Waking in the Blue
Poetry & Essays about Mental Health

Edited by Sherri Levine and Sam Rose Preminger

In this ground-breaking anthology—curated by Sherri Levine—more than three dozen authors share their poetry and personal reflections on illness, healing, and how mental health shapes the craft of writing. In the Foreword by John Fox, founder of The Institute for Poetic Medicine, he writes, “Waking in the Blue is infused with inclusion & surprise, heartbreak & struggle, wisdom & love.” This book is an invitation for anyone to tap into their own creative spark as a way to heal and maintain their own mental health or help someone who may be struggling. The compassionate message that rings true throughout these pages will remind the reader: you are not alone.

Contributing Poets/Essayists:

Kelli Russell Agodon • Shawn Aveningo Sanders • Lana Hechtman Ayers • Miriam Bassuk • Zan Bockes • David Stanford Burr • Susan Carberry • Elisa Carlsen • Linda Casebeer • Dale Champlin • Tinamarie Cox • James Crews • Merridawn Duckler • Nadine Dunseith • Nadine Ellsworth-Moran • Elizabeth Brulé Farrell • Andrea Hollander • Dana I. Hunter • Marc Janssen • Auna Johannesen • Joan Kantor • Tricia Knoll • Payal Kudesia • Laurinda Lind • Catherine Mary Macías • Karen Marker • Carolyn Martin • Emily Moon • Frances Opila • Sam Rose Preminger • Anna Quon • Bonnie Henderson Schell • elmo shade • Diana Spore • Margaret Stawowy • Chase Twichell • Jeanann Verlee • Koon Woon • Victoria Wyttenberg

Early Praise

Waking in the Blue is testimony and revelation, a breaking through barriers of silence, shame and stigma, revealing healing powers of poetry, courageous self-expression, and empathic community by those who have walked the talk, those living with severities of mental health distress such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, grief, and more. Reading Waking in the Blue is to know you are not alone. Be inspired to befriend your own poetic voice and discover the gifts it will bring.

—Diane Kaufman, MD, founder/director, Hold On Campaign for Suicide Prevention

Though there is plenty in these pages to feel sad or scared or mad about, the poems and brief essays in this anthology contain beauty and wisdom and deep humanity. To enter the work of these poets is to be allowed into an authentic, vulnerable place that is moving, compassionate and often exquisitely created. I felt honored to be let inside the minds of these authors, but best of all, I was lifted time and again by the authors’ faith in poetry—how for both reader and writer, no matter how disordered or stormy the weather of our hearts and minds, poetry can keep us alive. Thank you Sherri Levine and Sam Rose Preminger for compiling this important book.

—Julia Levine, PhD, author, winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry

Sherri Levine’s edited anthology, Waking in the Blue: Poetry & Essays for Mental Health, is a powerful collection of Poetry and essays by a blend of highly respected and emerging contemporary poets. What makes this collection stunning is Levine’s invitation to each contributor to address how their mental health affects their creative process. Each entry includes one to four poems followed by a brief essay in which the author describes—and occasionally analyzes—how their life experiences shaped their work. This is one of the most haunting and satisfying literary anthologies I have ever read. We first see the actors presenting their craft on stage, and then we go backstage to sit with them as they tell their stories. While the Poetry is often lyrical, melancholy, and nuanced—with occasional hints of sunshine and humor—the essays often reveal horrifying traumas, quiet isolation, and years of crippling anxiety. These narratives serve as a powerful testament to how poetry can be used to navigate a difficult past. As a reader, I came away with a far deeper respect for these writers and the resilience behind their craft. This book should be required reading for aspiring poets and mental health professionals alike.

—James Pennebaker, professor emeritus of psychology, University of Texas at Austin

How does a mad girl pop and sizzle? The writings in Waking in the Blue are testimonies to the lived experiences of its writers and their mental health challenges. They are not just histories of sadness and trauma. Here are the mechanics of writing for psychological survival: raw, marvelous metaphors, honest anguish, poetry shaped by emotion. These poems and writings remind us that even in the depths of suffering, language can become a lifeline—and that the fragile, courageous act of telling one’s story can turn solitude into solidarity and pain into something luminous.

— Sherry Reiter, PhD, CM, director, The Creative “Righting” Center

Waking in the Blue is a celebration of human spirit—how we endure, how we suffer, how we thrive. As Payal Kudesia writes, “My mental illness often feels like both a curse and a muse,” but when these experiences are shared with courage, honesty and generosity, they become gift. How do we meet what is most difficult? How does writing help us practice self-compassion and self-awareness? How do we honor all aspects of our aliveness? How do we go on when our next breath feels like a risk we’re not sure we can take? These writers open us to the complexities of our humanness. I found myself and my beloveds on every page. This book makes me tremble and want to cheer at the same time.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Wonderment, host of The Poetic Path

About the Editors

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by Sherri Levine

A collection of voice poems, In These Voices, allows us to peek inside the lives of a variety of characters. Levine, through the magic of language, embodies a jilted lover, a worried husband, a young woman, a son, a granddaughter and even a squirrel.

About the Author

Sherri Levine lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches English as a Second Language to adult immigrants and refugees at Portland Community College and Portland State University. Her work has been published in The Timberline Review, Hartskill Review, VoiceCatcher: A Journal of Women’s Voices & Visions, Verseweavers, Perspectives Magazine, The Poeming Pigeon, and The Sun Magazine. She won First Prize (Poet’s Choice) in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Biannual Contest (2017). Sherri recently served as Poetry Editor for VoiceCatcher. She escaped the long harsh winters of upstate New York and has ever since been happily soaking in the Oregon rain.

What They’re Saying…

Sherri Levine’s debut, In These Voices, deals in the charms and quirks of language, the vagaries of love and loss, and the confusions and wonders of life going by. It is a wise, delightful collection.

~ Joe Wilkins, author of When We Were Birds,
winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry

From the first, brilliant poem to the last, tender one, In These Voices is a surprising joy ride. Sherri Levine’s cast of characters range from “Girl,” who “steps out / of the subway /in her shimmy / shine short shorts / shoe-fly / halter tie / crop top . . .,” to the child of “The Greatest Jewish Cowboy” who says to him in a prose poem, “. . .please hold me in your coat, keep me warm, pull me close so I can whisper I love you in your ear.” In “I Ate a Raymond Carver,” Levine asks, “If I ate you, Raymond Carver, / would I write like you?” The answer is Yes. She, too, is a “Master of minimalism, / carving and chiseling / characters . . .”

The book closes with a beautiful, lyrical poem, “There is Poetry in These Rooms.” Gratefully, her reader responds, “There is poetry in this book!”

~ Pat Schneider, author of Writing Alone and With Others
and How the Light Gets In

Sherri Levine’s poems are full of captivating words and images with just the right amount of sparseness. They are about being a child and being an adult; about romances and heartbreaks; about the parents we remember and who they’ve become; about students and truck drivers and cowboys and squirrels. But ultimately, these poems are all about love.

~ Alida Thacher, Co-Founder, PDX Writers

Sherri Levine’s poems transport the reader not just to another place in time, but to a different state of mind. Each of her voices puts you right behind their eyes, lets you feel the bath water chilling around an aging body or the hula hoop spinning around a pair of strong young thighs. Thoughtful, lyrical and totally unique, I keep going back for more.

~ Thea Constantine, author of Stumptown

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