events & workshops
I believe the target audience of poetry is everybody. I believe we are all poets and know what poetry does. It makes us feel, as Emily Dickinson puts it, like “the top of my head were taken off.” I’ve not met a person who didn’t desire - no, need - to feel that sensation of awe in the face of vulnerability. Poetry can enrich our lives. That claim is simple. Poetry is our lives. That truth and acceptance changes how we live. In workshops and classes and meetings by the side of the road we gather and take inventory of, what Marianne Moore calls, “the garden of our imagination.” It is a privilege to have the opportunity to inform, guide, and write with fellow seekers. Whether you are looking to explore, to find readers, to find perspective, or simply - and most importantly - listen, all are welcome to join in the pleasure of the work. And the work is fun.
LIGHT IN THE SHADOWS
It’s not a new idea, the division between good and bad. Light and dark. But it would seem an understanding of our emotions, experiences, lives, in this binary fashion leaves out much of the gray between these poles. The gray that suggests that what might be devastating could be strengthening. That in loss, we find growth. That in our grief, we might find gratitude. It’s messy and beautiful in shadows.Join Nick Reading, author, poet, and teacher, & Meghan Barich, journaling and creative expression coach, to explore how poetry offers us perspectives on both the dark and light, and all of the gray that makes up most of our lives. We will work together to glean inspiration from selected poems and gain confidence in leveraging poetry as a catalyst to creative expression. We hope that our gathering will provide a spark that may build into a personal and poetic writing practice.Everybody leaves with a poem. Everybody finds some light.
DATE/TIME TBD
THE PROSE POEM
The prose poem is a party guest who fixes your toilet & reads water flushing as a diviner. It is a chair that doubles as a coffin. It is a flower that masquerades as a rake. It is a hat left on a bus & the nest of wrens that make it home. In this class we have the pleasure to be the guest. We will consider how the prose poem walks the horizon at dawn without mentioning day or night. We will allow it to dictate terms of endearment and divorce. It will slip crystals into our pockets while we are finally doing laundry. Studio time will be allotted for oranges to become a grandmother’s wedding day broach while we craft our own prose poems and share them with each other over a nice glass of eyelashes.
7.7.19 / INDIANA WRITERS CENTER / 12-3:30
THE EVERYDAY POEM
This workshop will focus on poems that use daily experiences as material. Whether it be an embrace with a partner in the morning, noticing a bee by the hydrangea, or whatever might have made us pause in our busy days, there is almost always something that we remember when we retire at night. Many poets, obviously, have used these experiences as the subject for poems that have proved timeless. And it makes sense that when I was ten scribbling after a test my subject was the walk home after school. It makes sense that the students I have been fortunate to share with, also write about subjects that may seem mundane. And we elevate the mundane by crafting our language, and thereby our understanding of the subject. And we elevate ourselves when we allow honest reflection, a truth organic.