"opening doors to the unexpected and beautiful"
poet and MFA program director Tess Barry on reading as mindfulness, learning to hear your own voice, and the necessity of finding a community of writers ✨
This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of creative practice and mindfulness. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. Subscribe for free below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨
Today, I’m very excited to share an interview with poet and MFA Director, Tess Barry. The thing about Tess is that once you’re in her orbit, it’s inevitable that you will come to know and love her. For several years, I had the gift of being in a small poetry workshop with Tess and a few other poets I met through the Madwomen in the Attic. Over those years, Tess was deep in the writing of her debut poetry collection, The Marvelous Real, which just came out last fall. Once a month, we’d meet at Tess’s house on the South Side of Pittsburgh, and eat and drink and laugh and talk poems together. My time around Tess’s table shaped not only my poetics, but also my sense of how vital it is to have a community of smart readers as you do the hard work of making a book.
Tess Barry’s poems are defined by generosity and capaciousness. Her poems gather in and make room. There is a deep wildness, too—something strange and off-kilter that shifts our perceptions and changes the atmosphere. Richard Blanco says of Barry’s book, “The Marvelous Real is the perfect title for this inspiring collection. Real, because it graces the many seemingly ordinary moments of our lives, transfixing them into the extraordinary, and marvelous, because Barry guides us on a magical, dream-like journey through the many sublime spaces/places her poetic soul has witnessed, imagined, or desired. All this conveyed through a musicality that soothes us into our truest selves.”
Tess shares a rich window into her practices, many excellent reading recommendations, and a brilliant prompt from Terrance Hayes. Read on, friends.✨
What are your writing/creative practices? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you in your daily life?
My writing practice usually begins with reading. Ideally, I like to sit and read a writer I love before writing. It helps to still my mind and move my mind into a quiet creative space. I like to write in the morning first thing. I love to read poetry, but also love fiction and nonfiction.
Lately, I have been reading some wonderful books – The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, who joined us as a guest writer at Carlow’s January MFA residency and will join us in June in Dublin for the Ireland residency. It is an epistolary novel and just wonderful.
I am also loving Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh’s award-winning collection of lyric essays Unmothered, Untongued. Lee is a gorgeous poet and brilliant writer of all genres and her work astounds me in its depth and power. Lee takes language and form to new places. Lee is a mentor in our MFA program and a wonderful person and great teacher. I go back to collections of poetry I love and lately it has been Nick Laird’s Feel Free. He is an astounding poet and has visited our MFA program in Ireland.
What are the most important mindfulness/spiritual practices in your life?
Reading closely is a mindfulness practice and has been a balm and joy throughout my life. If I am feeling unsettled, reading stills me and returns me to myself. Spending time in nature is a great way of entering a mindful space, too. I love to be outdoors and find the natural world is another gateway into the creative self, a place to still the noise and quiet the mind.
Last spring we had robins build nests on our front and back porches and it was beautiful to see the nests created and have the robins swooping in and out when you opened the doors. It was magical. Mindfulness is like that, creating a space where you can open doors to the unexpected and beautiful. I love to listen to all kinds of music and music is transportive in a different way, sometimes listening to music can get me to a place of mindfulness. I have had many mindfulness practices I’d say from running, to walking, to gardening, walking our Saint Bernard, Lucy, and reading or listening to music. Reading helps to build one’s interior life and without that you would have nothing to draw from in terms of creativity. I am not sure who said “the best writers are writers who read,” but it is very true.
Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/mindfulness practices/life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post-it note to help you remember it?
I don’t think I have a mantra or motto, but I have certain lines from writers I love or literature I love that I might write down, save, and return to.
When I was growing up my mother had a James Baldwin quote she posted around our house and it is a quote I always return to. It comes from Nobody Knows My Name, More Notes on a Native Son, and I’ll excerpt it here:
“To be with God is to really be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end in the way we think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” —James Baldwin
I love this Baldwin quote and for me it speaks to the creative process—a journey toward something we do not understand, which in the going toward makes us better.
I also love this quote from the late Australian poet Les Murray (he is a poet I love and was always discussed as a candidate for the Nobel prize):
“Everything except language knows the meaning of existence”
—Les Murray, from his poem “The Meaning of Existence
Here’s the full poem:
The Meaning of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.
—Les Murray, from Poems the Size of Photographs, (FSG, 2002).
Jack Gilbert is another favorite poet of mine and I love this quote from Gilbert’s poem “Tear it Down”:
“We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.”
One of my favorite fiction writers is the brilliant Irish writer Claire Keegan. And I am so fortunate to have heard her read and speak about writing many times at Carlow’s MFA residencies in Ireland. She is a brilliant writer and teacher. I could fill a book with quotes from Claire’s talks to us and here is one I love:
“It is the reader in me that is drawn to the writing. I’m always striving to please the reader in me. What suits the reader in you? Trust the reader inside you.” —Claire Keegan
What helps you when you get stuck with your creative/writing or mindfulness practices?
It is helpful to me to read, to be in community with other writers and artists, to take a walk, visit a museum, listen to music. I had an experience at an exhibit some years ago that is a good metaphor for getting to that deep creative space—I saw an exhibit at The Cloisters in NYC–it is a sound installation by Janet Cardiff called The Forty Part Motet, and consisted of forty high-fidelity speakers positioned on stands in a large oval configuration throughout the Fuentidueña Chapel. The exhibit was a reworking of the forty-part motet Spem in alium numquam habui from the 16th century by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1585). Spem in alium, which translates as “In No Other Is My Hope,” is perhaps Tallis’s most famous composition. As you walked through the exhibit you could stop at each speaker to hear individual unaccompanied voices but then also have the cumulative effect in this beautiful space of all voices. Spem in alium and The Forty Part Motet is a great metaphor for FINDING YOUR WAY to the creative process, getting close and stilling yourself and leaning in to hear one voice—your voice—which paradoxically is what gives you access to cumulative voices. I grew up in a family of 10 children and heard many voices in my home and hear them still. One central aspect to good writing is in the authenticity of one writer’s particular voice, but also the ability for a singular voice to convey the universal, the paradox of the particular voice that gives us access to the universal voice of humanity.
What does the phrase “beginner’s mind” mean to you? Does it connect to your creative/or spiritual practices? How?
I think “beginner’s mind” is a great way to think about creating art, writing. The more I learn the less I know about poetry and writing, about the nature and mystery of the creative process. The beginner’s mind suggests a state where you are uninhibited and not self-conscious, free to be honest. A state where you might act from instinct as opposed to being weighted down by expectation or foreknowledge. It suggests an expansive and natural place and so a perfect place from which to write. I’ve experienced a blissful state sometimes when writing when overtaken by self-forgetfulness and it is a magical thing. I think beginner’s mind is the space I am always trying to get to and write from, and in the age of distraction it is even more difficult to get there for long periods of time. Reading or music can get you there. Walking or exercise might, being out in nature. I think stepping away from phones and screens is key to getting there. The space of beginner’s mind is similar to moments of great joy or sadness, in that it is a space that allows for moments of sudden insight and clarity. It connects to my creative practices because it is a sacred space I want to return to. But it is also an elusive space given the age we are living through and the difficulty in getting to that deep space of quiet within ourselves when we are distracted 24/7 with screens and bombarded with information.
Are there any books / writers / teachers / approaches that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?
There have been many books, writers, and teachers who have been transformative in my life. I love literature and have been shaped by many writers I return to including Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Seamus Heaney, Ruth Stone, Terrance Hayes, Claire Keegan, Carol Ann Duffy, Les Murray, Lynn Emanuel, Simon Armitage, Lucille Clifton, Sheila Carter-Jones (her latest book Every Hard Sweetness is really powerful and transformative, Rebecca Morgan Frank (a brilliant contemporary poet), and Kenzie Allen (her Cloud Missives is a beautiful book), as well as countless others.
I’ve had great teachers including our former MFA and Madwomen director Jan Beatty, Lynn Emanuel, all the Carlow MFA mentors in the U.S. and Ireland. In high school and grade school, I had exceptional English teachers who fostered my love of literature and desire to write. One of the best teachers I ever had was Marah Gubar (daughter of Susan Gubar) who taught in my graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh and now teaches at MIT. A fantastic person and professor who really understood literature’s power and a great storyteller. I took a literature course with her and learned so much about writing and reading.
I would recommend to women writers Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops, a singular community of writers. I’ve been a Madwomen since 2007, a Madwomen mentor and instructor, and I think it is so important for writers to have a community. I found a great one in Madwomen and then through Carlow’s MFA program. I would also recommend starting a workshop with other writers.
There are so many communities that have been meaningful to my growth as a writer and to my life – Carlow’s Madwomen in the Attic, Carlow’s MFA program, and the many workshops I have been a part of, including the Josephine Street poets, who met at my house for a number of years (Lisa Alexander, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Rachel Mennies, Michelle Stoner, Bernadette Ulsamer, and Emily Mohn-Slate). The Josephine Street poets were a great group of post-MFA writers. This workshop was intimate and strengthened me as a writer and editor. The Josephine Street group remain poets I deeply admire and cherished friends.
I am so grateful for Carlow’s MFA community and the chance to come together with our mentors, students, alums, and guest writers twice a year. It is such a tonic to the darkness of our current world. One book I would recommend is: Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook (Univ of Iowa, 2010). It is a great book for teachers of poetry and is comprised of a number of short essays—great for teachers AND also a fantastic book for poets about poetry.
A Prompt from Tess ✨
This is one of my favorite prompts. It is by the wonderful poet Terrance Hayes and comes from a book entitled The Working Poet (Autumn House Press, 2009). It is a complicated, involved prompt but always produces great results. I encourage people to give it a try.
TESS BARRY is the author of The Marvelous Real, a poetry collection published in December 2025 by Meadowlark Press and a finalist for Meadowlark’s 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize. Barry was shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize. Twice a finalist for North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and Aesthetica Magazine’s Poetry Award, she has also been shortlisted several times for the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely published in the U.S. and abroad and appeared in journals such as: Aesthetica, The Compass Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Cordella Magazine, Mslexia, The Louisville Review, North American Review, and The Stinging Fly, among others. She is a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and the director of Carlow University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, a low-residency program in the U.S. and Ireland.
More from Tess ✨
Order your copy of The Marvelous Real from Meadowlark Press!
Follow Tess on IG @tess.barry88 and @carlowumfa to follow Carlow’s great MFA community
Learn more at her website
Your turn: What resonates with you? Do you have any other questions or thoughts to share with Tess?
Catching up with Beginner’s Mind Alums ✨
Cameron Barnett interviewed Rita Dove for the Pittsburgh Review of Books! I loved this brilliant, wide-ranging conversation between two of our best living poets.
Denton Loving taught a virtual workshop for Eastover Press on Place-based Writing. Denton has so much wisdom to share; check it out!
James Crews has a new book of poems out, The Breathing Room: Poems of Rest and Retreat (Mandala Publishing, 2026). Order your copy here!
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What a beautiful interview! I love the idea of the "beginner's mind":
"The more I learn the less I know about poetry and writing, about the nature and mystery of the creative process."
This is the gift of the MFA program--a chance to enter the space of the beginner, in community with others. Thanks, Tess, for all that you do to create the space that makes it possible. 💕
Amazing to hear more about Tess's process, of course not too surprising. The prompt! Mind blown.