1st Edition
Expressive Therapeutic Writing Guiding Transformation and Restorative Care through Intermodal Arts, Word by Word
This book brings engagement and conversation to a cross-pollination of creative and expressive writing and multi-modal art forms.
Through the lens of expressive arts therapy, the authors demonstrate how writing can reveal the unexpected that emerges from art making. The lineage of expressive arts therapy includes artful writing; poetry, associative, creative, and memoir, for example, to engage in self-discovery, growth, and restorative care. Each chapter is grounded in intermodal expressive arts with a central focus on creative and expressive writing, which is informed by movement, visual art, storytelling, music, sound, photography, and physical performance, including response art, and has writing prompts and invitations as well as playful and improvisational integrative arts writing explorations.
Creative arts therapists and expressive therapists actively searching for creative playful self-reflective writing practice will find this book a rewarding resource.
1.Intermodal Arts and Writing: How One Art Fertilizes the Other 2.Cultivating Practice in Writing with Other Art Forms 3. Writing as Praising Common Things: Odes, Prayers, Hymns, Amulets, and Rituals 4. Writing Details: The Spine of Soulful Writing 5. Writing and Metaphor: Stepping Away to Get Closer 6. The Children’s Department: Childhood, Children’s Literature, and Striving to Write More Like Children 7.A Body of Writing: Writing From, On, and With the Body 8. Writing on the Inside and the Outside: Boxes, Masks, and Other Containers 9. Letters, Notes, and Handwriting 10. Caring and Restoring: Righting Ourselves Through Writing 11. All Good Things Must Come to an End: Writing, Harvesting, and Gleaning 12. Leftovers: Gleaning from the Scribbles in the Margins After-words: A Thank You Note to the Book Index
Biography
Krystal Leah Demaine, Ph.D., MT-BC, REAT, CTRS-C, RYT, music therapist, expressive arts therapist and professor of Expressive Therapies at Endicott College practices HEARTful healing note by note through song, story, poetry and creative curiosity.
Tamar Reva Einstein, Ph.D., REAT, expressive arts therapist, poet/artist, and teacher, crosses cultural borders in Jerusalem with the arts as her mother tongue; threading writing and arts like her threaded beads and amulets.
“Reading Expressive Therapeutic Writing made me want to live forever to be able to try a fraction of the warm and welcoming, exciting and interesting, moving and nourishing writing prompts and suggestions offered by these authors. Krystal and Tamar have shared deeply from their hearts, souls and vast experience generously casting a magical spell that rejuvenates and enlivens the act of writing and gifts it back to us as a power we each have but may have misplaced. If you have ever wondered if you might have anything in you worth writing, read this book and discover your soul. I love this book!”
Pat B. Allen, Ph.D., ATR
“This book is part treasure trove and part feast! The authors create such an inviting atmosphere to writers of all levels of experience. Those new to the practice will find gentle encouragement, those who have been writing for years will find rich inspiration. They bring you on a journey through many creative possibilities where everything belongs and writing becomes a vibrant act of healing.”
Christine Valters Paintner, Ph.D., REACE, online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts and author of over 20 books.
“A warm and welcome invitation to everyone, not just the so-called "gifted and talented," to enter the forest of words, with many helpful prompts and suggestions along the way, it is also the heartfelt story of a collaboration between two friends, both skilled practitioners, Krystal and Tamar.”
Phillip Lopate, Ph.D.
“Krystal Demaine and Tamar Einstein have gone far beyond autoethnography in creating this feast for the senses! The alchemy of their intermodal collaboration features writing as a bridge, container, mirror, and thread in its use across academic, community, and treatment settings. Readers will find sustenance through experiential writing invitations, theoretical and historical wisdom, and case study-based uses of aesthetic feedback, all ensconced in image, film, movement, enactment, and sound. A unique and powerful resource!”
Nancy S. Scherlong, LCSW, CHHC, SEP, PTR/CJT-CM, President, International Federation for Biblio-Poetry Therapy and Registered Poetry and Journal Therapist, Psychodrama Practitioner
