Poetry
The Painted Word How to find the images, then how to hold and prepare them for the written page.
The Pictures in Poems What is imagery?
Poetry Workshop Discussion of poems-in-process
Sound, Speech and the Music of Words Tuning up the ear for language and exploring the relation of sound to dramatic impact.
Imagery and the Poet How do word pictures stir the reader and the writer?
The Sense of Poetry If poetry no longer rhymes and often misses more than a few beats, what is the sense of poetry?
Advanced Creative Writing
World of Words Focus on the creative, not critical, aspects of writing: in other words, how do we make writing, not unmake it.
Visible and Invisible Stories There is a set of apparent stories in our bodies and another collection of stories in our dreams, thoughts and feelings.
The Meaning of Spontaneity in Form and Focus How do we write what has spontaneous meaning for ourselves as well as keep our readers glued to the page? Learning to recognize what is new and working towards a coherent literary form.
Truth, Lies and Fiction What motivates us as writers to leave the comfort of apparent truth to enter the odd reality of fiction?
The English Sentence A review of sentence structure as well as ideas on how to bring clarity, variety and beauty to the sentence. What part of grammar matters?
Belief and the Believer Ways to make belief believable in story and poem by finding voices for the seer and the cynic and noting the difference between story and sermon.
Autobiography
Autobiography: Childhood, Youth, Adulthood Three part course supports the process of remembering and re-visiting the past and forming life into story.
Finding the Thread Exploration of major events, themes and characters in your own life story as a way to organize autobiographical writings into book form.
Leave-taking and the Familiar Writing of stories and poems related to different aspects of travel away from home, in both the literal and figurative sense.
When Death Comes Stories and poems of death— a part of life kept more secret than sex.
Love The experience of love using story and/ or poem as the medium.
Portraits and Self Portraits People we have known, or thought we knew, or wish we had known, or perhaps wish we hadn’t known, as well as the one person we dance with daily, our own self.
Childhood and the Magic of Shifting Realities. In childhood we are often subject to whimsical if not irrational rule. What is magical about one’s own odd childhood? And how do we express it in story and poem?
Beginning Creative Writing
A First Step Out Form, detail, practice, and audience as well as the vague yet essential matters of inspiration, creation and mystery.
Writing for Your Self A chance out of public view to experience how you write, what interests you in writing, what might stop you from writing, and most important, what inspires you to write.
Keeping a Notebook Notebooks as a way to contemplate new projects and/or as exploration in the art of writing.
Writing as Entry into the Imagination Writing can lead you to yourself and beyond into what you don’t know you know…a foray into this unknown.
