Poetry as a Living Practice

Sonia Iris Lozada, author of Poetry as a Living PracticeIn this season of Poetic Resurrection, I explore poetry as a living practice by sharing poems from Awakening Dreams. A poem continues to change long after I have written its final line. When I return to it months or years later, experience brings something new to the reading. A phrase I once understood through sorrow may reveal acceptance. A question may become more complex, or I may finally be ready to sit with it.

That ongoing conversation is at the heart of Poetic Resurrection.

Through the podcast, I bring poetry into spoken performance and explore its relationship to memory, identity, spirituality, and everyday life. My work as a writer and performer meets here: the words on the page become voice, rhythm, breath, and silence. Reading aloud allows me to discover where a poem asks us to pause and what feelings emerge in that space.

My published collections—including Inspire Me: Raw, Inspire Me: Perceptions, Inspire Me: Awakening Dreams, and Follow: Akashic Dreaming Through Time—explore different aspects of our inner lives. Across these books, I return to questions about how we understand ourselves, what we carry, and how our understanding changes over time.

In this season of Poetic Resurrection, I have been sharing poems from Awakening Dreams. Revisiting them offers an opportunity to reflect on both the experiences behind the writing and what the poems mean to me today.

My recent episode, “When Doing Gives Way to Being,” explores a shift in priorities that I have felt in my own life. Growing up with little, I placed great importance on achievement and financial security. I wanted my work to be seen. Those desires shaped many of my choices.

I still care about reaching readers and listeners. But I have become more attentive to the quality of my daily life. The pleasure of creating, the freedom to follow an idea, and the peace of having time to reflect. Poetry helps me examine that shift honestly, including the uncertainty that comes with it.

Poetry as a Living Practice Through Meditation

My meditation work offers another way to share these explorations. Through The Still Point Minute, my year-long series of short meditations on YouTube, I invite viewers to pause and reflect on themes such as presence, compassion, trust, and freedom. Poetry and guided meditation both encourage close attention—to a word, a feeling, a memory, or a moment we might otherwise pass over. These recordings offer an accessible space for reflection and a gentle invitation to return to ourselves.

Alongside my poetry and audio work, I am developing a collection of dream-based psychological science-fiction stories. These drafts allow me to explore consciousness, perception, and identity through characters and imagined worlds. Working in another form brings fresh questions to my writing and challenges me to find different ways of expressing them.

Poetic Resurrection remains a place where I can share that evolving practice. Each episode begins with something that has held my attention and an invitation to consider it together.

I hope you will listen to “When Doing Gives Way to Being” and explore the poems and conversations throughout the podcast. Perhaps something you hear will stay with you—or help you find words for an experience of your own.

Thank you for joining me in exploring Poetry as a Living Practice, and may these words offer a moment of connection and reflection in your own life.

Many Blessings,
Sonia Iris Lozada

 

Life – World Poetry Day

World Poetry DayIn celebration of World Poetry Day held every March 21st. I’m reading some of my poetry and since it’s an international event, I will also read them in English and in Spanish.

“Arranged in words, coloured with images, struck with the right meter, the power of poetry has no match. As an intimate form of expression that opens doors to others, poetry enriches the dialogue that catalyses all human progress, and is more necessary than ever in turbulent times.” Audrey Azoulay – Director General of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The recorded poems are from Inspire Me: Raw. The poem Citizen and it’s Spanish translation Cuidadana are read and performed. Also, Forget and it’s Spanish version Ovide and to add a little humor because not all poetry is dramatic or traumatic, we have the poem Go-Go Boots.

Listen to Podcast here

Inspire Me Series Book 1 & 2

Contains Inspire Me: Raw, Inspire Me: Perception and five poems from the upcoming book Inspire Me: Awakening Dreams.