237: Dr. Nadia Colburn — Your Life Is Not a Task to Complete

Think Act Be Podcast

My guest this week is Dr. Nadia Colburn, a poet and author of a new book of poetry entitled I Say the Sky (affiliate link).

Topics we discussed included:

• Developing greater interest in poetry later in life
• Turning to poetry as a spiritual or devotional practice
• The ability of poetry to express or point to things that are difficult to capture
• The emotional connection that poetry can inspire
• Presence that exists outside of traditional narrative
• Readings from Nadia’s books
• Wanting to live and yet forgetting we’re alive right here and now
• Mistaking the world for a task
• Making the body more spacious so it can contain more
• The ongoing life of the past into the present
• The dialogue between writing and meditation
• Letting go of the desire to show that we’re good and acceptable
• Nadia’s description and evocation of the experience of anxiety in her poem “Anxiety”
• The missingness of poetry, according to Kieran Setiya

Nadia Colburn, PhD, is also the author of The High Shelf.

Her poetry and prose have appeared in more than 80 publications, including the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Spirituality & Health, Lion’s Roar, and the Yale Review.

Nadia holds a PhD in English from Columbia University. She is the founder of Align Your Story writing school, which brings traditional literary and creative writing studies together with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement.

Learn more about Nadia at her website, where you can also find meditations and other free resources.