Marriage & Family Therapist | Registered Poetry Therapist | Poet
Helping others to find their “voice” is at the heart of Perie’s work, whether in her role as a marriage, family and child therapist, a poet, a poet teacher through California-Poets-in-the-Schools (CPITS), or poet working in the therapeutic mode.
From 2005-2007 she was the president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT), which promotes growth and healing through literature, symbol and story. She continues to be a Master Mentor/Supervisor for those who seek credentialing either as a certified poetry therapist (CPT), a registered poetry therapist (PTR), or Certified Applied Poetry Therapist (CAPF) through the National Federation of Biblio/Poetry Therapy (NFBPT). Individual training plans are designed with a trainee’s goals and interests in mind. Once a month she holds peer/supervision groups in the southern California area. In 1998 she was presented NAPT’s “Outstanding Achievement Award ” and in 2004, the “Distinguished Service Award.” She is a MFT in private practice, licensed since 1991. She conducts writing groups for healing and well-being through Hospice of Santa Barbara and Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers of Santa Barbara. For over twenty-five years she has led poetry workshops for the national Santa Barbara Writers Conference, held the third week in June. Every August she leads the three day Santa Barbara Summer Poetry Writing Workshop.
Perie is chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Poetry committee. Each year the Foundation sponsors the Barbara Mandigo Kelly poetry awards offering prizes on the subject of peace and the human spirit in three categories: adult, high school and youth. See their website WagingPeace.org.
Perie has published three books of poems; Milking the Earth (1986), and The Privacy of Wind (1997), and most recently With Nothing behind but Sky: a journey through grief (Artamo Press, 2006). Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals including, but not limited to, Askew, Atlanta Review, Connecticut Review, International Poetry Review, Lucid Stone, Nimrod, Paterson Review, Poetry Flash, Prairie Schooner, Quercus Review, Rattle, South Carolina Review, Santa Barbara Magazine, Solo, Studia Mystica, The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Quarterly and Wisconsin Review. Anthologies include: Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (C & R Press 2009), Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California (Greenhouse Review Press, 2008), Fishing With My Father (Penguin Press, 2005) which includes her poem of the same title, The Cancer Poetry Project (Fairview Press, 2001), and The Poetry of Peace (Capra Press, 2003). She has published several poems and essays over the years in several California-Poets-in-the-Schools (CPITS) anthologies, and edited two of those volumes. Recently she wrote a dedication poem, carved in stone, for the Douglas Family Preserve in Santa Barbara.
She is an adjunct faculty member of Antioch, Santa Barbara as well as having taught at the University of California Los Angeles, Santa Barbara City College, and has been a frequent guest lecturer in the UCSB English Department. Her adult students have worked with Perie many years and publish widely.
Please feel free to contact Perie if you are interested in receiving individual therapy, exploring your issues through poetry and/or journaling, learning more about the National Association for Poetry Therapy and their credentialing program, or help with crafting your work. She says poetry as art and poetry as therapy are very separate in their approach. Poetry as art focuses on the poem, whereas poetry for therapy focus on the person. She echoes the poet Shelley who said “poets are the true legislators of the world.” In today’s troubled world, poetry more than ever is a way to at least bring us to internal peace.