Sunday, August 25, 2019, 1:00 P.M. To 4:00 P.M.
The cover of the November, 2017 issue of Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom of Our Time had a title & subtitle that inspired this poem-writing class. The cover title, Death, The Greatest Teacher- Why Awareness of Death Is the Secret of Life, captured my imagination. I asked myself, Would the current political climate in our country, being so severe in hate and ignorance, political polarity, and daily examples of the decline of diplomacy and eloquent statesmanship influence nonattendance at a class on death? My answer was to stick to my main philosophy in teaching my art:
If I am inspired by the curriculum I provide for writers attending my classes, the writers will be inspired to write inspirational poetry.
Therefore, this class for beginning or seasoned poets, will address the issue of death literally and figuratively. A literal example comes from the work of Judy Lief. Her book, Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality, evolved from leading an annual retreat for women touched by cancer.
Judy’s opening sentence in the Lion’s Roar article challenged me to think more into the possibility of facilitating a class like this: Whether we fight it, deny it, or accept it, we all have a relationship with death. Some people have few encounters with death as they are growing up, and it becomes personal for them only as they age and funerals begin to outnumber weddings.
Ms. Lief opened another door to teach this class when she wrote: It becomes obvious that to get to a more uncluttered relationship with death we first need to plow through a surprising number of ideas, presumptions, and speculations, some of which are very deep-rooted. In my work with Native American women trauma survivors on Rincon Reservation I discovered that talking about trauma only goes so far. When the women picked up a pen and began to write poetry about their past wounds, a depth of strength, healing, and resolve was finally reached from pens of discovery.
Judy Lief: When we look into where all this comes from (a form of mindfulness) we encounter a paradox. We usually consider death to be the end, but it begins to to seem that death is in fact the beginning. It is the texture out of which we grow our identity, the stage on which we enact our story.
The figurative enters with my poem When Drip Is Not Drop, written in the Fall of 2015. In the first line I ask: How do I deal with the last chapter of my life? The last line ends the poem with: Bones to ashes, rising and falling, like waves in two sacred seas.
Lief reminds poets to connect to their lives in terms of a story or history. Enter the power of spoken word. The writer in me stands up to the challenge of the pen and faces the blank page to begin the story of my relation to death. The paradox is how that increases my relation to life. Poetry from helpers in hospice, masters of Buddhism, and mainstream poets will compose the spine of this class.
On account of the sensitive nature of this issue, kindly remember this is not a critique workshop. We at San Diego Writers, Ink want this poetry workshop to elevate writing from your heart in a Container of respect, safety, & reprieve. That guideline is a reflection of the heart of our Mission Statement.