Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Berkeley
$95 members/$110 others (this class is not currently scheduled)
What does it take to create vivid, powerful poetry or prose that offers a transformative experience to our readers? How can we engage so deeply with our own material that we, too, are changed in the writing of it? Poet Mary Oliver famously said, “I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.” In this workshop with award-winning poet and memoirist Ruth L. Schwartz, you’ll spend the day exploring how to “see” more clearly and more deeply, both in your outer and our inner worlds. You’ll examine the ways in which this kind of seeing can both complicate and enrich your relationship to “truth” in your writing.
“We’ll work to expand our curiosity on every level, including our curiosity about language and form, as well as about our subject matter,” says Ruth. “Finally, we will explore notions of beauty, and how the ability to see beauty in unlikely places can both deepen our relationship to our material – and more fully engage our readers. In the process, we’ll expand the range of (e)motion available to us, as writers and as human beings.”
Note: CEUs are available for licensed MFTs or LCSWs.
Ruth L. Schwartz is the author of four award-winning books of poems, including Edgewater, a 2001 National Poetry Series winner selected by Jane Hirshfield. Her memoir, Death in Reverse, documents the year following her donation of a kidney to her former partner. Her poems and essays have appeared frequently in The Sun (sometimes under a pseudonym, at the editors’ request), and she has received numerous literary fellowships, honors and prizes. Ruth is currently a Distinguished Visiting Writer in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Ashland University and also teaches privately. In addition, she is a practicing hypnotherapist and shaman who honors and wrestles with pain, beauty and truth in all their disguises.