Freeing your Life with Words a Workshop with Susan Wooldridge
Join us at a workshop that will make you feel excited about language and self expression in both poetry and prose. Susan will first talk about her journals and her own writing process, including the "fourth genre" where categories-prose, poetry, fiction and non-fiction blend.
Then we’ll gather (and steal) words from a scattering of books and create a group “word pool.”
Through play we will begin to listen within to our deepest and most mysterious voice, delving into what soul says, heart says, mind says, water says, our town says as we write about who we are, where we come from and where we’re going Along the way we will explore imagery, close observation, metaphor and “dream sense." immersed in what poet Ann Waldman calls "goofy profundity."
We may write poem/prose invocations, asking objects to bring us qualities we need. We may use guided imagery to take us to our childhood home, become an object in the center of the house and write from within the object. We may meet with our shadow and write our shadow’s poem, often a moving and transformational experience. We may spin out midsummer night's dream love poems to ourselves, to another, to a tree, a child, or the universe. Inner peace, joy and freedom will be our focus.
We’ll draw on opposites, noun/verbs, imagery and wholeness. Treasure will spiral forth from our imaginations.
We will welcome both laughter and tears. Sharing work is always optional.
SUPPLIES: Bring loose scratch paper and a pen you love. Color pens and/or color pencils optional.
Workshop Includes a vegetarian lunch provided by Oz Farm
About Susan:
Susan has a B.A. in anthropology from Barnard College and an interdisciplinary masters in art and writing from CSU Chico, Chico--where she developed a love for performance art as well as collage, printmaking and ceramics. She’s held workshops on creative language and process with thousands of adults and children, including teachers and youth-at-risk. Her book poemcrazy: freeing your life with words was published in 1996 by Clarkson Potter/Random House, and is now in a 29th printing. Anne Lamott writes, “This is a wonderful book—smart, wide-eyed, joyful, helpful, inspiring. You’re going to love it, and love writing poetry more for having read it.”
Susan’s chapbook of poems, Bathing with Ants, was published in 2004 by Bear Star Press. Her book, Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing (and Freeing Your Creative Process) was published by Harmony/Random House in 2007. Both poemcrazy and Foolsgold were Quality Paperback Book selections.
Susan is now writing a book about land and language from her hilltop office in The Bolt, a "canned ham" vintage trailer. For many years Susan has held workshops in rural California libraries sponsored by Poets & Writers Org. and CA. Center for the Book. Susan has worked in over 80 libraries and her workshops have been featured in Poets and Writers magazine.
Susan lives in a co-housing village in Chico, California, at the edge of Bidwell Park (or Sherwood Forest)--where Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood was filmed. Check out Susan's website, www.susanwooldridge.com
Comments on Susan’s workshops include:
Exhilarating, playful and profound. Opens a tremendous creative frontier for people. --Kathlyn Hendricks, author of Conscious Loving and The Conscious Heart.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to that day. --William, SED 5th grader, Chico.
Susan doesn’t teach poetry so much as unlock it. Her teaching itself is poetry. –Amy Tullius, Poetry and the Piano Workshop
A day glistening with fun, profound insight, and soul-shifting poetry—that I wrote to myself.” Layton Fisher, Hendricks Institute.
Something inside of me peeked out. Something I had forgotten. Carrie Marie Tusman, Santa Barbara.
Sitting and writing poems with Susan is like taking a lid off a jar. --Laura. Chico