The Naked Room
The Naked Room
(forthcoming from Broadstone Books, Jan. 15th)
The Naked Room, (forthcoming from Broadstone Books, Jan. 15th) is a true synthesis of Willa Schneberg's life as a psychotherapist, (of one not exempt from angst), and her life as a poet. These are poems of the unconscious, the dreamscape, the despondent, the unmoored and the mortal. This manuscript not only goes inside the inner workings of a clinician’s practice, but has a larger scope, which includes the history of psychiatric treatment with its dangerous “cures” and embedded prejudices, and treatment today and lack thereof for the houseless and insolvent for whom entering the realm of the “therapeutic hour” is a luxury beyond reach.
Mudhouse Residency
Agios Ioannis, Crete
Poet in Residence
Willa spent an idyllic two weeks at the Mudhouse Residency in Agios Ioannis, Crete with other artists working in a variety of genres: painting, animation, choreography, composition and photography. Agios Ioannis is a tiny hilly village where houses share walls with ruins, and at one end is a taverna and the other, a bar.
Cottage Tour
Lotus Vajra Sculptor's Work at Like Nobody’s Business
Click the link here to check them out.
Willa’s ceramic sculpture is available at the newly reopened artisan shop on NW 23rd in Portland. Like Nobody’s Business and Willa are also mentioned in The Jewish Review’s article “Art: Creating and Sharing in a Pandemic.”
Like Nobody’s Business
971) 352-6838
904 NW 23rd Street
Portland
TINY MONUMENTS
For David Maisel, who photographed canisters holding the ashes of mental patients at a state hospital in Oregon.
The lyrics of Molly Mayo's song "Archipelago" were inspired by
"Tiny Monuments."
When human beings were still locked away
for sadness clinging to them like a marine layer,
hearing voices telling them how awful they are,
going fetal when cars backfire or corks pop,
they were housed at the Oregon State Insane Asylum,
and when they ceased to be, they were cremated.
If no one claimed a brother, a daughter, or a father,
the ashes were left in numbered copper canisters,
on pine shelves in an underground vault.
Not infrequently the water table rose
giving the forgotten homes uniquely their own,
coated with efflorescence and mineral dazzle,
where an alchemy of copper and water bloomed
and burst into color.
These tiny monuments to the scorned and unknown,
wear patinas of pink, burnt sienna, ocher, aqua,
and if you look closely you will find
moon craters, archipelagos, frozen waterfalls,
dunes with lone tracks, and Big Dippers
embedded in their pores.