For some, writing is a chore. For others, it’s kindling, lifeblood.
Nestled in a small Vermont town four hours from Portland, Goddard College is a hub of progressive thinking. Goddard offers low-residency programs in unique disciplines including environmental studies and consciousness studies. One unique offering is its Transformative Language Arts program, which prepares students to facilitate using language—“written, spoken, or sung”—as a transformative tool. The program is based on the belief that setting pen to page can melt you, mark you and morph you.
Several Portland residents have completed their Master’s Degree with a concentration in Transformative Language Arts, and have manifested their studies with writing groups for teens at Long Creek Correctional Center, women living with cancer and people surviving the loss of a loved one.
“Words have absolutely helped me survive brutal times in my life,” says one Portland TLA graduate. “Emptying my head out onto the page and making something new has allowed me to mark transitions, and then move on.”
Goddard’s TLA program was founded by writer Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg in 2000. “TLA is all about finding and even restoring meaning, through the language arts, to our lives,” says Mirriam-Goldberg. Whether it has to do with enhancing healing or helping people make changes that they want to make in their lives or helping communities understand and celebrate themselves much more. TLA is storytelling, writing, theater, blending different arts.”
“There are so many studies out there now that show how expressing ourselves in words out loud or on the page can absolutely improve physical health—it can lower blood pressure, it can increase the responsiveness of the immune system. And of course on an emotional level, using our words helps us to make sense of what we’re doing in our lives,” says Mirriam-Goldberg, who is also the current poet laureate of Kansas.
To find out more about TLA and Goddard College, click here. You can also visit the TLA Network’s website here to learn about TLA’s professional network and annual conference.
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