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Poetry workshopFirst Session: Presentation03/12/2012The red poetry workshop will have three main parts:Gathering of thoughts and words about emotions that have to do with redStudy of the different poetical forms and the different poetsPresentation that will consist of us helping others write poems and us reciting our own poems in a special space that we will create.1) Gathering of thoughts and wordsIn close relationships we get into difficulty with each other through either speaking or not speaking. We say something that hurts the other person, or we hold in our feelings and do not speak, and then pressure builds to the point of anger. This simplified observation helps to show that we can act in profound ways through our speech. With words we shape and form what goes on between us into something meaningful, intimate or even holy.Poetry is the most sophisticated verbal art that is able to powerfully alter emotions by choosing and connecting words. Poetry, however, is not about talking about experiences but about speaking through them, showing the feelings that it provokes. In poetry, as you are not talking about something in specific, and you are not explaining something, the emotions expressed through the sound of the words become the most important thing. The sound, the pause and the rhythm of what is being said becomes the most important thing. Because poetry is not about information but about the feelings all types of topics can be treated. Not only topics of great importance like global warming or politics, but also topics like the joy of eating blue berries or the sadness of losing a friend.A first entry into poetry is by finding it in others and in ourselves by learning to listen to the pauses, the stumbling, the inarticulateness, the gaps and the searching that accompanies speaking. It is in those moments that you can best see the inner side of a person, his fears, what he likes, what excites him, what boars him, what causes him doubt, etc. Pauses in speech are places where emotions can be introduced to completely change the character, sense, meaning and feeling of what we say. These “holes” in our speaking are a pathway that leads towards the deeper feelings of a person. That is what poetry is interested in.Careful listening is very important to be able to develop emotions through words. The listening that is needed to find the poetical side of speech has to be a listening that does not only come before and after we speak but within our speaking itself. In other words, listening to ourselves and to recognize when certain words alter our emotions and to reflect on why that happens is crucial for this type of listening. This special type of listening waits patiently, without the need to fill in any emptiness. And it is easy to recognize when we are speaking in this manner rather than conveying information or letting the chatter in our mind spill out endlessly. Also, a sense of rhythm plays a central role in our finding a new way of relating to our speaking. When we say one or a few words and then pause, a rhythm is set up. This rhythm cannot be affected, because it comes forth from the phrasal structure of the language that we use. In this way, the sound of the words you choose also affects the feelings they produce. For example, “beloved”, “cherished” or “lover” could refer to the same thing but they create totally different sounds and feelings. Also, “hurt”, “pain”, “anguish” and “suffering” may refer to the same thing but the intensity of the feeling changes.Words when heard in contemplation, listening to the sound and feeling they create, have a rhythm of their own. The task of the poet is to find the words that resonate with our inner emotions. We can experientially verify this process in an easy way. For example, we can repeat a short sentence in varying ways to let the pauses enter into the sentence:I enter the silence.I enter the silence.I enter the silence.In each different spacing the sentence becomes different than simply saying, “I enter the silence”. If we practice this little meditation for a few minutes daily we can begin to feel the strength that adding pauses, rhythms and emotions to words has in shaping our feelings and thoughts.This exercise will be central in this poetry workshop, so it will be important for the participants to think of words not only as conveyers of meaning but as creators of a sound that is charged with emotion and may change our relationship with other people and even with ourselves and our own thoughts.As our main topic is red, we will have to gather the emotions that we relate to red and the words that relate with these emotions. Each of you will have a journal to describe these emotions and to play with the words to be able to fit emotions and words as best as possible.2) The study of the different poetical forms and the different poetsFor homework you will not only have to write a journal about your own experiments with words and sound. You will also have to find out about English poets and about poetical meters and rhymes.For this you can either ask the people around you to recommend you to some English poets they might now, do the investigations yourself or choose from the following list of poets:Robert BurnRobert Louie StevensonLewis CarrollLord ByronWilliam BlakeDylan ThomasSylvia PlathEmily DickensonElizabeth BishopGwendolyn BrooksJuliana BernersElizabeth DaryushWhen reading this poets it is important to try to understand each word and to try to find the rhythm and the feelings they are trying to express.For the meters and the rhymes of poetry you can start looking in the following cites: pages will probably create more questions than answers so you will have to find other information sources to investigate the subject further. ................
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