Mystic Poetry in Crete
June 16 - 23, 2009.
SPIRITUAL WRITING RETREAT ON THE
OREGON COAST:
Flowering Into Spring
Friday evening to Sunday afternoon February 22 - 24, 2013
Beautiful Ocean Front Accommodations near Lincoln City
Cost: $325, plus 5 meals option, $50
Includes Writing Workshop and Lodging
Early Bird Signup Special: 4 private rooms, $25 extra, first come, first served
$50 non-refundable deposit required by February 15
Give yourself the gift of deep rest, rejuvenation and inspiration. You are warmly invited to join us for a weekend of creativity and beauty in our three ocean front homes. Cosy yourself by the roaring fire, let the waves lap over you as you bathe in gentle guided meditations, music and poetry selections, and use them as a springboard for your own writing. We will explore springtime themes of rites of passage, rebirth and renewal and share and critique our writing with others.
Expect to be challenged creatively, to be stimulated to plumb deeply for writing pearls, and to savor heart-opening, intimate, and refreshing time.
As an optional, luxurious extra, an excellent chef will offer five tasty, healthful meals, or you can bring your own food. Each home has its own fully furnished kitchen. Please note: advance notice is necessary if you choose the meal plan.
For more information or to register, please contact Ana Ram at ana@anacallan.com or call 503 449 5463. Please know that space is limited to 8 people so sign up early.
_______________________________________________________________________
Elegy, Self-Elegy, Eulogy:
Poems Of Lamentation and Praise
Expose Yourself To You:
Men & Women Writing on the Body
The Love of Thousands:
Your Ancestors and You
Exploring the Mystery in Memoir:
A Winter Workshop
Spiritual Memoir:
Writing on the Body
Mothers and Daughters:
A May Workshop
Finding Your True Heart’s Passion
"Poetry sacramentalizes experience" says Edward Hirsch. "It makes art out of a 'mouthful of air'."
Where better than Crete - the bedrock of poetry - to explore creative writing in a safe, supportive, and challenging milieu? Allow the lap of the sea and the allure of the land to inspire your words. In this weeklong workshop, we will dive deep into the lodestone of our lives, through guided meditations and exploration of selected poems, with attention always to craft, style, and content. Using our readings and discussions as fuel, we will transform selections of our personal histories into art, which may emerge as poem, story, or memoir.
Befitting our illustrious backdrop, we will write from the heart, from our true interior and celebrate our lives on the page with passion, without apology. Please note that anyone with an open heart and a pen is most welcome.
"Oh, orphan world, I love you dear."
William Stafford
Over the centuries, an illustrious caravan of poets from distant and near ports has looked deeply into the mirror of mortality and brought back treasures from their search. Rumi, Hafiz, Rilke, Coleridge, Mary Oliver, Charles Wright for starters, have wrested pearls from the closed or cracked oyster of their personal experience, have wrought ecstatic and sobering poetry from their unique immersions into the mystical realms. In our sessions, we read from this vast, rich store, taking some favored lines to heart, sharing our findings of our own with each other, and adding our lines to the swelling repertoire.
We end with a tea ceremony, as we share from our trove of favorite poems by candlelight. Everyone is welcome. The only prerequisite is a love or interest in the subject.
All poetry, says Galway Kinnell, is the "compulsory and elementary cry of the human being about what it means to be on this earth." In challenging times, poetry offers a sanctuary for us to explore complex feelings and transmute them into art that can heal. In our sessions together, we'll start by exploring the elegy, that classic ode of farewell, and we will write our own goodbyes to what is passing, as all must pass eventually, to make way for the new. Our second session will focus specifically on our own mortality. For balance, we will progress in our final session towards sharing poems of welcome, of celebration, those poems that invite, even embrace the whole magnificent play of life in all its brutality and beauty. Be prepared to read deeply and to write from your most honest heart. PLEASE NOTE: In order to do justice to the subject, this workshop works optimally over 3 days.
"The older I get, the more I feel almost beautiful-not my face, plain puritan face, but my body. And I will be fifty soon!"
Sharon Olds
"I divide backs into two kinds: my own and everyone else's. I wonder what that says about me that I worship a part of the body that signals a turning away."
Philip Lopate
The Chu'an Monk Yuan Fu has written that "throughout the body are hands and eyes." And memories galore. Our personal histories are stitched into our cells; the key signature to true self resides in our particular draperies of flesh and bone.
Expect to study an eclectic sampling of writing on this misunderstood subject. Using words, music, and guided movement, we will write our way towards understanding of the mysteries related to our physical selves. We will also explore the body's role in relationship with others; with pain, illness, ageing; and with our own unique interior.
For reasons of safety in expression, women and men initially meet separately. With a week to process and write, both genders then come together to share in what promises to be a nurturing, challenging milieu which invites genuine, heartfelt, healing discourse. Be prepared to plumb deep, to listen hard, and to learn surprising secrets.
"Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands."
Linda Hogan
What is the genesis of your tribe, what gifts, habits, challenges have they bequeathed to you? Our ancestral lines are many and complex, and account for much of who we are. In order to truly appreciate our own lives, and our place in the larger cultural milieu, it helps to begin with our historical inheritance. Yehuda Amichai has written: "The memory of my father is wrapped up in/white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work." In this two-day workshop, we unwrap the offerings of our ancestors, using a variety of resources: memory, family legends, photographs, letters. We begin to breathe life into the unseen forces that animate and shape us. And our findings then shape our writing. Poem, story, dialogue, essay, song, all expressions and voices are welcome.
"The first mystery is simply that there is a mystery, a mystery that can never be explained or understood, only encountered from time to time. Nothing is obvioius. Everything conceals something else."
Lawrence Kushner
Many cultures dedicate the month of November to commemoration of the dead, of what has passed, and partake in a range of ceremonies, including honoring of ancestors, of those who have left us, but whose legacy has gifted us directly or indirectly. The closing in of winter is a time ripe for interior reflection, for meditating on what endures when the shifting waves of life, of death, settle. In this weekend intensive, we will take time to address these questions, through selected readings, discussions, and our own writing. Poetry, memoir, story are all welcome. Be prepared to delve into your own life's endless mysteries, its pleasures and pain, its love and loss, and to share your findings and gifts.
We begin with a guided meditation to assist us in tuning into our true
heart’s interior, that is, to kindle the divine spark that animates us
all. By drawing quite literally on our inspiration, we will write from the current that underlies the cerebral and taps into our deepest wisdom. Through musical selections and carefully chosen poems, we will explore what it means to marry our humanity to our divinity, and from this rich perspective, we will write and share tales of our lives. All genres and levels of writing are welcome. An open heart and mind are encouraged.
Our primary and formative induction into this life begins in the body of our mother. It is perhaps the most complex relationship we will ever have and sometimes requires a lifetime to appreciate. In this workshop, we will explore a diverse range of writings on mothers and daughters, living and deceased. Expect to plumb the emotional and spiritual depths of this physical, mysterious, and often challenging bond. When the poet Lisel Mueller’s mother died on a beautiful summer day, she wrote her first poem, which ends, “I placed my grief in the mouth of language/the only place that would grieve with me.” She went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In this month dedicated to mothers, human and divine, let us transmute our own trials and triumphs into poetry.
“Every father should remember that one day his son will follow his
example instead of his advice” - George Bernard Shaw
Perhaps one of the relationships most crucial to our sense of identity isthat of our father.: the man who helped ushered into life, and who taughtus much of what we know of men. How has your connection to your father shaped your life? Has it had an impact on how you relate intimately with others? What benefits and challenges have you experienced in your life as a result? What does the term “father figure” mean to you? What traits have you inherited, for better or worse? The playwright Lillian Hellman has written that “my father was often angry when I was most like him.” We will explore this complex and fundamental liaison through guided meditation, exploration of literature on the subject, and through our own writings and musings. Both men and women are welcome.
It has been said that there are three primary motivating forces for
action. For many, when one moves to do something, it is often running from fear. When one ceases to do so, they are impelled by passion, which spills into compassion for the world. What inspires you to move through life? How much of your time is spent fleeing what you are afraid of? How much of your passion do you allow to flower through and express? How much of your internal fire do you subdue? We will examine what remains afraid of full expression and the areas where passion and power might be free to fully blossom. Be prepared for an exhilarating exploration into this rich and imperative source of our original essence.
