July 2026 Letter | John Fox, PPM

Dear Friends of Poetic Medicine,

How is your summer? I hope summer is bringing uplift and flourishing green.

For millions of people, however, especially in the American East, Mid-West and in Europe, summertime is bringing extreme, life-threatening heat. The fires in Canada have sent intense smoke into the northeast part of the country.

That level of heat and smoke aren't anything to mess around with. Please keep yourself hydrated and as cool as you can be. Please find safe and breathable air. Check on your neighbors, particularly if they are elders, make sure they are all right and ask whether they need help.

It isn’t summer for everyone who is in touch with us from around this planet. My thought as I begin this letter is to be inclusive – to make sure everyone feels welcome! I hope that your winter, your season, is, in its own way, offering wisdom, is a teacher that brings blessing.

I Love Golden Days

At this time, faced with news of wars, social and economic injustice, and so much else harming our earth and people, that disturb and trouble people of conscience, including me, summer and the natural world remain a time of delight. That delight is good for the heart.

Marcie Schwartz, a Certified Practitioner of Poetic Medicine in Massachusetts, catches that good-hearted delight in these lines from her poem Summer Loves:

I love golden days,

lazy days, no school days.

Hot sun and warm skin,

bare toes in sand or grass.

The ice cream truck’s music,

filling the neighborhood.

Do these lines resonate for you? Uncle Marty ice cream truck’s music resonates for me. I remember running after it.

Marcie’s lines open a timeless world for me, images I savor, as if a poem has the power to deliver me beyond memory. This power of language to shift, disrupt, dissolve, and transform linear time and thought, make me consider a remembrance not boxed into and defined by time.

Summer’s Talent to Run Ahead

I cherish the idea of “remembrance” in relation to creative language and our lives.

Remembrance in the sense of the yogic philosophy, Sanatam Dharma, the “eternal way of life,” which posits that a divine memory of who we are, called “smriti” in Sanskrit, is a living divinity within and with us always.

Walt Whitman, in stanza six of Song of Myself, shows this consciousness:

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait

at the end to arrest it,

And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I believe this divine memory is expressed in poetic language. I called my first book Finding What You Didn’t Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making because of this – welcoming people to connect with and reconnect with their creative spark that may be forgotten or disregarded, yet is never lost.

In that book, I quote Zen Master, Suzuki Roshi, from his classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, to encourage receptivity to this memory of our original nature:

That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind. To experience this is to have religious feeling.

~ Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

All seasons, in their unique ways, may wake us to this deep remembrance. Here I am, writing to you in early July, considering how summer reaches my soul. I wrote a poem called The Edge:

What I learned about

making my soul

came from immersion

in Summer's talent

to run ahead on the path

and disappear

all on its own. I am lost in

Cottonwood snow, light swarming

in a breeze that gives away

no secrets, smiling,

swept along with

my arms extended wide open

toward what I already know.

There, settled on the serene face of

early evening, a burnished gold hum

dissolves into silence and fire —

to appear as the first star,

a constant presence

I trust, trusts me, this place

where I meet

all I belong to

at the edge, summer just out of view,

breathing in

something more.

~ John Fox

I learned and I still learn from summer about trust. I learned and I still learn from summer what a joy it is to live with “my arms extended wide-open.” I learned and I still learn from summer how to love that “serene face of / early evening, a burnished gold hum.”

Oh, yes, summer’s “burnished gold hum.” What does summer bring you?

My Visit to Cleveland & Northeast Ohio

Summer brings me travel. In my nearly annual way, I am traveling to Cleveland, to northeast Ohio, my hometown, August 23rd through September 6th.

At the age of twenty-three, in 1979, I traveled by Amtrack to Northern California. I have lived here for forty-seven years with a deep love for this state.

YET I have never lost my affection for Buckeye people and our mid-west ways, for my classmates who have stayed, and for the gorgeous landscape and my home-ground, beside Lake Erie. Chris Fox, my younger brother, lives in Cleveland Heights with his partner Lynn Segelin.

Speaking of seasons! Growing up there, I dipped deep into each-and-every-one. When I return home, I am in touch with a felt-sense, the seasonal vibration of that place. I connected with poets and poetry. Way back then, I was in contact with a wonderful poetry teacher, Alberta Turner, and the many poets Alberta gathered at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Alberta wrote one of the best books on poets and their writing I ever read, 50 Contemporary Poets and Their Creative Process.

I recall my 12th grade English teacher at Shaker Heights High, Mr. Gar Aikens. I remember standing in the doorway of our classroom with Mr. Aikens. It may have been near the end of the year, June,1973, standing in that threshold doorway. He gave me a copy of Selected Poems and Two Plays by W. B. Yeats. This is my time-worn, split-up copy, held together by a large clip.

I learned many of Yeats’ poems and can still recite them into the air, your ears and heart.

That gift of Yeats was so generous and so aware of what I would treasure, what I needed. Yeats became a lasting inspiration. Yet even more important was what Mr. Aikens said to me:

“I don’t understand much about poetry. You do. GO with that.”

And that is what I did. A simple statement of encouragement and seeing me like that – what a gift! Thanks to Gar Aikens.

I digress! Let me get back to my upcoming visit to Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. There will be two public events and there will be my many regular stops to wonderful non-public places to bring poetic medicine.

The Community of St. Peter welcomes me again on Friday evening and Saturday on August 28th and 29th. I was at CSP last year. The Community of St. Peter is a special, courageous community!

I offer Connections: Synapses of Flourishing in Creating Human Experience. The keynote for this retreat is found the opening stanzas of this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Bless the spirit that makes connections,


for truly we live in what we imagine.


Clocks move along-side our real life


with steps that are ever the same.


Though we do not know our exact location,


we are held in place by what links us.


Across trackless distances


antennas sense each other.

Check-out the flyer for Connections. Please let others know.

For many years I have kept a steady connection with the Cuyahoga County Library on South Euclid in Lyndhurst. Specifically, I have worked with the superb and wonderful Laurie Kincer. Laurie, for so long, has directed the William N. Skirball Writing Center.

I will be there on Saturday, September 5th, offering a day retreat, Seeing Takes Time. We will unpack this quote:

Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small—we haven’t time—

and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.

~ Georgia O’Keefe

That day, we will give our time to – see & discern, pause & slow down, pay attention & tap into silence -- write & listen. We will share our poems, by invitation.

My use of the past tense “directed” is because that wonderful and superb Laurie Kincer is retiring from the library and William Skirball. She has brought so many writers forward – given them so much support. What a graceful and good way to live and serve. You will be missed. Thanks to you, Laurie!

During my visit I will be two days with elders at Laurel Lake Retirement Community in Hudson, OH, I am invited for the 8th year by Chaplain Jon Dodson. This happens after being invited for another eight years by the prior chaplain, Mary Tatman. I love chaplains and how they love poetic medicine!

Thanks to Darnell Epps, IPM Board Member, I will bring poetic medicine to elementary teachers at Hawken School. The purpose is to encourage, inspire and SHOW them how to bring writing magic, creative sight, felt-sense, and imaginatively wild poetry into the lives of children – and this is critical – my even deeper task is to give these remarkable, stalwart teachers, an equal share of this.

If they are going to encourage children in this way, I need to show them poetry and poem-making are accessible for them as teachers and even more, as persons. It is just as possible, is even necessary, for them to enjoy playing with words!

2100 Lakeside Homeless Shelter with Annie Holden

Another special program will be returning to 2100 Lakeside Homeless Shelter for Men. The truly great human BE-ing Annie Holden, invites me. She has been regularly bringing poetry to these men since I was there in 2009.

Jack Shierloh invited me to 2100 that year, 2009, after he had experienced poetry-as-healer at The Gathering Place, a cancer support center in Beachwood. Jack knew, living with prostate cancer, that making poems changed his life. He noticed and remarked how I got down onto the floor to look up, as I listened to him and others.

I welcomed Jack’s invitation. To make it work optimally, I wanted these men to receive extra support. I asked a friend Annie Holden, along with Jack, to come along and if there was a need, to act as a scribe for these poets. A scribe listens to and writes down in poetic form the words spoken out loud.

Something in that experience clicked profoundly for Annie. To make a long and very interesting story, shorter --- she was won over by these human beings who happened to be without housing, won over by their integrity, creativity and insight, won over by her own opening heart.

She left her 30 years of retail bookstore work and with the help of grants (Vista, AmeriCorp) she applied for, she kept her life going and dedicated herself to bringing poetry to the 2100 Homeless Shelter.

That compassionate dedication included drawing into that circle many volunteers – Julie Michelson, Flo McNichols, Jack Shierloh and other people offering that scribing service, offering their humanity, offering care to unhoused men, marginalized by this country. This volunteering went on for years.

Julie Michelson says, “This felt like a true community – such diverse backgrounds – yet it was a true community.”

Eventually, Annie was hired onto the staff at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries, where she continues to work to this very day at 2100!

I share this story of Annie and 2100 because the inspiration and significance of her life-choice, the immense capacity of poetry to make a difference, to hold a sacred place, is so apparent and I will never tire of lifting it up.

Annie is not alone having a story of greater meaning that IPM has a part in creating.

I am sure there will be other opportunities for poetic medicine in Cleveland. If you have ideas, let us know! Something I count on, god-willing, is to celebrate my 71st birthday on August 31. I usually connect that birthday event with attending a Cleveland Guardians baseball game!

What else? There is so much that is flourishing in this great work.

Poetic Medicine Summit Programs in July and August

We are very pleased with the continuing unfolding of IPM's Poetic Medicine Summit 2026. What began in late April carries on with the monthly Impact and Outreach Series. You can still register for the Summit. We have events presented by our established PPM Graduates and Poetry Partners, every month, for the rest of 2026 and beyond!

On Thursday, July 16th from 12-2 Pacific, we welcomed a presentation by Witek Nowosiad, IPM Board Member and lead Chaplain at Children’s Health in Plano, TX. Witek is a leader in the practice of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Throughout the United States, CPE-trained chaplains serve in hospitals and other places.

I met Witek many years ago at a regional Southwest CPE Conference where I did a presentation. I am always looking to nurture and make these relationships generative. The Institute for Poetic Medicine is a breathing, living, creative, generative “being.”

We hit the jackpot in sharing this with Witek!

For the past many years, in an extraordinary way, Witek weaves together Poetic Medicine and CPE. He believes in the therapeutic benefits of combining poetic medicine and chaplaincy. The chaplains he trains are encouraged to participate in the 9-week Poetry as a Tool for Wellness Facilitator Training series and he is currently working with IPM to guide a team of chaplains through the Practitioner of Poetic Medicine (PPM) program. Presenting at the next National CPE Conference, Witek will reach many others who teach and can benefit from CPE with his woven gift!

His program for July is titled Healing Words Amid Suffering: Poetic Medicine and Chaplaincy:

This workshop explores how Poetic Medicine’s creative approach to self-expression can deepen chaplaincy practice — especially the sacred disciplines of listening, silence, and presence. Through examples of poems written by chaplains and others engaged in spiritual care, we’ll reflect on how poetry can accompany moments of pain, grief, and transition.

You need not be a chaplain to benefit from this. You may be from another helping profession touched by listening and caring. It may be true to say that we are all engaged in spiritual care.

On August 22nd our Poetic Medicine Summit 2026 Impact and Outreach Series will offer Poetry as a Tool for Creating Community: A Behind Bars Experience, a program guided by the poets of Circle Up Austin, volunteers who bring poetry and other programs to women in prison in Texas. Circle Up Austin poets trained with IPM via Poetry as a Tool for Wellness. Julie Wylie and the others on that team are well described online:

In Central Texas, Circle Up is an organization that uses the "Poetry as a Tool for Wellness" format to help incarcerated individuals in women's prisons build community and process emotions. Their writing workshops and readings have been active in facilities like the Lane Murray Unit.

Circle Up Austin is a Poetry Partner with The Institute for Poetic Medicine, hosting workshops that teach justice-impacted individuals how to write and connect without pressure for their poetry to be "perfect". These sessions have been described by participants as moments of healing where they learn that they are not alone.

I attended a poetry reading given by nine women inside the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas. In addition to hearing the liberating creative freedom of their voices, which was so much about reclaiming their spiritual health, core individuality, courage, and integrity. I was given a treasured anthology of their poems.

Speaking with these women, poets who are incarcerated, I am inspired by how much they felt their own poems and poetry are steadfast companions of their heart. Standing next to Lily Archuleta, as I held this anthology, she told me she and her poet-friends feel the faith and companionship of the women from Circle Up. She said this is a safe place – the poetry and the Circle Up presence – a safe place, in an environment fraught with contention and challenge.

We Appeal to Your Voice, an Important Region in all Who Talk

I could go on! I am told that I write too much. I could try crimping my style. But I don’t wanna do that. I like writing to you. I like celebrating the work IPM does – it isn’t “work” in the typical sense – there is a serious side to it, but this is for authentic life. As William Stafford writes in A Ritual to Read to Each Other:

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes, or no, or maybe—

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Yet, by and by, and maybe at last, we can arrive where W. B. Yeats lands in the last lines of his poem A Dialogue of Self and Soul:

I am content to follow to its source


Every event in action or in thought;


Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!


When such as I cast out remorse


So great a sweetness flows into the breast


We must laugh and we must sing,


We are blest by everything,


Everything we look upon is blest.

I wish that for us, forgiveness, a great sweetness flowing into the heart, to laugh and sing, to feel blest and to bless.

Wait! I almost forgot, suddenly, there is this something I was present for, 31 years ago, something I can’t forget, possibly this is “smirti,” divine memory: something short, sweet, and true:

This is the green pasture of my poem, The Edge.

I hope that you stay safe and healthy. Or, if you are having a challenge of health, a challenge of circumstance, your friends at IPM encourage you to breathe and take good care. Please remember to take particular care if there is a heat wave where you are.

You can write. You can look for opportunities to write with others. The Institute for Poetic Medicine is here. Let us know.

Kindness,

John Fox

p.s. If you are inspired, encouraged or perhaps surprised in learning all that IPM is about, all that we are doing in the world, as described in this newsletter – if you want to be a part of making such a difference in the lives of people -- please add your support of good thoughts, your financial help, and your creative ideas. All are needed. They are and you are, welcome. And I am grateful.