Yoga Poetry with Corie Feiner.

a questionnaire on practice, three poems, and a video reading!

I’m so in love with the energy around Corie Feiner’s Yoga Poetry project. She’s spreading this devotion like wildfire (in the good ways) in both yoga and poetry spaces, and I’m thrilled to have her here.

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Corie Feiner is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Bucks County, PA, and the author of Radishes into Roses and Who Was Born at Home? She is an international performance poet and slam champion with an MFA from NYU. Called “wonderful” by The New York Times, Corie has won numerous awards for her poetry, performances, and educational workshops. Her latest project, A Poem for Every Pose, combines her love of yoga with her craft. You can learn more about her, and join her growing community of yogis, poets, and seekers of inspiration on her community-building Substack publication.

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Do your works come together by accident while journaling or ironing, or are you more intentional?

The poems I am sharing here are from a series that I have assigned myself as part of a mission to integrate poetry into yoga practices worldwide. This is a new sort of project for me that has been ongoing and developing since 2021. It started with what may be considered an “accident” with my first poem for Hero Pose (written after a particularly powerful yoga practice) and has evolved since then to 89 poems.

Many of the poems are written early in the morning with a strong intention on what I am going to write. However, a good amount of the poems also came suddenly while traveling or during a yoga practice, where I stop and get it down on whatever I have, whether it is my journal, my computer, or my phone.

I am compelled to share with you that I often thought to myself, “Who am I to write these poems?” But I got support from two very close friends, got out of my own way, and just kept going. These poems came as a gift, and I realized that I could either take it or turn away.

So I took it. And actively take it every day.

What tools do you use (i.e., prompts, workshops, books)?

For my Poem for Every Pose project, I have an assignment, so my prompts are the poses themselves.

I also teach a somatic poetry workshop for women called the Bodylove Poetry Writing Workshop where we explore and write about different body parts. This is an outgrowth of my healing journey to reunite my mind/body/spirit and also to celebrate my miraculous body. During these workshops, I offer writing prompts, sacred writing time, and take this space to also write.

Outside of both of these projects, I write whatever I need to write and mostly do not share it with anyone. These poems and scribbles are just for me.

I have a simple composition book with stickers on it, whose pages I use generously. The simplicity of the Composition book gives me permission to take up space and write as much or as little as I would like. I had a lot of fancy journals, but I found myself not wanting to “waste” my pages because they were so pretty. So as much as I like the beautiful journals, I realized that my goal was not to look like a writer, but to write.

What inspires you?

I get inspired and excited about reading, writing, and life quite often. It is how I am wired. But what inspires me, in particular, to write poetry is how much I discover about myself and how good it feels to get in the zone of writing.

I am also inspired by my vision of performing my yoga poems at more festivals, retreats, and events, creating poster prints, cards, and books, and having them integrated into yoga school curricula. It is essential to work with my crazy-ambitious goal in mind in order to get past all the muck of not “feeling like it.”

How do you get inside a moment?

I used to mostly only write when a flood of feelings overwhelmed me, and the only thing I could do was get it down on the page. This feeling felt like heat in my chest – sometimes desperate, sometimes mad with smiles – and words would keep repeating in my head, then my mouth…

As I grew as a writer, I came to understand that inspiration can also be a practice. I show up to the page the same way I show up to my yoga mat. It brings to mind a quote by Chuck Close, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." (Insert smile here.)

My routine is to wake up as early as my body will allow and just start writing. I have been writing long enough that I allow the poem to be bad, to be messy, to be whatever it wants to be.

When I am writing my yoga poems, in particular, I set my intention, start writing, and often stand up, practice the pose, write more, look up instructions and any relevant mythology, write more, and then revise, revise, revise.

Some of the yoga pose poems – especially the ones with solid metaphorical names – came more easily, like Mountain Pose or Goddess Pose, but others with more mechanical names, like Extended Side Angle Pose, took more effort.

But I have learned to trust the process and to trust and honor the vision of my project.

How do you know when a piece has come together (does it feel a particular kind of way in your body)?

When crafting a poem I intend to share, I am known to revise it anywhere from five to thirty times. I know that it is coming together when I am able to read it out loud all the way to the end without interrupting myself to change something. When I reach the end, I feel a tingle in my entire body as if someone else had just shared a gift of a poem with me, and I feel blessed… or somehow more healed. Sometimes I will touch my chest or even shed a tear.

Even after that, I send the poem to my two readers, who are both writers and yoga instructors. After their feedback, I make any final changes and share it here, on Substack.

The three poems I am sharing here, Mountain Pose, Goddess Pose, and Star Pose, are from my Starshine Salutation Sequence, which is a longer sequence of poems that align the reader/listener with their hearts and with irrefutable and unconditional self-love.

-Corie Feiner

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Corie practicing Mountain Pose in the mountains.

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Mountain Pose

by Corie Feiner

Every day is a new day to relearn how 
to stand, to lift my head away from sink dishes 
and screens, to roll my shoulders 
 
from their good-for-nothing slouch, to hold 
my neck high as if there was a string 
from heaven pulling me upwards saying, 
You were born of us, too. 
 
Today, I stand like a mountain and tell myself, 
This is where everything begins. Still and solid
with arms that flow by my sides like wild rivers 
shimmering with life. 
 
Here, I become a witness to time itself 
watching my thoughts come and go 
like wind-swept clouds knowing no matter 
 
what storms come my way, my feet can hold me 
to the earth as I crumble and rise, crumble and rise 
humble and holy, dirty and divine. 

Sanskrit Name: Tadasana

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Goddess Pose

by Corie Feiner

When I squat into goddess pose 
there is so much to reclaim –
 
starting with birth. 
 
My birth. Your birth and all 
the births before us that were full
of squatting and bleeding and grunting 
and knowing that we can 
make it through most any pain.
 
Next are our centers which we have been taught 
to either hide or give away. 
 
And next still are our breasts
which were made to be shown, 
to be kissed, to be sucked, to be loved. 
 
I have to stand like this—
hips, hands, and feet shining outwards 
 
as if I could become a goddess  
with nine heads and eight limbs, 
the sun as my crown, the moon 
as my core and dance                                                             
 
a divine sexy mama dance 
that can create or destroy anything – 
 
this is the only way anything new
has ever been born. 

Sanskrit Name: Utkata Konasana

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Corie in Star Pose as she practices for the Bucks County Yoga Festival.

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Star Pose

by Corie Feiner

To be in star pose is to stand with your heart 
so open it could feel worthy of taking up 
any space it needs. 
 
It is to hold your body upright, to spread 
your arms and legs so wide you can swear
they twinkle, your breath shimmering 
with light. 
 
It is to remember that you, too, are made of 
the same stuff as all star bodies that guide even 
the most storm-tossed ships back to shore. 
 
We have seen the beginning of time over 
and over again and, each time, it seems 
like the end,
 
but know this, as you stand there, that you 
are a wish in someone else’s sky. 

Sanskrit Name: Utthita Tadasana

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invitation to collaborate

What art, writerly, mind-body, or life practice are you leaning into? What does your creative life look like? What were the inspirations for your favorite works? Have you recently published a book of poetry? If you’d like to share about your creative, poetic, spiritual, well-being, or otherwise living life practices, please get in touch. unraveling, unmoored seeks collaborators. More info can be found on the About Page. Please message or email with questions.

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