Writing Through Grief Resources:
1. Panelist, Luna Jaffe’s Handout with poems and writing tips
2. Panelist, Tom Flanagan’s Letter and Poem
3. Panelist, Tanya Lord’s Poems
4. Tom Flanagan’s Blue Skies Rhode Island website
If you went to share your writing anonymously on Tom’s Unspent Love Letters portion of the website, email him at BlueSkiesRIGrief@gmail.com
5. Luna Jaffe’s Look Mom, I Can Fly website and book; Luna’s personal website
6. Visions & Voices (PSCP-SADOD’s online memorial for submitting expressions of grief)
7. Julia Cameron on the importance of a daily creative ritual
8. Elizabeth Gilbert’s (author of Eat, Pray, Love) “Your Elusive Creative Genius” TED Talk
9. Pioneer Valley Writers’ Manuscript Program (can help with manuscript development)
10. University of Arizona tips for poetry
11. What’s Your Grief Journaling Course
12. Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief
13. Ann Randolph’s Unmute Yourself Course
14. Nature sounds to help create a soothing environment for writing
15. Ideas for how to start writing when you are feeling stuck
Brain dump
Subtractive poem
Writing prompts
Sentence stems
Finding shared community of writers (unmute class)
Starting with a title
Identifying fixations
Channeling a muse
16. Selection of poems written as letters
“Love Letter from the Afterlife” by Andrea Gibson: From a loved one to the person left behind.
“Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” by Mary Elizabeth Frye: About living on in the wind, sunlight, and stars.
“Heavy” by Mary Oliver: This poem reflects on how surviving deep sorrow brought her closer to her grief.
“Not Now” by Ullie-Kaye: This short dialogue poem offers a new way of seeing grief.
“But You Didn’t” by Merrill Glass: To a partner lost in the Vietnam war.
“Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: About his sister.
“To a Dead Friend” by Langston Hughes: Reflecting on the world continuing to turn after a friend’s passing.
“What the Living Do” by Marie Howe: Telling her brother about mundane tasks that continue after his death.
“Remember” by Christina Rossetti: Pleading to be remembered.
“To My Mother” by Edgar Allan Poe: Speaking to his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, after the death of his wife.
“In Memoriam A.H.H.” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Addressing his deceased friend, Arthur Henry Hallam.
“Letters to Grief “by Kate Motaung (2024/2025): Personifying grief.
“The Drift Called the Infinite” by Emily Dickinson: A letter to her cousins after her mother’s death.