The Art of Loving Poetry
Teresa Mei Chuc recalls the MFA passion and community that inspired her to found Shabda, a poetry press
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.
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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.
Crying for a Vision, Snowstorm
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.
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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