In-Versing Your Life
Cynthia Blomquist Gustavson is a prize-winning poet and a pioneer in the world of poetry therapy. This podcast takes one poem and relates it to the current day, then challenging the listener to write.
- Update frequency
- every 4 days
- Average duration
- 9 minutes
- Episodes
- 23
- Years Active
- 2020
23. Why we’re so divided?
🗳️ Elections are close and people find it harder to talk to one another. 0:43
🧐 Looking through different lenses showed me something different. 1:34
👂 'Sound principles' a poem from 'Please Use This fo…
22. A Caring Community
🏙️ 00:15 There is always somebody to help you in Tulsa.
🐦 01:06 Canada geese's community spirit is strong.
🪁 01:53 Poem: "Migration"
💞 04:15 The poem is based on a true story - wild geese sacrifice for …
21. Loss
✝️ 00:15 There are funerals where nobody shows up and funerals where there are many friends and relatives.
⛪ 01:23 Not all the relatives could get to the funeral of Cynthia's Dad because the church wa…
20. Double Helix Twisting
🏥 00:15 Both Cynthia's mother and sister are breast cancer survivors. She wrote a poem about that.
📕 01:06 The poem can be found in the book "Re-Versing Your Pain"
👩⚕️ 01:27 Poem: "Double Helix Twisti…
19. What I Hunger For
🍁 00:15 It's a privilege to live out at the lake house. It is so quiet and the fall is beautiful.
⛰️ 00:38 Cynthia talks about what inspired her book, "Between Tahlequah and Tulsa."
🧅 01:14 Poem: "Numb…
18. The Grid in My Brain
🥶 00:15 Cynthia muses about how it finally got cold in Oklahoma.
🧭 00:51 Today's poem is a new one, exploring the symbolism of the sides of the world using the "grid".
🌐 01:38 The "grid" exists everywh…
17. How Change Helps Us Grow?
😇 What makes us change from day to day? 0:57
😮 The whole concept of change is about nurture. 1:44
🎙️ Cynthia reads a poem 2:43
🪕 Music has always been a big part of Cynthia's life. 6:02
🎶 Music her Dad …
16. Who am I? # 2: About the soil
🧩 Poetry is a puzzle, and I make up my rules. 01:14
📖 A poem from the book "Conversing with God, poetry for pastoral counseling and spiritual direction." 2:05
🐦 About the poem Catbird 1609 C 2:24
😊 Cyn…
15. Dialysis
🥇Cynthia's first poem was published in a national publication in 1984. 0:14
😇Dialysis is a poem of hope. 0:59
🎙️Cyntia reads the poem Dialysis. 2:54
🍂Enjoy the colors of autumn. 3:48
https://cynthiagusta…
14. Body Image
📂 "Perfect and terrible" categories of body image you push yourself in. 0:17
📖 Cynthia reads her poem `Image` 1:11
✌️ Thin is in but also is sexy. And being your own woman. 2:34
👀 Life seems easy for m…
13. How I Move Forward?
🚴 Using a riding on a bicycle as an extended metaphor. 0:20
📖 Poem: "How I move forward?" 1:01
😇How do you move forward? And do you think about your spirituality? 2:52
🌎 I try to lessen my footprint on …
12. Yoga and Poetry
🌧️Rain is so wonderful, it extends green colors in nature. 0:18
🧘Just like yoga stretches, poetry stretches you inside towards unreachable places. 0:50
📖Reading: Poem about Yoga. 1:25
🤔Thinking about wh…
11. I Want to Play the Drums
🏡Working out in September and using onomatopoeia in writing. 0:19
🥁A story for children; "I Want to Play Drums" 1:41
👂Thinking about sounds in your world. 6:54
🧒Using poetry as therapy for children who'…
10. At the Beach
🏖️ Hope you have been to the beach this summer, haven't you? 00:15
☯️ Two kinds of people in the world, according to various dichotomies. 00:45
⌛ [poem: "Walking on Sand"] 01:41
🤔 Have we ever considere…
08. Merry Mary at the Fair
🔠 Following is a new children's story, where many homonyms are used. 00:15
🎢 ["Merry Mary at the Fair and the Unfair Merry-Go-Round Fair - A Story in Homonyms"] 02:08
🎙️ "Being a poet, I love the sound…
09. The Real You
🌅 The most beautiful August ever! 00:15
👉 Introducing the poem. 00:35
💇♀️ [poem: "Split Ends"] 01:16
❓ Split ends as a metaphor and what it means. What are the remaining hairs? 02:24
3️⃣Three things tha…
07. Summer Retreat
🛖 We all have our own special connections to log cabins, don't we? 00:15
🍂 [poem: Knotty Pine and Cozy Dark] 01:39
🌱 Find your unwinding time and place, so you can find yourself, again. 04:45
🙏 Visit Cy…
06. Ask yourself: Who Am I?
🤔 Who am I? There are so many ways to answer this question. 00:32
👴 [Cynthia introduces and reads a poem about her grandfather, Mr. Knoblauch] 02:56
👶 Children are born with their temperament, their pe…
05. What do you think of when you hear the word “tomatoes”?
📖 Two tomatoes-related poems from the book "Con-Versing with God". 00:15
🍅 Cynthia receives the "August Tomatoes" 00:57
🪖 Cynthia reads the second poem, "Tomatoes in Cages" 01:42
🌡️ Tomatoes as a metaph…
04. Interview with publisher of Blooming Twig Books
📚 Kent explains the origin of his publishing company name and its tagline 01:16
🪖 Soldiers getting used to reading through comic books and how that resonates with writing books that people want to rea…