How did you become involved with The Good Listening Project?
Through my poetry-inspired friendship with Frankie Abralind, I became an intern in his department at Sibley Memorial Hospital. I worked with Frankie to pilot the program in the hospital setting for about six weeks. Together, we realized how valuable the listening element of the conversation was for people. When Frankie founded the organization, I was the first official Listener Poet!
About how many poems have you written for people?
I have written about 150 poems for people through The Good Listening Project!
What’s your writing process like?
I sort of cast around in my mind for a central theme from the conversation and build from that. Often, a certain quote from the poemee will strike me as the crux of what they shared with me, and I will develop imagery using the quote as a starting point. I use metaphor frequently, so that the poems I write often make sense only to those for whom they were written.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
I’m not sure that I have a specific answer to this! I suppose the most meaningful advice I have heard is to think about what other people are going through when you interact with them. The costs of being kind and considerate are usually much smaller than the benefits. I feel very fulfilled by promoting the wellbeing of others.
What’s your favorite poem that you’ve written?
Well, there are two elements to the poems I have written through The Good Listening Project. The first is the content of the poem itself, at face value; the second is how well I feel I was able to capture the essence of the conversation it is based on. If I had to choose, I think my favourite poem would be one for which I love both of these elements. One that comes to mind is “When A Tiger Fights,” because I feel like I really captured what was shared with me in a way that made sense emotionally to the poemee.
What makes you laugh out loud?
My parents find each other so funny that when one of them does something silly and the other starts laughing, I lose it as well. It hardly matters what the silly thing was!
Aillie McKeever is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 10 alum with over 20 years of experience in higher education. In her listening practice with students and poemees, she attunes to the energy beneath words and gazes—as Hafez suggests—with a full moon in each eye.
Dr. Derouin is an accomplished nurse educator, dual-certified pediatric nurse practitioner and healthpolicy leader with over 30 years of experience.
Anne Marie Wells is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 9 alum and an award-winning and Pushcart-nominated poet as well as a playwright, memoirist, and oral storyteller.
Avni Vyas is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 6 alum, as well as a poet and professor living in Florida. She is the author of Little God (Burrow Press, 2021) and the chapbooks Far From Glorious Feeling (TOA, 2021) and When I Was a Barefoot Cloud (Anhinga, 2024).
Beck Klassen (they/them) is a listener, a learner, a carer, and a writer. As a queer and trans/genderqueer/gender non-conforming/non-binary anarchist, they are regularly engaged in deconstructing oppressive social norms, both theoretically and in practice. Beck is a fierce proponent of prefigurative politics and spends their time infusing their values into how they move through the world.
Brook Wyers, Certified Listener Poet Alum from Cohort 12, is an SLL Writing Specialist at Northeast Ohio Medical University. She loves reading and has a passion for publishing and poetry.
Camilla Barber is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 6 alum, and a Community Coordinator and Dance Fitness Instructor supporting accessible wellness across New York City.
Carina L. Dacer is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 4 alum, and compliance professional who volunteers with healthcare center and charities. She serves as Treasurer on the board of The Good Listening Project.
Chanice Withers is an educator, poet, and proud graduate of the Certified Listener Poet program Cohort 7. A natural-born teacher, she shares her gift with the community through her monthly workshop, Poetry in the Park—a space for connection, creativity, and healing.
Chidube Nkiruka (1976–2024) was a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 8 alum whose work reflected his deep commitment to healing and justice. His fascination with rhythm and poetry was connected to its capacity to birth resilience, resistance, and recovery amidst those suffering from neglect, abuse, and addiction.
Chuck Behrens has been an ordained minister since 1980, a hospice chaplain since 1994, and is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 8 alum. He is a current member of the National Speakers Association and is often asked to give keynotes and lead workshops on end-of-life care, spirituality, effective communication, holding space, and compassion fatigue.
Cortney Collins is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 12 alum and writer living on the Front Range of Colorado. She is the founder of the pandemic-era virtual poetry community Zoem. She does her best to pay attention.
Dawn M. Schocken is the Director for the Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation, and a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 1 alum.
Devon M. Bremer is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 2 alum and Director of Clinical Education Administration working with medical students and physicians.
D'ete Blackshire is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 3 alum, facilitator, and artist with a calling to create healing spaces that offer opportunities for transmuting struggle into seeds of hope.
Dylan Klempner is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 11 alum, award-winning journalist, and multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the role of creativity in health and healing.
D. F. Tweney is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 11 alum, journalist, editor, poet, community builder, and publisher. He lives in the California Bay Area, where he helps tech companies tell their stories, takes care of his family, practices mindfulness in the Plum Village tradition of Vietnamese Zen, and swims in the Bay.
Elizabeth Pringle is part of the co-founding team of Listener Poets and has produced The Good Listening Podcast. She explores language and the human experience through theatre and film, arts and media education, leadership coaching, and professional development.
E. Tan is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 11 alum, researcher, educator, administrator, and multi-arts creative with a Ph.D. in Literature and an M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership.
Elizabeth Torres (b. 1987, Bogotá) is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 11 alum, a Colombian-American poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist residing in Denmark.
Ellen J. Reich is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 11 alum, a Spiritual Companion, and a Process Writing Facilitator. She loves deep listening and guiding others to honor their inner critics – by sending them on vacation – so that word-play can bounce around uninterrupted and with joy.
Erin “Fitz” FitzGerald is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 9 alum, and a human who believes deeply in the healing power of generous listening. She is a hospice and palliative medicine physician and was an instructor and director of Healer's Art, which utilizes generous listening as a skill to be with others' suffering and humanize medicine.
Frankie Abralind co-founded The Good Listening Project in 2018. He began experimenting with this work when he was lead designer at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital's Innovation Hub.
Geva Thole is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 7 alum, a poet, and Behavior Health Specialist living in Wisconsin.
Gina Petersen is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 7 alum, and creates through mothering, nursing, mentoring, teaching, reflecting, reading, writing poetry, listening, and exploring nature with her husband, dog Rosie, newly born son, family, dear friends, and the souls she meets on the sojourns of her days.
Gray Davidson Carroll is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 7 alum, and a white, transfemme writer, dancer, singer, cold water plunger and (self-proclaimed) hot chocolate alchemist hailing from Brooklyn by way of western Massachusetts and other strange and forgotten places.
Heather Coats is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 4 alum, Nurse Practitioner, and Director of Research at Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association.
Ingrid Berg serves as Board Chair of The Good Listening Project. She is a palliative care physician and medical humanities scholar who services the inpatient team at CHI Health in Omaha, Nebraska.
Jennifer Chassman Browne is a Certified Listener Poet Cohort 10 alum. She has been an educator for over 25 years, and has since founded New Ground Educational Consulting, a DEI consulting company with an emphasis on disability. She delivers keynote presentations and develops and facilitates workshops related to disability and inclusion.