to write around them—either address them directly or create work set in a stable time frame

• Seek outside perspective when a project feels tangled; sometimes you need someone else to identify the “dotted line” between multiple stories

• Protect dedicated creative time even (especially) during crisis

• Find or create community where “your ideas will be taken seriously and nourished and moved forward”

• Take care of yourself “so that we can help take care of each other”

The overarching message: creative practice isn’t a luxury during difficult times—it’s essential infrastructure for survival, resistance, and maintaining the capacity to care for ourselves and our communities.

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