Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:34 — 79.9MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS | More
My guest for this episode is Meta Commerse. Meta is a poet, a novelist, and a healer. My initial motivation for this interview was and still is as a continuation of my series on Racial Reconciliation, because Meta offers a class through her Story Medicine Wisdom School titled, ‘Story Medicine for Racial Healing.’ But as I learned that Meta was a poet and novelist and had developed this resource she calls story medicine, I wanted to talk with her about each of those aspects–her art, her development of story medicine, and the use of her art and story medicine is facilitating racial healing. As you will learn, Meta prefers to speak of racial healing rather than racial reconciliation. It is because of her reasoning on this issue that I am changing the name of my ongoing series.
Consequently, this episode is the first of three. In this episode I talk with Meta about her story as it lead to her being poet and novelist and you will get to hear Meta read some of her poems and a selection from her novel.
Meta is the author of six books: Landscapes of Abuse (2001), Rainsongs: Poems of a Woman’s Life (2012), The Mending Time, a novel (2014), Blues Doula, poems by Meta Commerse (2019), Womaning, a memoir (forthcoming), and Diamonds and Pyramids: Story Medicine for Racial Healing (forthcoming).
You can learn more about Meta, her Story Medicine Wisdom School, the courses, lectures, and internships she offers in that school, the Community Action Projects offered through The Race Relations Station, and purchase Meta’s books through her website, storymedicineworldwide.com.
I want to offer a special word of thanks to Carol and Tony Asiaghi for letting Meta and I use their beautiful and peaceful West Asheville Garden Retreat and Sanctuary to record these three interviews.
The audio clip of Womanist theologian and ethicist, Dr. Katie Cannon, from the documentary, Journey to Liberation: The Legacy of Womanist Theology and Womanist Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, is used by permission from Union Theological Seminary.
The music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project. You can learn more about the album and the Worship Project at theportersgate.com.