Writing Poems from Within the Work with Dale Kushner

Poetry, like every art form, has gone through its many changes. The poetry of the moment is shaped as much by theory, criticism, and fad as by the history and politics of time and place. But a poem comes into being through an individual consciousness, the poet’s consciousness, which in turn is subject to unconscious influences. If we believe that both the personal and collective unconscious are reservoirs of meaningful dreams, images, memories, and archetypal motifs, then one of the poet’s tasks is to access this storehouse of individual treasures and integrate it into their work. Borrowing from the language of medieval alchemy, which is aimed at turning the base metal lead into gold, this workshop will, in part, focus on bringing into awareness our “prima materia” into the light of consciousness to infuse and enrich our poems.

As writers, we often push at our work from the “outside,” trying to make something happen rather than attuning to the organic flow of the material. In this workshop, the keywords will be exploration, revelation, wholeness, and trust. In class, we’ll look at our ambidextrous minds—how our brain hemispheres complement each other to enhance meaning and language skills. We will explore beyond the rational and linear modes of narrative by following our image-making and associative minds, moving from outside “constructing” the work to creating from inside our lived lives.

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