Soulfaring –

Past Programs, Performances, Fellowships and Awards 2012-2021

 

Ongoing:

Host for monthly Poets Laureate of Lawrence open mic/featured poet program at Lawrence Art Center, every 4^th Tuesday, 2012 – Current

Past Programs, Presentations, etc. include but are not limited to the following:

2020-2021:

Due to Covid-19, I took a break from public programs and presentation and started writing a book.

2019:

April 6, 2019

Yoga Nidra with Celtic Harp

Flourish Yoga + Wellbeing

3pm

Liza will play therapeutic harp accompaniment to this hour long yoga nidra meditation. Back by popular demand!

February 10, 2019

Two Writers Who Mother Me: Homage to Ursula LeGuin and Mary Oliver

Heartland Unitarian Universalist Church, Carmel, IN

Poet Liza Hyatt will share poems and passages from the writings of her two most favorite authors and reflect on how their words provide a life-giving home generous with spiritual wisdom. Both of these authors kept writing and speaking into the last years of their lives. Having lost Mary Oliver last month, and Ursula Le Guin in January 2018, Hyatt’s presentation on their writing will honor them, express gratitude, and keep their voices alive.

2018:

September

Corning Irish Heritage Foundation, Montgomery IN

A Braided Story for My Irish Great Great Grandmothers

October

Resiliency Training Indiana Public Defenders, Muncie and Indianapolis

Let Your Yoga Dance, Nature and Art Self-Care Retreat, Story, IN

December

Compassion Fatigue and Resiliency Inservice, Eating Disorders Task Force of IN

 

 

2017:

November 4, 2017

Indiana Historical Society

Storytelling Arts Basile Emerging Stories Fellowship Performance

A Braided Story For My Irish Great Great Grandmothers

Hyatt performs with harp accompaniment an original family history story about how learning about her Irish great-great grandmothers transformed her life.

2016:

March 17, 2016

5:30 pm; 36 E. Market St., Wabash, IN; 260-563-9070.

Wabash County Historical Museum – A Poet’s Pilgrimage on the Wabash and Erie Canal

Liza will share poems and stories developed while following the path of the Wabash and Erie Canal, researching the lives of her canal building Irish ancestors who came to Indiana in the 1830’s. In the bardic tradition of Ireland, Hyatt will accompany her poetry with Celtic harp. Hyatt’s tracing of canal history will inspire others seeking to explore their own family history. A discussion period and dialogue about ways to creatively research our shared Hoosier heritage will follow Hyatt’s presentation.

Hyatt’s project is funded in part through a grant from the Indiana Arts Commission and is a Bicentennial Legacy Project.

April 19, 2016

7:00 pm, 1030 W. Washington Street, Delphi, IN

Wabash and Erie Canal Center –

A Poet’s Pilgrimage on the Wabash and Erie Canal

Liza will share poems and stories developed while following the path of the Wabash and Erie Canal, researching the lives of her canal building Irish ancestors who came to Indiana in the 1830’s. In the bardic tradition of Ireland, Hyatt will accompany her poetry with Celtic harp. Hyatt’s tracing of canal history will inspire others seeking to explore their own family history. A discussion period and dialogue about ways to creatively research our shared Hoosier heritage will follow Hyatt’s presentation.

Hyatt’s project is funded in part through a grant from the Indiana Arts Commission and is a Bicentennial Legacy Project.

 

November 9, 2016

Bless This Mess, Theater at the Fort

Lawrence, IN

As part of the Spirt and Place Festival, particants in Hyatt and Krapf’s Writing About Difficult Relationships Workshop share creative non-fiction and poetry about complex relationships. The Indiana Art Therapy Association hosts an art show exploring the same them.

 

2015:

April 8, 2015, 7:00 – 8-30pm

Hancock County Public Library

As part of National Poetry Month, Liza Hyatt reads from her work “The Mother Poems,” followed by a free writing workshop.

April 12, 2015, 7:00pm

Evening With the Muse, Writer’s Center of Indiana

As part of National Poetry Month, Liza will perform poetry in bardic style accompanied by her Celtic Harp, sharing work from her three books and also one or two poems by her favorite poets.

May 1, 2015

Listen to Your Mother Show

May 7, 2015, 6:30pm

Poetry on Brick Street

Sullivan Munce Cultural Center, 225 West Hawthorne Street, Zionsville, IN 46077.

http://www.brickstreetpoetry.org/?page_id=746

In honor of Mother’s Day, Liza will read from her book The Mother Poems and will also share new poetry.

 

June 20, 2015, 9:30 am-2:30pm

Oldenburg Franciscan Center

Mining the Dark for Healing Gold: Writing About Difficult Relationships with Norbert Krapf

Speaking openly about conflict-filled and wounding relationships is often such a frightening process that we avoid it at all costs. Yet by not articulating the conflict in these relationships, we deny ourselves access to the whole context of our lives and can’t live our present and future fully. Memoir writing and poetry offer us ways to speak truthfully, patiently, and compassionately about these relationships. When we use such forms of writing as a spiritual practice to acknowledge relationship wounds, we cultivate a profound healing. We cannot brave this mining of our lives, however, without guidance and support from others (therapists, pastors, spiritual directors, friends) aware of our writing journey, sensitive to the impact of trauma within personal relationships, and willing to walk alongside us, listening as we find words to speak what was unspeakable.

Indianapolis poets Norbert Krapf and Liza Hyatt have made such personal writing journeys. In Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet’s Journal of Healing, former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, at the age of seventy, speaks about his abuse as a child at the hands of a priest and the lifelong effects it has had on him, his family, and his loved ones. He speaks in four voices, the boy, the man, the priest, and Mr. Blues. In The Mother Poems – A Memoir: The Warrior Queen Novelist and Her Poet Daughter, Liza Hyatt, as she enters her 50’s, untangles her relationship with her mother, a powerful and inspiring figure also emotionally distant, critical, and unwilling to participate in the details of her children’s adult lives. The Mother Poems begins with Hyatt’s earliest memory of her mother and culminates in poems that give voice to the author’s grief after her mother’s death.

As writers who know the difficult terrain that must be traversed while writing such challenging poetic memoirs, Krapf and Hyatt have joined together as presenters. In Mining the Dark for Healing Gold, they read from their work, share the story of how they came to write their own healing memoirs, identify the social supports and creative practices which sustained their work, and engage participants in a discussion of emotions and memories evoked by hearing the authors’ poetry and stories. Hyatt, a licensed mental-health counselor and art therapist, will provide information about ways in which creative self-expression is instrumental in the healing of trauma. Both authors will guide participants in experiential writing activities through which participants can begin to write about their own complex relationship wounds and also develop skills to assist others who attempt such a challenging writing journey. During the workshop, participants may begin to write about a difficult relationship in poetry or prose (a letter, description of a memory or episode, character portrait, memoir chapter, free or formal verse, journal reflections, etc.).

Drawing upon perspectives found in depth psychology and creation spirituality, Hyatt and Krapf unite, in a rare gender-balancing collaboration, to address the spiritual wounding that affects all men and women in our culture. While sharing their individual stories – about a boy being wounded by a man he called Father and a girl being wounded by a woman she called Mother – they also enter into dialogue about our shared need to heal, at an archetypal level, the injured Masculine and the rejected Feminine. In grappling with the cost of this imbalance in their own lives, they celebrate each other’s healing and help workshop participants enter more deeply into such important soul-work.

 

2014:

Art of the Matter, WFYI Public Radio, May 15 and 17, 2014

Indy Reads Books, book launch for The Mother Poems, Indianapolis, IN, May 21, 2014

Indy Reads Books, one of three featured Chatter House Press poets, June 14, 2014

Unbroken Bones Society, Robert Parks United Methodist Church, performance with singer-songwriter Sarah Grain, June 14, 2014

Riley Cheer Guild membership luncheon, harp music, June 26, 2014

Pensy Trail Art Fair, authors tent, June 28, 2014

Unbroken Bones Society, Robert Parks Methodist church, featured poet, August 9, 2014

Fourth Street Art Fair, Spoken Word Stage, Bloomington, IN, August 30, 2014

Heartland Unitarian Universalist Church, guest speaker, September 28, 2014

Unbroken Bones Society, Roberts Park Methodist church, featured poet, October 11, 2014

First Fridays Poetry, featured poet, Fort Wayne, IN, November 7, 2014

Indy Reads Books, Writing about Difficult Relationships reading with poet Norbert Krapf, November 19, 2014

Indy Reads Books, book release for Indy Writes Books, December 5, 2014

Indiana Authors Holiday Book Fair, Indiana History Center, Indianapolis, IN, December 6, 2014

Omni Severin Hotel, private party for Indy Writes Books authors, donors, and Indy Reads Books Board of Directors, December 11, 2014

 

2013:

Brick Street Poetry, Zionsville IN, March 7, 2013

“Under My Skin: Compassion Initiaton” Performance Art presentation, Art Therapy Symposium, Mount Mary College, Milwaukee, WI, April 20, 2013,

Listen to Your Mother Show, part of a cast of women writers, Indiana History Center, Indianapolis, IN, May 2, 2013

“Under My Skin: Compassion Initiation” Performance Art presentation, St Mary of the Woods College, August 2, 2013

Elaine Voci’s “An Evening With…”, featured poet, Carmel, IN, September, 26, 2013

Unbroken Bones Society, Robert Parks Methodist church, featured poet, October 12, 2013

Eating Disorders Task Force of Indiana Conference, presentation on Expressive Art Therapy, October 18, 2013

Bookmamas Bookstore, poetry reading, November 9, 2013

Heartland Unitarian Universalist Church, guest speaker, November 10, 2013

 

2012:

Art of the Matter, WFYI Public Radio, March 16 and 18, 2012

Book Mamas Bookstore, Irvington, IN, March 17^th 2012

Fort Wayne Friends of Jung, March 31, 2012

Zionsville Public Library, guest of Village Poets for Poetry Month, April 10, 2012

St. Mary of the Woods College Earth Literacy Gala, April 14, 2012

Artsgarden, Circle Center Mall, National Poetry Month featured poet, April 23, 2012

Art of the Soul, Indianapolis, IN, May 11, 2012

Tome on the Range Bookstore, Las Vegas, NM June 8, 2012

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Indianapolis, IN, July 6, 2012

Cultural Arts Gallery, IUPUI Student Center, Indianapolis, IN July 13, 2012

Evening with the Muse, featured poet, Writer’s Center of IN, Indianapolis, August 12, 2012

Heartland Unitarian Universalist Church, Indianapolis, IN August 19, 2012

Following Fridays, Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, IN September 14, 2012

Play Therapy Association of Indiana Annual Retreat, September 21, 2012

Hancock County Public Library, Greenfield, IN September 27, 2012

Unbroken Bones Society, Robert Parks Church, Indianapolis, IN, October 13, 2012

Poets Laureate of Lawrence, Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, IN, October 23, 2012

Fringe Festival of Indianapolis, Cracked Eggs Storytellers, August 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 2011

Evening with the Muse, featured poet, Writer’s Center of IN, Indianapolis, Sept. 12, 2010

 

Fellowships/awards/grants received:

2017 Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Indianapolis Arts Council

2017 Frank Basile Emerging Stories Fellowship for work on ABraided Story for My Irish Great-Great                Grandmothers

2015 Indiana Art Commission Individual Artist Project Grant for work on Once, There Was a Canal

2014 Pushcart Prize Nominee for “What We Write” in The Mother Poems, Chatter House

2010, First Place, Food for Thought Writing Competition, Indiana Humanities Council

2008, Cultural Scholarship, Indy Irish Festival for study of Irish harp, tin whistle, storytelling

2006 Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Project Grant for work on book-length poetry manuscript, Under My Skin

2003 Blair Sadler National Award for Arts in Health Care, Julian Center Mosaic Project

2003 Frank Basile Emerging Stories Fellowship for developing a new storytelling performance, Through John Muir’s Eyes, 1867.

2002 Rose Voci Fellowship for Women Writers

2001 Partner’s For Peace/Turn Off The Violence Domestic Violence Project Award for the Julian Center’s D.V. Awareness Mosai