The act of writing a poem is a heroic journey. Every time you write in your journal, or write a poem, you are standing shoulder to shoulder with Achilles, Odysseus, space explorers, Saint Francis, Martin Luther King, and all the heroic individuals who have lived through the ages to enrich the lives of others through their beneficial work.
Through our writing, we carry on the most important dialogue of our lives—the conversation with ourselves.
The truth is, no deep personal obstacle or barrier can be cleared away until we name it, engage it, debate it, argue with it, make friends with it, and let it go. This process most successfully happens when we write, especially when we write our own poems. By communing with the poems of others, by creating our own and sharing them, we emerge from our barricades and open to opportunity and possibility.
These occasions may present themselves in our family dynamics, our friendships, at work or play, but from whatever place they beckon, we will be newly prepared to embrace and make the most of them. Through poems and journaling we’ll open the doors and windows we have always needed to open in order to let the light and the air in.
This six-week weekend course (Saturday, July 10th to Saturday, August 14) is a splendid opportunity to experience just such a blossoming journey. Poet Robert McDowell, author Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions, will guide you through a series of provocative and surprising teachings reflecting the hero’s journey and the words that create it. He’ll share many intriguing and fun examples of poems and prose excerpts to illuminate your own exploration, as well as lively, original writing prompts that will spark your innate creativity and playful sense of invention.
Through it all, you’ll achieve a newfound confidence and serenity in all that you do, and you will find a comfortable place in your company for the hero or heroine who is always within.
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