Love, Death, Desire & Madness: Writing into the Sacredness of our Humanity, Workshop 4

One of the greatest gifts of poetry is it allows us to explore our humanness with compassion and playfulness, even when the subjects challenge us. Psychologist Michael Brant DeMaria identifies four topics we often shy from meeting openly—love, death, desire and madness—and in this four-part workshop series, we’ll circle each of them through reading and writing poetry.

Curiosity will be our guide. How might exploring raw, vulnerable states open us to depth, startle us with wonder, and invite a more profound relationship with the sacred? In each session, we’ll read poems, write poems of our own, discuss process, and have a chance to share the writing we do together—or not. All levels of writing are welcome.

This workshop is for people who are curious about how writing might help them show up and be more present in their lives, people who are looking for another tool for exploring mindfulness. They need no prior poetry experience. They don’t even need to like poetry. It is especially for people who worry that their writing won’t be good. We won’t aim for good writing–we will only aim to write what is true.

By relaxing our expectations on an end product, participants can expect to surprise themselves with 1) the joy that is possible when writing and 2) the power of wonder. In this class, writing is foremost a practice in self-compassion. The poems themselves are a byproduct. The real benefit to this practice is that it can change the way we meet the world.

This is the fourth workshop in our four-week series, meeting January 8, 15, 22, and 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. Mountain Time, 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern time.

To learn more and register for this online four-part workshop, visit this link.