Nerissa Nields

Thank you for visiting! I’m Nerissa. Please look around and make yourself at home.

Unless you meant to find out about my band The Nields, which is here.

I am a writer, musician, cheerleader of community and steward of poets and bards of all kinds. Also a lover of dogs.

And you can join my morning writing accountability group at My Substack Newsletter, Symbols and Cymbals.

I write novels, poems, essays, songs and more. I’m currently working on a novel trilogy about a family folk band called The Big Idea.

I lead retreats, workshops and an online writing accountability group (called Morning Seeding & Tending).

I blog about writing and everything else here and in my substack newsletter, called Symbols and Cymbals.

Books and Movies: The Odyssey

The Trojan Horse appears in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey I saw Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey the night it opened. Emily Wilson’s critique notwithstanding, I mostly loved it. Bill Irwin’s take…

September 29, 2026

Dog

Things Worth Paying Attention To

“Poetry is the history of emotions.” Someone, not me, said that. A poet writing 30 Poems in November named Julie Cavacco just sent me that quotation, and it raised the lid on the Pandora’s box of what is poetry, a question I don’t engage with unless someone pins me to the wall and asks me point blank. OR I’m pinned against the wall with a bad draft of a poem I’m in the middle of but can’t see a graceful way out of and wish that I’d started somewhere else.

November 6, 2025

Journal

On Choosing Disorientation

Sometimes getting lost takes us right where we need to be. “One of the beautiful things about art is the way that our practice can allow us to lift out…

October 23, 2025

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