Crystal (Hoffman) Woodling is a poet, performer, clinical and folk herbalist, Hellenistic astrologer, and yogini. However, she is first and foremost a teacher.
Crystal has been entranced by the word and its effects on the material world from her earliest moments of conscious thought. She started studying anthropology in elementary school and composing songs and stories almost as soon as she could speak.
Michael Dennison, her first poetry mentor, was a master occultist who taught her to write and perform in the tradition of the great poet-shamans of old: Taliesin, Enheduanna, Byron, Dickinson, Yeats, and H.D. These remain some of her strongest influences.
Her poetry has been published in dozens of literary journals and her theatrical work has been performed on stages around the globe. While serving as visiting lecturer in creative writing at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, she co-founded and received an A. W. Mellon Grant for Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Arts Journal with Rima Rantisi. RR still serves as a cornerstone of Lebanon’s arts and literature scene today.
In 2013, she left academia to become the wandering bard she always dreamt of being. She walked alone from West Virginia to South Dakota writing poetry for kind folks who took her in and penning new myths of the land. This journey led her to the Ihanktonwan Nakota Reservation where she began the deep medicine work that now forms the core of her being.
She is absolutely thrilled to join 22 Teachings as Guest Faculty where she hopes to share and nurture the eternal poetic flame that her teachers and guides tended so well within her.
You can find out more about her work at crystalwoodling.com and on instagram @crystalwoodling
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