WORKSHOPS & EVENTS CALENDAR,
Poetry is knowledge, salvation, power, abandonment. An operation capable of changing the world, poetic activity is revolutionary by nature; a spiritual exercise, it is a means of interior liberation. Poetry reveals this world; it creates another. -Octavio Paz
Event Archives 2023
JANUARY
ELEGY & EROS:
A WINTER POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP
- Dates: January 21 – March 3, 2024
- Day & Time: Sundays, 1pm-4pm, Mountain Time, (includes break)
- Location: online, via Zoom
Description: “I like to think of the sound of weeping, along with the sound of laughing, as among the first thoughtful articulations a human being ever made…weeping and laughter indicate passional responses to experience, toa perception of circumstances not only in the present but in the past and— yes ––the future…These two primary forms of vocalization evolve further into songs: ecstatic language, as it were, standing beside itself, speaking out of its head (and heart). It is no accident that the two fundamental modes of lyric poetry are precisely these, crying and laughing, the intonations of grief and pleasure. By this I mean, the elegy and the love poem”. –– David Baker
A common adage about the nature of poetry is that “Every poem is a love poem.” An equally common adage is that “Every poem is an elegy.” In this winter workshop, we’ll explore a range of poetic forms and approaches –– in traditional as well as contemporary free-verse –– through which desire and lament, humor and despair, honoring and the erotic and have found expression. We’ll explore poems that console as well as poems that declare the impossibility of consolation. Poems of equanimity as well as poems of uncertainty. The dirge as well as the delicious “green fuse that drives the flower.” Each week, you’ll receive poems and prompts to inspire and to use as you wish in the making of your own poems, along with craft notes. Each week we’ll share our poems with one another in a generous, respectful, and informed workshop format, with brief written responses to your poems from Sawnie. Each week we will open ourselves to the presence and the resilience of the poetic imagination.
WISHING YOU A BLESSED WINTER
TO REGISTER AND/OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT US
FEBRUARY
GEOHAPTICS: SENSING CLIMATE
A Sensory and Sensitive Response to Climate Change
Sawnie will be reading from her poems, along with New Mexico poet and Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
- Date: Thursday, February 22, 2024
- Time: 6-8 pm, Mountain Time
- Location: 516 ARTS,
- 516 Central Ave. SW, Downtown Albuquerque, NM 87571
Description: 516 WORDS: Live Poetry Reading with Mei-mei Berssenbrugge & Sawnie Morris.
Identified as a key element in engaging with the exhibition by Daniela N. Molnar at 516Arts, Berssenbrugge and Morris’ poignant work accentuates the themes and methodologies explored in Geohaptics: Sensing Climate.
You can listen to Sawnie read with acclaimed and award-winning poet and friend, Mei Mei Berssenbrugge, at 516Arts in Albuquerque in early 2024, at this LINK.
MAY
POETRYSNAPS! SAWNIE MORRIS: ‘AFTER THE LATE-WINTER CAR TRIP’
A short interview and poem by Sawnie aired on Arizona Public Radio
Description: “Former Taos, N.M., poet laureate Sawnie Morris says as a young girl poetry showed her how events and objects were connected in curious ways. According to Morris her leap into creating her own prose came when she took an especially empowering women writer’s course at the University of Colorado. She reads her piece called “After the Late-Winter Car Trip.”
You can listen to Sawnie speak and read at this LINK.
JULY
Taos Writers Conference, 2024
EQUANIMITY & THE LONG-LINE POEM
- Date: Saturday, July 22, 2024
- Time: 2-5 pm, Mountain Time
- Location: Join online from anywhere (Taos Writers Conference, sponsored by SOMOS),
Description: In these days of geo-political, environmental, military, social, and –– for some –– personal upheaval, the grounded feeling of equanimity can be hard to come by. The Buddha said that if we want to be happy, we need to be able to stand like a great tree amid praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow. In this workshop we’ll look at a forest of such trees comprised of ancient and contemporary poems that manage to convey just such equanimity – not by looking away, but by seeing clearly and articulating that seeing onto the page. We’ll consider a range of attitudes and attributes along with detailed strategies poets have used in making such poems, from the observational to the investigatory to the meditative –– and we’ll begin the creative process of writing our own equanimous poems. Time will be made for sharing initial efforts and for receiving feedback from the instructor.
TO REGISTER AND/OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT US.
Taos Writers Conference, 2024
PERCHANCE TO DREAM: CRAFTING OUR DREAMS INTO POEMS
- Date: Sunday, July 21, 2024
- Time: 9am-12pm, Mountain Time
- Location: Meeting in-person, Taos, New Mexico (Taos Writers Conference, sponsored by SOMOS),
Description: Literature, and specifically poetry, from its earliest known incarnation has been shaped of dreams. The orchestration of language that creates our experience of a poem shares so much in common with our experience of dreams that the very architecture of what we call a poem may originate in our innate capacity for dreaming. We’ll spend the first part of this workshop reading and discussing the work of a range of contemporary poets who write successfully and movingly from their dreams, looking with a keen eye at the craft moves that have made the private experience of a dream into a shared and inspiring experience for a reader. During the second half of the workshop, we’ll experiment with shaping our own dream(s) into poems, with time allotted for sharing of first steps toward forging a poem from the images and traces of a dream, and for receiving individual feedback from the instructor. Bring a dream (or two or three), written or held in memory, to the workshop. It may be a dream from as long ago as childhood, or a dream you dreamt last night – along with your favorite writing instrument (ideally a lap-top, and/or notebook).
TO REGISTER AND/OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT US.
NOVEMBER 8-12
Please join me, Sawnie Morris, for a five day
ONLINE Poem-a-day POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP
- Dates: November 8-12
- Day & Time: 11:00am-2:30pm daily
- Location: Ranchos de Taos, NM
Description: This playful, non-competitive, poetry-writing circle – open to writers at all levels –– is founded on the idea that when we come together with creative generosity, curiosity, and intention, we make poems that turn out to be –– as poet Robert Hass has said –– “stronger and truer than ever before.”
- We will meet online each morning for 5 days for approximately 3-3.5 hours (includes generous break for lunch)
- The first morning you’ll be offered a series of prompts toward the creation of a new poem
- After that, you’ll bring the first draft of a new poem – composed during the previous twenty-four hours – each day, to our workshop
- We’ll spend the first two hours of our workshop discussing one another’s poems
- After lunch, we’ll engage with the work of a range of contemporary poets and a set of magic prompts, which you’ll be able to use for the inspiration of your next poem
- You will be free to use the prompts in whatever way you wish, or not at all
- You will be eligible for a 10 minute private session with Sawnie, during the week, to discuss your poems
Writers at all levels of writing experience are welcome.
TO REGISTER AND/OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT US
DECEMBER 15
TEATRO PARAGUAS HOSTS A READING
W/ POETS SAWNIE MORRIS & DONALD LEVERING
- Date: Sunday, December 15, 2024
- Time: 5 pm, Mountain Time
- Location: Teatro Paraguas
- 3205 Calle Marie, Suite B, Santa Fe, NM, 87507
FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT US
SawnieMorris.com 