Click here to view a video of Sheila Bender reading from A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief
Book Publication to Raise Funds for PTMSC Camp ScholarshipsA New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief by Sheila Bender
Port Townsend, WA, September 2009 -- Port Townsend author and writing teacher Sheila Bender is raising money for the Seth Bender Camp Fund at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center with proceeds from her new memoir, published by Imago Press of Tucson, AZ, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. The book is about the months following the death of Bender's 25-year-old son Seth in a snowboarding accident; combining the words of shamans and the nondenominational spiritual words of poets from a text she was using while teaching college classes, Bender uses prose and poetry to map the journey she made to an understanding of the eternal. Seth, whose toddler overall pockets were always filled with twigs and snails, grew up loving the coastal waters of the Northwest. "Helping provide more Northwest young people with opportunities to closely observe our marine waters is very much in keeping with my son's spirit," Bender says.
Instruction for Others Inspired by Son’s Spirit
As she was writing the prose and poetry that would become the book, Bender also launched an online instructional magazine for those who write from personal experience, www.writingitreal.com. Here, too, her son's spirit inspired her. She paraphrases him this way, "Taking time to write from personal experience provides the right food and the right stuff for finding what lights our souls and what we have to offer others."
Sheila is teaching from her book on line and in person, hoping to reach others for whom writing will help in healing from grief.
Contact: Sheila Bender, Writing It Real, info@writingitreal.com 360 385 7839
or Leila Joiner, Imago Press, 3710 East Edison Tucson, AZ 85716 ljoiner@dakota.net 520.327.0540
A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief
Poet and essayist Sheila Bender tells the story of her family and the family of her son Seth Bender’s fiancée coming together, understanding that 25-year-old Seth will be taken off life support. She writes about the months they faced together before the upcoming day that would have been his wedding day, and she tells the story of using poetry to write her way out of grief and find a way of carrying her son's life in her own, a way of understanding mortality and immortality. A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief is accessible, absorbing, and a bringer of peace to those who mourn.
(Paperback: 202 pages, Publisher: Imago Press, ISBN-10: 1935437046)
Where are words for our deepest sorrow? Where is language that allows us to live without our loved ones? In prose that's heartbreakingly clear, Sheila Bender invites readers along on her journey. She's honest about the stunned confusion, the denial, the futile hope that somehow her fatally injured son might recover. She opens her heart to write the wrenching moment of his death. With great generosity, Sheila Bender's writing shows how poetry can create moments when we can breathe, places where we can rest. Beyond that, fully aware of harsh losses, her work celebrates life, celebrates love.
-Peggy Shumaker, Wings Moist from the Other World
Maybe it's because of her extraordinary gifts as a poet that when Sheila Bender's beloved son died in a skiing accident, she did not shut down. Instead, she opened her heart and mind to take in what memory and life still offered. With this beautiful book Sheila Bender offers a way through unimaginable loss. I love this book.
Sheila Bender broke my heart and put it back together again.
-Abigail Thomas, A Three-Dog Life
In this beautifully rendered and soulful memoir about the tragic, accidental death of her son, Bender writes: “Poetry gives voice to our bleats and our barks, our bellows and our roars.” In fact, it is Bender’s voice—her poetry and her prose interwoven in this one compelling book—that guides us through her journey of grief to a new theology of life. In her lyrical language—whether it be a roar or a chant—we, as readers, find help and hope for our own healing, regardless of the nature of our loss.
-Sue William Silverman, author, Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir
This is a story about the healing power of love and grief, written with an elegant simplicity and authenticity that is bound to touch anyone who reads it.
-Miriam Greenspan, author of Healing Through the Dark Emotions: the Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair
Two pathways: the narrative—of a life, a family, of intentions and love, of what was, what was to be, of what ends abruptly—and the poetry—a doorway into unyielding grief and an opening for unique healing. The psychology in Bender’s combined approach wisely and simply continues to un-layer and heal the grief.
-Dr. Linda L. Moore, author of Release From Powerlessness: A Guide for Taking Charge of Your Life
Sheila Bender writes poignantly about the Continental Divide in her life, the death of her son, Seth. I imagine the rivers of the past, when Seth was alive in the world, flowing east, and the rivers of the present flowing in the opposite direction, to the western land. Returning to reading and writing poetry in the midst of her grief, Bender searches for meaning in loss. Through poetry, she finds her new voice and discovers how to give form to what has no body. This moving and significant memoir demonstrates the deepening of art that sometimes follows loss. Poetry becomes the sun that lights what is, after all, a single country.
-Meg Files, Write from Life: Turning Your Personal Experiences into Compelling Stories
You have written a very powerful book. It stretches poetry's hands into the depth of unimaginable loss and comes out loving. And thank you for allowing me to know your son. He will now be with me always also. A beautiful gift.
-Claudia Mauro of Whit Press
About the Seth Bender Fund
Donated funds support scholarships for Port Townsend Marine Science Center day and residential camps for youth between 8 and 13 years of age. You can read descriptions of the programs at http://www.ptmsc.org/ by clicking on "camps." Donations to the fund may be made at the Center's website or by mail to:
Seth Bender Fund
Port Townsend Marine Science Center
Fort Worden State Park
532 Battery Way
Port Townsend WA 98368.
You may order An New Theology directly from the author and receive an autographed copy. $20 includes an $8 dollar donation to the Seth Bender Memorial Summer Camps Scholarship Fund and includes shipping and handling.
About the Author
Sheila Bender began writing poetry when her children were small. She continued writing and studying poems and, in 1982, graduated from the University of Washington with a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing. Since then she has taught at universities and community colleges in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Tucson, and has published nine books on writing and two books of poetry.
Today she lives with her husband in the Port Townsend house her son Seth Bender designed. She offers one-on-one help and classes through www.writingitreal.com. On the site, she also publishes Writing It Real, a weekly online magazine about writing from personal experience, launched in honor of Seth on October 1, 2002, the 27th anniversary of his birth.
Sheila supports the Port Townsend Marine Science Center's Seth Bender Fund for summer camp scholarships with donations from her book's proceeds and delights in knowing that many children and teens, her two grandsons among them, are attracted to the rich marine life on the salt water shores her son adored.
