On first Wednesdays we share post(s) that illustrate Transformative Language Arts in practice.
This week’s post author is Nicole Livengood, a Certificate in TLA Foundations student and a wonderful occasional guest facilitator for our free Community Circles.
We invite comments, questions, conversations and restacks. If you like what you read, click the heart or share us with friends!
I couldn’t help but chuckle as I looked around at the five women scattered across my living room. One chewed on her lower lip, tapping her index finger on her jeans. Another patted her hand on her notebook. A third paused to count on her fingers before crossing out a word.
Each woman was intent on corralling her creativity into lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Just minutes before, we had looked at haiku of one line, and of three lines with just eight syllables. What surprised them? I asked. What did they notice? The haiku didn’t consist of three lines of seventeen syllables total, they cheered. Their trepidation over haiku dissipated as we discussed haiku’s flexibility and its function: to notice, capture, and contain. To create a snapshot of a moment.
I am not, to be clear, a haiku expert or poet. I am, though, an observer of the body and the world. My rediscovery of haiku came as I drove to town in February. My nerves thrummed, my breath was shallow. Anxiety threatened to take the wheel. I flipped off NPR in disgust. As I nestled back into my seat I caught a glimpse of–was that– a rainbow? It was. Liquid, pale magic rising between the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, above my town’s historic post office on a 2 below zero day. A photo couldn’t capture its promise. My fingers started tapping out syllables on the steering wheel. I played with words, and arrangement, and gerunds, and finally got:
Two below zero Frozen hearts destroy the world And yet – a rainbow
Nice. Nicer still was that the focused concentration on syllables and imagery meant I could not obsess over anything else. There was no room for NPR, or my to-do-list, or the what ifs that had been ruling my life. This is what I wanted to offer my friends in the haiku workshop. They were waiting, in a state of suspension over their non-profit jobs, their cancer treatments, their children's financial aid packages. They, like me, were frazzled and tense and felt powerless. But over the course of two hours, we all found respite in a freedom that came, paradoxically, from the constraints of seventeen syllables that we resented as third graders. We discovered, as one participant put it, a “gift of a practice that [we] could use to create peace and joy”.
Haiku demands little, and offers much to the anxious, the wired, the knotted up, the monkey-brained—in other words, the human. It’s an accessible, creative meditative practice that wrangles life’s mess into something manageable.
Seeds on the wind Hope
Nicole C. Livengood is a writer, independent scholar, community health advocate, recovering academic, and seeker. In 2023, she received an NEH grant for her project on Zulma Marache, a French immigrant whose memoir of seduction and abortion was published in 1844. She's seeking the work of hands in Act II of her life, and TLAN has been an essential part. She sporadically posts to her Substack, The Higher Call.
Come write with us: two months of TLAN events & classes
Check out our classes, free community events, and our annual conference. Scholarships are available.
24 August 2025 5:00 PM • online • free and open to all!
Performances and presentations of their work by TLAN members followed by an artist talkback. Join us!
Writing Hope: Turning to the Page in Difficult Times // with Angie Ebba
10 September 2025 • Online
This class is ideal for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the world, going through a difficult period in life, or processing change, as well as those wishing to expand their creative practices or learn/practice various types of poetry. All levels of writers are welcome.
15 September 2025 • Online
A creative workshop to explore your concerns and experiences with our climate reality and nature’s intimate connection with us.
Writing the Dead // with Sharon Pajka
17 September 2025 • Online
If you’re curious, if you’re grieving, if you’ve ever whispered to a loved one who’s no longer here, or wished you could, this course is for you.
Transformative Language Arts Network Community Circles
21 September 2025 5:00 PM • online • free and open to all!
2025 Power of Words Conference
03 October 2025 (CDT) • Unity Village, 1900 NW Blue Parkway, Unity Village, Missouri • A joyful in-person celebration of community, creativity, and the power of written, spoken, and sung language.
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A wonderful example of a gathering of friends around words - and just as important - noticing what is right in front of us. I’m inspired to try this too!
Yes! "It’s an accessible, creative meditative practice that wrangles life’s mess into something manageable."