Good Listening on the Backstairs

becoming a certified listener poet

Aug 13, 2025

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There’s a piece of art hanging on my wall. A seminary graduation gift. A metal sculpture. A person or maybe an angel. A sticker on the back that reads “listener.”

Looking at it, memories rise. Memories of being listened to and listening to others. Memories of desperately longing to be heard and times I wasn’t able or willing to hear what others were sharing. Memories of the giver of that gift. The way she compassionately listened on one of my hardest days. Memories from a few months later, listening to her vulnerably share from a hospital bed.

We were more than fifty years apart in age. She was a black woman born in the south, who lived through segregation and the violence of racism. One of the first times I listened to her speak, she told a story of witnessing a lynching as a child and how that memory haunted and shaped her entire life. As a young white girl in elementary school, lynching was something I heard about very briefly, as an aside to a Civil Rights lesson.

Looking again at that gift, I’m reminded that life is an invitation to listen, that like a song we long to be listened to, and like the depths of the sea we are called to listen.

Karl Messinger wrote, “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.”

Just like listening drew the gift giver and I together—like a strong magnet—it drew me to The Good Listening Project (TGLP), a nonprofit dedicated to humanizing healthcare through the healing power of poetry and compassionate presence. Listener Poets are an essential part of this work, holding one-on-one sessions where individuals share whatever is on their heart and mind and then transforming what they’ve listened to into a custom poem.

In January, I attended a Listener Poet Info Session. Listening to others and writing poems about what you hear? Um, yes, please. Had I finally found my place? A way to be a queer poet in a world that keeps telling me who I am isn’t welcome and what I’m good at isn’t wanted?

The timing wasn’t right for me to be part of the winter cohort, but I absolutely trusted that the right time would come. And it did. I applied and was accepted to the summer cohort.

There were ten amazing humans in the Summer 2025 Certified Listener Poet Cohort. Each listener bringing unique perspectives, wisdom, talents, and interests. Twice a week, for five weeks, in 3-hour blocks, we came together from not only around the United States, but from around the world. Our facilitator was magical in her hospitable and nurturing teaching style. Every guest added new energy and insight to the conversation. Every word spoken and heard, became a magnet pulling us closer and closer to the transformative force of community and creativity.

Our sessions covered a range of topics and poetic techniques; from building trust to resisting burnout, from holding space to equity and trauma informed practice; from haiku to tanka, ekphrasis to freeform. We had lively discussions about ethics and compassion, empathy and suffering. We practiced listening and writing together. We gave presentations on our curiosities and possibilities. We completed a practicum that included facilitating six listening poet sessions.

New Listener Poet notebook. Not that I ever really need a reason to buy a new notebook.

Through this course, not only was I fortunate to meet brilliant poets, but also to listen to and create poems for six incredible poemees. I chose to focus my practicum on individuals working as mental health counselors and therapists. My anxiety was high as the pressure felt intense. These individuals not only took time from their busy lives to meet with me, but they also trusted me with their emotions and stories. Each encounter, every poem was my favorite.

In my final presentation to the cohort, I spoke about poetry as a form of memoir, a way of expressing and experiencing memory. Whether we are crafting a poem from our own memories or from listening to those of another, we are active participants in storytelling. Storytelling is incomplete until there is also storylistening.

The English Novelist and Poet of the Victorian Era, George Meredith suggested, “Memoirs are the backstairs of history.”

What I didn’t share with the cohort is that when I was a kid my family struggled to make ends meet and my folks took on a lot of odd jobs to pay the bills. One of these jobs was cleaning an old building in downtown Flint; a home built in the late 1800s turned into a law office. I often went along to help out.

There were two staircases. There was the main staircase at the front door with its beautiful and so hard to dust and polish wood railings and banisters. And there was another at the back, hidden away from sight behind closed doors. It was steep and narrow. The floor creaking with every step. The light not always wanting to turn on.

I remember asking why a house would have two staircases and why they were so different. The servants needed a way to move about without being seen, I was told. The answer only stirred more questions.

And then it started to make more sense why we only came to clean late in the evening or on weekends, why I was embarrassed about being seen taking trash from the basement to the curb, why I was hushed that time I told a story about polishing the front staircase.

There was another story about the house floating around. It was haunted. The ghost could be seen peeking out the window when conditions were just right. I never saw her, but I’m convinced I heard her whisper once at the top of the backstairs. There’s no limit to what you may hear when you’re open to listening.

The backstairs of history are full of memories and spirits. The floor and the walls crying out with stories. Stories creaking, waiting to be told. Stories echoing, eager to be listened to. These are the stories I want to tell and hear. These are the poems I long to write. And because of TGLP I am better prepared for this important work.

The world doesn’t really want to hear these backstair stories, but we absolutely don’t need their permission. We do, however, need room to bring them to life, to move them from memory to consciousness. Storytelling and storylistening are an antidote to shame and a recipe for healing for everyone involved. A society bans stories because it knows their potential for provoking change.

I’m looking again at the listener on my wall. Remembering the giver, who not only gifted me a meaningful piece of art, but also a story. She trusted me with pieces of hers and created soft safe space for me to share pieces of my own.

Two people who on the surface had so little in common, but after listening to each other realized the backstairs we climbed, while different, shaped us in similar ways. Her experiences of racism and my experiences of homophobia filled us both with a desire to build a world of equality and justice; where people understand intersectionality and the ways that power seeks to divide in order to more easily conquer; where listening is mutual and reciprocal; where stories are served with morning coffee and bedtime snacks.

I came to The Good Listening Project hoping to find a new spark, new purpose, new dreams. What I found was that and so much more. Deeply listening to others, I heard the courage to gently listen to myself. What I heard changes me. I am a better poet. And more importantly a better person. Ready to do my part in creating a better world.

Listening isn’t a lost art. But we might have to climb the backstairs to fall into it.

What memories do you hold of listening and being listened to?

Who has been a good listener in your life?

With Water and a Listening Heart,
Rebecca & 10CAMELS

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