Happy solstice, dear friends. As of today (Sunday, December 21st), we have passed through the longest night and have begun to celebrate, in ways both small and rousing, the return of the light.
Today is a high holiday of sorts for me, as I am a walking solar array, a Persephone. Every year, I go into an underworld of the psyche in the dark half of the year. Right around May 15th, and rarely earlier, I re-emerge and feel more fully myself, the weight of winter tossed aside and forgotten…for the next six months. Two years ago, I started taking cold dips in the ocean once a week or so, with friends. This supports my nervous system in winter, curiously. My first dip was terrifying, then exhilarating, when I realized my heart did not stop when standing waist-deep in the Atlantic in January.
To all who are celebrating the winter holidays this week, I clink my mug of tea (or glass of fancy seltzer) with you. To all who are grieving or feeling blue, I see you, too.
This weekend, I’ve shared a gorgeous interview-essay with Stevie Trevino, whom I wrote about a few weeks back. When I met her, I just had a sense that her devotion to craft went beyond the mechanics of putting words on paper. She, like many creatives, is a channeler, devoted to the practice of creation and all the inner work that requires.
When you think of channeling creativity, who comes to mind? Send me a message or leave a comment with your connections. I’d love to hear and share them with all of you.
Warmest wishes to all as we celebrate the return of the light.
Rochelle
Natalie Goldberg and a New Orleans Poem Store
with Stevie Trevino
“Whether you call it channeling, improvisation, flow, or another name, at a certain point, the creative process becomes ineffable, mysterious, and sacred.”
Tell us about the spark of your idea for the Poem Store.
When I was three years old, I had a toy typewriter and when I was four, my mom taught me how to read and write. I’ve loved writing poetry and stories since I was a child, and would sometimes give my dad copies of them, in which he wrote comments in the margins. As a teenager, I discovered Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones. I read it over and over, turning to its pages as I would to a friend. I internalized many of her ideas, like trusting first thoughts, turning off the inner editor, and viewing writing as a practice. She has a chapter on spontaneous writing booths, where she writes about setting up a table and a sign out in public and writing poetry for strangers. Reading that as a teenager in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the 1990s, I felt the idea was both magical and impossible. When I moved away at 20, I had completely forgotten about it.
At 27, I moved back to Michigan and went to college. Before my last semester, my friend and I took a road trip to New Orleans. It was there that I fell in love with street music. After leaving, I wanted to return to New Orleans and play music on the street but I didn’t play an instrument! I had a couple of typewriters, one of which I would leave around my college campus, set up with paper and instructions for people to write what they wanted to on it. I felt like there was something I could do with a typewriter to busk on the street. I wanted to be outside, in the flow of people, creating art. After graduation, I did some digging. I believed that what I was looking for existed already, and I just had to find it.
Then one night I found a video of a woman with a typewriter set up on the street, writing for people in New Orleans. As I watched the video, I was transfixed by a powerful sense of serendipity.
Lit up, magnetized, and breathless. It was as if I was looking into a portal, through which some part of myself was looking back with a clear message—that I was going to New Orleans to write poetry on the street.
Where was your first Poem Store? Do you have any memorable encounters from those earliest days?
I was 32 the first time I set up my poem store in New Orleans. The first night I went out with my typewriter, I just stood there, too nervous to set up. The next night, I didn’t hesitate. I got to the corner with my typewriter and a milk crate, and sat down.
The first person I wrote a poem for was an adorable woman a few years older than me. She asked me to write a poem about her, and then asked me to let her sit in my lap while I read it to her, which I did.
People came to New Orleans looking for magic, and they would find it. I was one of those people looking for magic, and I was also someone creating it. I’m from a town of 500 people. Being surrounded by so many people on the street every night, interacting with those who chose to approach me, and writing poems for them was mind-altering and consciousness-expanding.
There were nights I would sit with my typewriter as people streamed all around me—behind, in front, both sides, in a constant flow—and there was no way to look at them all, there were so many moving so fast. Most of them didn’t seem to notice me, though they walked close enough that they might brush my table as they passed. Mostly they looked straight ahead, probably focused on wherever they were going next, and I could stare at them as they walked by, and they would never see me sitting in front of them. Then all of a sudden someone’s awareness would separate them from the crowd. As they looked at me, I watched their energy transform from simply noticing to really seeing me and my typewriter, and becoming curious, then excited, and saying, “What are YOU doing?”
And we would talk and make magic happen through being present with each other in the moment, this brightly colored locus of connection glowing amid the chaos of the street, and then the typewriter keys made their music and more people would hear that and they would come and wonder, “What are you doing? What’s happening right here, right now?”
What is the role of creative channeling in your writing?
My process is intuitive. I try to maintain a clear channel, and writing poetry for strangers has paralleled my journey of shadow work, in which I seek to uncover and acknowledge hidden aspects of my psyche. It’s important because people are trusting me with their stories and the contents of their souls, and it’s my responsibility to maintain clarity within myself, so that I can honor others with my words.
Every poem I write shines a light on some aspect of consciousness. When I’m writing a poem for a stranger who is standing in front of me, it’s likely that the poem is going to shine light on aspects of consciousness that the other person has brought to my attention, which I otherwise would not have been holding in my awareness. Certainly on this journey I’ve written poems that have asked me to shine lights on places wholly in the darkness of my unawareness.
People are trusting me with their stories and the contents of their souls, and it’s my responsibility to maintain clarity within myself, so that I can honor others with my words.
I endeavor to write the best work I can, without fear or desire for reward. This involves practicing writing quite a lot, as well as reading others’ work and learning about elements of craft. Being curious about my psyche and my heart, and being willing to seek out all the sneaky ways I turn to fear and desire, is essential for me to maintain a clear channel. Fear and desire ultimately distract by turning my attention toward or away from their objects, and I want to keep my attention on the act of writing, the people in my environment, and my experience of the present moment.
Whether you call it channeling, improvisation, flow, or another name, at a certain point, the creative process becomes ineffable, mysterious, and sacred. I feel honored whenever I reach a point in writing where I feel that the act of creation grants freedom to the unconscious, both individual and collective, to manifest and play in the work.
I sit at my typewriter—I arrive. I hold out my hand. A hand reaches out to hold mine.
Stevie Trevino is the creator of Stevie’s Poem Store, which brings the experience of live typewriter poetry to public spaces and private events in and around Portland, Maine. Her work is inspired by transpersonal experiences, Jungian psychology, nature, and time. Influences include Ada Limón, Charles Bukowski, and Mary Oliver. You can follow her on Instagram.
Stevie is leading a generative writing workshop in January 2026 in Midcoast Maine. A wonderfully imaginative way to while away winter (in a yurt, to boot).
Lovely to meet you here, Stevie!
Thank you for this and the special message within.