Writing

I write. I keep writing. The result: more than a dozen books and numerous articles, short stories, and poetry in print and online, published in the U.S. and abroad. My preferred nonfiction topics include dance, embodiment, healing, consciousness, mindfulness, and play. My fiction tends toward magical realism. My poetry is ecoproprioceptive. When creativity knocks, I answer and the words flow onto the page.  

Nonfiction

I’ve had the great fortune to speak with and write about many great performers such as Merce Cunningham, Kazuo Ohno, Rachel Rosenthal and others. The result is books and articles that focus on dance, embodiment, radiant aliveness, and living and working in South Korea.

Contact Improvisation: An Introduction to a Vitalizing Dance Form

This book is my thanks to founder Steve Paxton and co-founder Nancy Stark Smith, who were both my teachers, for creating this groundbreaking improvisational dance, and my wanting to share my enthusiasm about this dance with both dancers and nondancers.

The text begins with a history, then describes the elements that define this form of dance. Buy the book on McFarland Books or Amazon.

Contact improvisation: An Introduction by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, Cheryl's writing

Ginseng Tango: A Travel Memoir

Ginseng Tango chronicles my move to the Korean peninsula to teach English, American culture, and dance while going through a divorce. It follows my involvement with tango, Buddhism, shamanism, and acupuncture while dodging death threats from a jealous woman. The memoir reveals my joy and unease as a foreigner while navigating struggles between ancient and modern practices, western and eastern ideals, feminism and Confucianism as North Korea launches missiles. Buy the book on Amazon.

Ginseng Tango: A Travel Memoir by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, writing about South Korea

Poetry

More so than any other genre, poetry allows me to experience an ecstasy of written expression and grounds me in Buddhist nondual awareness. Words move me, write me, and take me to mind-altering places.

Her Body Listening

Her Body Listening, my newest collection, is a poetic reflection of my final year in training as a Healing Touch practitioner. Poems grounded in the energetic body and written with rhythmic word associations reflect somatic wisdom and a deep listening tied to earth and spirit. Each poem evokes an awareness of healing and the subtle energies coursing through the body. Read more. Buy the book on BlazeVOX or Amazon.

Her Body Listening by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, poetry collection, writing

Continental Drifts 

 This book is “always musically aware and syntactically limber, and it contains a large measure of improvisation and play….She creates kinetic writing that always surprises.”  — Joeseph Harrington

Buy the book from BlazeVOX or Amazon.

Continental Drifts by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, poetry

Morphs

The poetry of Morphs features a committed conversation this reader experiences as occurring in layers, pricks, grace notes, simulated dance steps, and thick sliding scales.

A limited number of signed copies are available. Contact me to order one.

Morphs by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, poetry collection, writing

Into Stillness

Kinetic poetry swirls historical fragments with dream, memory, flesh, violence, humor and ecstasy. In prose-like poems that surprise linguistically with their twists of meaning, Into Stillness explores the tension between self and other, existence and death, the word and its silence. Buy on Amazon.

Into Stillness by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, poetry

Uncommon Grammar Cloth

This series of experimental poems, written in continuous prose-like paragraphs but with the rhythmic attentiveness of verse, allows the ever-shifting present to emerge like various threads of a fabric in the making. Familiar word patterns transmute suddenly with an associative leap or syntactic twist or a play on sound, enacting the sense of the body in motion, the self seeking the other, or catching glimpses of the divine. Buy on Amazon.

Uncommon Grammar Cloth by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, poetry collection, writing

Chapbooks

The Phrase

A fabulist story about a young phrase that leaves home.

The Phrase by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, chapter book writing

Declaration of Independence

The famous national document poetically recast through erasure and collage.

Declaration of Independence by Cheryl Pallant, book cover, writing

Poetry By Chocolate

A poetry collage made from the tantalizing text on chocolate wrappers.

Poetry by Chocolate by Cheryl Pallant, writing

Recent and select publications

 Prose

 Several articles on healing and ecosomatics in Spirituality & Health Magazine

“Bringing Ecosomatics to Yoga” in Yoga Magazine

“Taos Conversation” in Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices

 “Poetry Saying,” Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, also in Zero Point Poesis

“Writing From the Body: A Blend of Intelligences” Multiple Intelligences Oasis

“Dancing Evolutionary Spirituality,” Dance, Movement & Spiritualities. Essay on Zen, Judaism, dance and somatics.

“The Essence of Forever,” This Land Press: how I fell in love with the work of T.C. Cannon

“Passing Over,” This Land Press: reflection on spirits and my cat in South Korea

“Write From the Body,” The Loft. A blog post about my somatic writing technique taught at The Loft.

“Torment Relieved in Song,” This Land Press, article about poet John Berryman

“Writing From the Body,” All Things Healing. Combining writing and movement to explore the language of the body .

Gifting Poetry: Teaching Students to Read Poetry Closely,” Teachers & Writers. This essay led to an award as Bechtel Finalist.

AWP Pedagogy Papers

“Moving Into Writing,” Creativity Portal 

Contact Quarterly 

Natural Awakenings  

Journal of Process-Oriented Psychology

ArtsInk

High Performance

Shamans Drum


Anthologies

“Dancing Evolutionary Spirituality,” Herstories:Call of the Soul in Dance Research, a collection of works by internationally recognized women leading the field of dance research and spirituality across the globe

Embodying Change,” Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World. This anthology asks, “In a time of environmental crisis, how can we live right now?” Other contributors include Alice Walker and Barbara Kingsolver.

An Introduction to the Prose Poem ” “Yonder Zongs” A wide range of models and stategies for the prose poetry. Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Russell Edson and Pablo Neruda

“A Declaration of Independence,” Letters to the World. An anthology with contributors from Wom-po, The Discussion of Women’s Poetry LISTSERV, founded by Annie Finch. A bountiful collection of writers including Camille Dunghy, Eve Enszer, Allison Hedge Coke.

“The Pizza,” Food for Thought. Writing about food by contributors such as Herman Melville, Charles Simic, and Marge Piercy.

“A Neighborhood Bar,” Inspired by Drink. Writing about drinks by contributors such as Edgar Allen Poe, John Updike, and Daisetz T. Suzuki.


Fiction

These are often dream-like, surreal metarealities that in fictive terms tell the truth in their own slanted way. My fiction has been featured in…

“Standing” Parhelion Magazine

“Breakthrough,” Cafe Irreal 

Confrontation

Oxford Magazine

“A Touchy Situation,” Cafe Irreal

Ambit 

Pleasant Living 

The Crescent Review

Convolvulus

Minds in Motion

The New Rain

“Until Death Do They Part,” Gargoyle


Reviews of artists

Laurie Anderson

Ed Sanders

Marie Choiunard

Pilobolus

David Whyte

Miranda July

Many other artists at Style Weekly


Poetry

Several poems at Empty Mirror

Several poems at Spacecraft Project

Women’s Studies Quarterly

Conterminous, Gridded, Deaggregated, and Uncertain,” Tarpaulin Sky

Fence 

“Heenayni,” No Tell Motel

“Ground in what flows through,” No Tell Motel 

“Panting,” No Tell Motel 

“Ten or more suggestions,” No Tell Motel

“Fear in the Reveal,” No Tell Motel 

Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry

An excerpt from “Into Stillness,” HOW2

“Yonder Zongs,” Moria

“Freaking Fricatives,” Moria

“Entry Steps,” Moria 

Homonumous: Magazine D’Avant Garde 

An excerpt from “Uncommon Grammar Cloth,” DC Poetry Anthology

NYQ

Sleeping Fish

Lyric

Coe Review

“Blue Poets in a Red State: A Linked Verse,” Big Bridge

Wormwood Review

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