Maggie Smith Writing In A Way That Is Brave Real And True...

Maggie Smith: Writing in a Way That Is Brave, Real, and True

Maggie Smith —

August 8, 2023

Maggie Smith: Writing in a Way That Is Brave, Real, and True

Maggie Smith — August 8, 2023

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Bestselling poet Maggie Smith has a gift for embracing the complexity of our human experience—and for writing about it with piercing intensity, clarity, and beauty. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Maggie about her approach to her craft and to life, and how writing can serve as a pathway to self-discovery and release.

Featuring a reading of the beloved poem “Good Bones,” this insightful episode of Insights at the Edge explores metaphor and life in sensory experience; poetic memoir; Maggie’s “drill-down” exercise; entering the territory of our pain; balancing a creative life and domestic responsibilities; the notion of “containing multitudes”; being an integrated, whole person; intuition and the deep knowing of what is brave, real, and true; sitting with the splinters (instead of sanding them down); allowing “full wingspan” for both individuals in a relationship; endurance versus closure; forgiveness versus acceptance; taking a bird’s-eye view of our experiences; making life more beautiful for everyone; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of “You Could Make This Place Beautiful,” “Good Bones,” “The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison,” “Lamp of the Body,” and the national bestsellers “Goldenrod” and “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change.” A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.

Author photo © Devon Albeit

Posted August 8, 2023

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Each week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon interviews leading voices in the Mind/Body/Spirit space about a vast spectrum of fascinating ideas. Since 2009, Tami and her guests have been exploring the edge of understanding, nearly 1,000 episodes on the honest work of change, including spiritual discovery, awakening, intuition, purpose, trauma, and grief.

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Maggie Smith: Writing in a Way That Is Brave, Real, and True

Maggie Smith: Writing in a Way That Is Brave, Real, and True

Maggie Smith — August 8, 2023

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