How did you become involved with The Good Listening Project?
When I was a child, I had several experiences that introduced me to first responders, surgeons, and hospice nurses. As it became clearer that these experiences would turn me into a poet rather than a medical professional, I began looking for ways to reconnect with medicine and healing through writing poetry. It’s now been a year since I serendipitously heard about Frankie’s endeavor with The Good Listening Project.
About how many poems have you written for people?
Almost 200! This has been a huge change for me, as I’d been used to workshopping poems with peers and teachers, then rewriting a single poem for weeks/months/years before it was “ready.” Adjusting to the new practice has been challenging and thrilling!
What’s your writing process like?
What I love most about this work is that I never know what people will want to talk about, what stories I’ll end up hearing that day. I’ve learned that I don’t need to ask many questions—usually the only things I’ll say are: “What would you like a poem about?” and “Could you tell me more about that?” And then I listen for the words, phrases, and expressions that are unique to their story. I love using direct quotes in the poems, so I keep a stack of loose-leaf paper with me and take notes during the conversation on the top sheet. After we finish talking, I review my notes and start rewriting the most compelling quotes on another sheet of paper. I usually write between 3-5 drafts by hand before typing the final draft, and I like to be able to spread them out and see all the pages at once—it’s like a map of how the poem has transformed over time.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
Once when I was listening at Grand Oaks Assisted Living through Sibley Memorial Hospital, I asked someone who her favorite writer was and she said, “I am! I love reading my own writing from different periods in my life and rediscovering who I was then.” She advised: “Write about everything that’s important to you, and do it often. Write about your friends and your feelings and what you love and what you don’t. What you’re doing now—writing for other people—it’s great practice, but make sure you’re spending time writing just for yourself too. You’ll want to remember who you were then.” I was reminded of her advice recently when I found one of my journals from elementary school. In it I had written: “I was thinking I want to be a poet when I grow up...”
What’s your favorite poem that someone else has written?
I really love the poem Elle wrote for the knitting circle at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts that we posted on March 31st. I love the shape of the typed poem on the page, the subtle rhymes, and the elegance in its simplicity.
What’s your favorite poem that you’ve written?
“Why I Take My Time” turned out to be an accidental sonnet that I wrote for a nurse at Sibley Memorial Hospital after chatting with her very briefly. We were able to talk again for much longer at the end of that week and I wrote a second poem for her, but when I wrote this first one I didn’t know if we’d get another chance to talk and I wanted her to know how important her words were to me.
What makes you laugh out loud?
Reading horoscopes and my cat’s face when he’s trying to climb a tree!
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 became The Good Listening Project's first Listener Poet in 2018 when they helped pilot the program at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington D.C. They thrive on connecting with and learning from people in personal and professional environments.
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.