“Poetry and psychotherapy are about ‘discovery’ and that requires me to become deeply curious about our experience of humanness — our wounds, longings, losses, regrets, and hopes.”

— Donna Henderson

Welcome to Fast Five, an occasional series in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.

Donna Henderson is a rare blend of creative accomplishment. She is a poet, writer, artist, singer, songwriter —and psychotherapist. Rooted in the arts, she is author of four poetry collections, two of which were named finalists for the Oregon Book Award. Her latest book, Send Word, published in 2022, is an evocative combination of poetry, art, and design.

Donna lives in Maupin, a town of 500 people situated along the Deschutes River in north-central Oregon.

1.
Why write?

I’m not sure I could have answered this question for the first few decades of my writing practice (that is, not with any answer that would not embarrass me to be connected with now!); all I knew was that I felt impelled to somehow, for (I understand now) the way writing organized and grounded something in me, from the very moment I began to be able to write words.

Writing let me feel seen in a family and a world at large in which I felt essentially unseen. I felt loved appreciated, to be sure, but not seen. And it wasn’t that I experienced writing as a way for me to be seen by others, I hasten to clarify: as a child, I didn’t share my writing anyway, and it wasn’t my purpose to. It was that writing gave me a way to hear my own voice, to register my own responses to the world (just as painting and drawing, which I also did from childhood, offered ways for me to see my own seeing). Like that, writing made it possible for me to see me.

Then, in 1975, as a student at Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon University), I enrolled in a class in Craft of Poetry from George Slawson, in which I had a profound experience with language that I am still dazzled by, grateful for, and continue to be led and informed by in my poetry practice these 50 years hence. I remember that I was trying to render into a poem the experience of both being part of, and observing, women in the shower room after a PE class, when suddenly I felt language itself take over, the words as they arrived (“skin”…“steam”) plunging me more deeply into the pure experience and wonder of the moment than before language had been engaged. Such that the poem that resulted (slight as it was, I still like it!) was a record of an experience of that: of an experience of wonder and discovery, intensified and made more intimate by the engagement of language.

Which is when and why I felt in love with poetry, which has been my primary writing practice since (though the purpose of my prose writing is the same): not as a means of self-expression (whether that be of emotions or opinions), but rather an engagement with language that engages me more deeply with wonder and with the senses, to see what there is to be made and to be understood by way of that engagement.

2.
You are an artist, singer, songwriter, poet and psychotherapist. What came first, and how did you develop and hone your skills?

Art came first, and was always there, and I credit my mother with that: she had five of us in quick succession, and while I experienced her as perpetually overwhelmed, and seeming to be more distracted than gratified by child-raising, creativity itself was her highest value (she herself was never happier than when writing, painting, playing the piano or dancing). So while we were expected to clean our rooms and help keep the house clean in general, the one place that never had to be cleaned up was the huge art table in the basement playroom, nor anyplace else that had to do with creative play.

Similarly, writing was just something we did in my family, (both my parents were journalists), so I suppose I started writing when I was given a diary at age five or so. And music was always a thing; mom played the piano, and both my parents loved music of all sorts, so I grew up listening and singing to music: it was just part of the water I swam in. So I really don’t remember a time that music, writing and art weren’t a part of my life, and I was fortunate that the public schools I attended valued and encouraged all of these also— I had some wonderful teachers! But I do think it is my mom to whom the most credit has to be given, and which was persistent throughout her life. I remember her unhesitating encouragement to me as an adult, when I was trying to decide whether or not to fork out the funds for a piano of my own (not really sure how ready I was to commit to actually playing it). “Of course you should buy it!” she told me. “Creativity, honey, it’s the most important thing.”

Later (and with each of the arts), I developed my skill by seeking out experiences of various kinds that would help me to learn the specific skills I wanted to learn. With poetry, I received that by attending summer writing workshops for many years, then an MFA (I graduated from Warren Wilson Program for Writers in 2006).

More recently, after languishing for many years, my visual art has been experiencing a happy renaissance since the year of covid quarantine, when I started taking classes on Zoom with Eugene, Oregon artist Zoë Cohen, who has been an important mentor and teacher since. In fact, the two of us are going to co-teach a class at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in the fall of 2025, involving language and art practices.

Excerpt from title poem, *Send Word*, by Donna Henderson.

As for psychotherapy: I have always enjoyed listening to others, and especially to (and for) how people cope with difficulty and make meaning and connection in their lives. So it kind of felt like a natural, I guess, to choose a profession based on that, and I went about learning to do it in the usual ways: school, graduate school, supervision, licensure, and (most importantly) a lot of great mentorship, continuing ed, and a wonderful network of wise colleague-friends, over the almost 40 years since I began practicing.

The practice itself of psychotherapy actually feels very much like simply another genre of creative work, in the way I practice it anyway. Because while poetry is commonly thought of as being about “self-expression,” and the objective of therapy as being “self-improvement,” I actually understand both poetry and psychotherapy to be about “discovery.” And that requires me to become —and to remain—deeply curious about our experience of humanness — our wounds, longings, losses, regrets, and hopes — with my clients, and to engage in that curiosity through language. And while psychotherapy typically begins with the stories clients carry about who they are and why they are that way, the actual process of therapy involves inviting clients to step off from there into what is unknown and unseen: to become more curious than certain themselves.

So I guess that you could say that “seeing and being seen” is what art, writing and psychotherapy all engage in…and it’s why I got into all of them!

3.
You co-founded Airlie Press, a collective poetry publisher. Why? And what have you learned through the process?

I’ll be briefer with this one (you’re welcome!): In the early 2000s, I’d been a member of a long-running writing group, most of the members of which had manuscripts of poems “circulating” (looking for a home).

But books of poetry are particularly difficult to place, since poetry does not make money for publishers, so there are fewer presses that publish it than that publish other genres. Because of that, a manuscript of poems, no matter its quality, has something like a 1% (or even less) chance of being accepted for publication by a press. On top of that, for poetry presses to even cover their costs of publication when they are unlikely to make much of a return, they charge a reading fee of around $25 for submissions. Given the number of presses one ought to submit to to increase the chances of an acceptance, a poet can (and we each did) easily spend $500 a year on submitting, with close to no chance of a bite.

So (to make a longer story much shorter) one of us proposed dedicating our time and funds instead toward starting a collective, shared-work press run by poets, based on the model of some others (Alice James, and Sixteen Rivers Press in particular), beginning with publishing each of our own completed manuscripts, and then opening to submissions by other poets who (if their manuscripts were accepted) would be willing to make a 3-year commitment to the work of the press.

It was a tremendously gratifying venture, and while I am no longer involved in the editorial work of the press (I currently serve on the Board of Directors) , I could not be more proud of how the press has thrived — it’s going on 17 years now, and continues to produce beautiful books of poetry (I think something like 40 titles to date), representing an increasingly diverse array of poetic voices.

Perhaps the biggest thing I learned from the experience was that the editors at Sixteen Rivers (who mentored and advised us) were right when they warned us not to try to start a press with fewer than seven initial members. Only four of us were up for it, so we decided to go ahead with it anyway and…well, burnout of the original members from active involvement was ultimately unavoidable, I think. A press is a LOT of work! I would not try it again with fewer than six compatriots, but oh what a splendid vision and venture it was, and (thanks to the dedicated work of the member-poets who have kept it going) and is!

4.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received (or given)?

Here are three pieces that come to mind: one is from one of my mentors in graduate school, Karen Brennan, and is particular to poetry: “Remember,” she said, “poetry is not made out of ideas, poetry is made out of lines.” which advice keeps me grounded in letting language, and not concepts, lead.

Another great piece of advice comes in the form of the poem, Berryman by W.S. Merwin.

And the third? In his book Mere Christianity (I think that’s where I read it) C.S. Lewis wrote, “I pray not because it changes God; I pray because it changes me.” That’s why I write, and what I urge other writers to focus on: the practice and the process, not the product. Paradoxically, the more I remember that, the truer (therefore better) my work becomes.

“Creativity, honey, it’s the most important thing.”

5.
I’m a word collector, are you too? What are your favorite words?

Here are a few: mimulus, gloom, cluster, pandemonium.

Also antidisestablishmentarianism, though only because it is (or was, when I was a child) the longest word in the dictionary, and because it gave my father endless delight that I could spell it (as I was often called on to do) when I was five, following his fervent tutoring to that very end.