How was The Good Listening Project created?
I started the initial organization, Poets In Residence, to expand the work that I was doing as a side project at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital. It had started as an art project, writing poems for strangers on the street in Washington, D.C. However, I’d learned quickly that the real gift I was giving people was not the poem, it was the feeling of being heard.
When I met Kay McKean, she helped me articulate that the real foundation of the organization was the culture of listening we were building. She and I created The Good Listening Project together.
About how many poems have you written for people?
Many hundreds.
What’s your writing process like?
I look for a hook in what the person said in our conversation. Maybe it’s a line they said, maybe it’s a feeling they described. I try to pound out the first line instinctively, then build around it. It’s common for me to rearrange the order of lines (and stanzas, if there are multiple). I probably spend too much time retyping to correct typos. I’m pretty sure nobody else minds them, so I’m working on not wasting so muhc time on them (see what I did there?).
What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
Maya Angelou’s advice has been a real lighthouse for me, though I’m far from perfect at following it: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
What’s your favorite poem that someone else has written?
I have a special place in my heart for one of the first poems we did at a hospital. Listener Poet Elle Klassen wrote it for a person who worked in dementia care, and who struggled with the frequent loss of people she’d bonded with. It ends, “and when others talk about the phoenix they forget to say that each time she rises she is stronger.” Damn. Such an inspiring line.
What’s your favorite poem that you’ve written?
The one I’ve reread the most is “This Isn’t Like That,” written for an attendee at the International Integrative Nursing Symposium. It was such a powerful experience that the person shared, and the poem I wrote brings tears to my eyes. Maybe that’s a humblebrag, but I spent a lot of time writing it and it really, really moves me.
What makes you laugh out loud?
My wife. Memes about emus and classical art. Four-year-olds.
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.