Poetry Therapy Threshold of Remembrance

Dear iaPOETRY community,

As I look toward this next season of iaPOETRY, I feel called to carry forward those who have passed—our mentors, colleagues, and friends. In my own ancestral healing work, I’ve come to understand that ancestors are not only blood-born; they arise from community, love, care, and, in our case, from words and mentorship. When we think of those we’ve recently lost—Mari, David, Nessa—and those who left us long before many of us arrived, I find myself asking: How do we carry their presence and impact into the community we are forming today?

I want to offer us a shared space to remember, reflect, and honor those who shaped our poetic journeys, so future members can understand the threads that have woven through us, and will someday weave through them.

As poets, we know the power of metaphor. Mentorship often feels like a vertical line—wisdom passed from mentor to mentee,  person to another. But our work in iaPoetry also honors the horizontal: the way these threads move through community. Nessa was my mentor; when she passed, Sana stepped in. In my “poetry therapy DNA,” I carry both of them, alongside my own evolving poetic self. Anyone I mentor will carry those stories forward, too. Our poetic DNA reaches beyond the living, reminding us that the influence of those who came before us continues in our work, our words, and our presence.

I would be honored to gather stories of our mentors and beloveds in one place—an evolving threshold where memory can be held and visited. Since Poetry on the Bridge is part of our shared lineage, I’ve been thinking about bridges and thresholds: places we cross, places we pause, places where the veil feels thin. I imagine this Threshold of Remembrance as such a place—stone by stone, memory by memory, a living archive of the people who shaped us.

Would you join me in co-creating this Poetry Therapy Threshold of Remembrance?
If you have memories or anecdotes about someone who breathed life into your iaPoetry journey, I would be grateful to receive them. Let’s gather these threads and weave them into our shared poetic lineage.

Please email your memories and stories to me at lisamarie@hiraethlon.com.