How to Jumpstart Your Inner Poet Through Memory and Story

About this course:

This three-hour workshop jumpstarts the poet within and inspire and ignite new work. Memory is a storehouse of who we are and what we have seen and done (and smelled and touched and heard). All of it is specific, sensory, and concrete—like the best writing. We take a deep dive into the rich territory of ideas, people, places, and emotions from our past and examine how memory can inform our imaginations to awaken fresh work. Students see how uncovering one memory often leads to another and another, creating work that surprises both the writer and reader. The day is a mixture of lecture, reading poetry and practicing “automatic writing,” tapping into our memories and the subconscious, and reading aloud to the class as jumping-off points for new poems. Of value to non-writers as well by showing how we can capture and utilize details from our past to use as inspiration no matter what our creative discipline.