Join our eNews list! Enter email below:
I am a long way from becoming a good poet
I am much closer, however, to becoming a good person. I thought about this during my graduation ceremony last weekend in Port Townsend, Washington where I celebrated the completion of a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Goddard College.
FACULTY:
Jan Clausen (pictured below, left) has a poem, "Ghazal: For Us" in the second issue of the poetry journal Theodate.
Darrah Cloud's latest play, Our Suburb, will premiere at Theatre J in Washington, D.C. next season, directed by Judith Ivey.
For me, a magical aspect of residency is getting ready: making airline reservations, planning the seminar I will teach, hearing from students about the artwork they will exhibit and present, and looking forward to conversations with students and faculty colleagues on campus.
Here is a “sneak preview” of the seminar I will lead this upcoming residency (April 5-12, 2013). This seminar combines two of my favorite activities, handwork and storytelling & folktales:
In Vermont, we have an unprecedented opening for driving real change in education policy. Our Governor, the Secretary of Education, school boards and administrators are deeply engaged in conversations that demonstrate a historic commitment to reform.
Here is the solitude from from which you are absent.
It is raining. The sea wind is hunting stray gulls.
-- Pablo Neruda
When I was eleven I was intrigued by the thought of travel. The idea that someone could get on a plane and before long be immersed in a new culture, and environment always fascinated me.
When I reached high school I met my best friend, Minako Matsui. She was a foreign exchange student from Japan who chose to leave the stability of her home to learn in the United States. We soon became great friends, for we were both so interested in each other’s lives.
One thing you notice when you teach in an MFAW program is that students love writing prompts. And who can blame them?
In the fall of 2010, six months after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Jenna Schmitz (BA HAS ‘13) moved to Hinche in Haiti’s Central Plateau, 37 miles north of Port-au-Prince. Trained as a Certified Professional Midwife at Birthwise Midwifery School (which has a credit-bearing partnership with Goddard College), Jenna volunteered with a Haitian-led organization called Midwives for Haiti.
Last week while in New Orleans for our monthly Jungian training seminar, I found myself with a free day, but in a torrential rain storm. No chance of wandering and making photographs in the French Quarter this visit.
I remembered passing by what looked like an art supply store in the Fat City neighborhood near my hotel on my visit last month. (I am perpetually lost in New Orleans, and hoped I would be able to find my way back.) I did find it, with the help of a young woman who was a native New Oreleanian.
As a lifelong knitter but only a recent (four years) but dedicated (every day if I can, several seven-day retreats) meditator, here is a short list of similarities between the two activities which I thought might apply to many other kinds of learning processes as well:
