Any writing prompt has the unexpected power of releasing a poem, a story, a personal account that contains unintegrated emotion or trauma. This shouldn’t surprise us. Much of the impulse to write comes from unexpressed or suppressed feelings. Learning to treat these writings with respect is one of the first steps to becoming a writer. Knowing something about how trauma affects us may help you understand why these feelings are so powerful yet difficult to express, and may help you get them down on paper to share these experiences with others.
This four-hour workshop, led by a therapist/poet and a poet, will offer you:
• Writing prompts specifically designed to elicit un-dealt with experience
• Knowledge to better understand how trauma affects you and your writing
• A respectful, safe space to begin working with the material that you may most want to write about, but are having difficulty expressing.
Use code EARLYBIRD at checkout for 20% off through August 18!
Kenneth Robinson is a poet and musician, and a psychotherapist in private practice for more than 30 years. His practice brings together art, psychology, and spirituality as a means to facilitate emotional integration and guide others beyond the shattering consequences of trauma to a sense of wholeness and connection. Kenneth received a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1977, and a Master’s in Theological Studies from the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University in 2007. He is a founding member of a musical group that leads kirtan, a form of meditation and worship that allows participants to move to open-hearted awareness and self-expression through sound. He has performed his poetry (individually, and in collaboration with Ana Maria Hernando) in Denver, Kansas City, Vancouver, and in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. His book of poetry, The Year of Lovemaking and Crying, was released in 1999.
Joseph Hardy’s poems have been published in more than fifty journals, including: Appalachian Review, Cold Mountain Review, Inlandia, Plainsongs, and Poet Lore. He is the author of a book of poetry, “The Only Light Coming In”, Bambaz Press Los Angeles, 2020. He teaches a brown-bag seminar for The Porch on how to use the website, Submittable, to find and submit your writing for publication. A reformed human resource consultant, Joseph and his wife have lived in Nashville, Tennessee since 2005. Joseph and Kenneth met in a writing circle led by the late poet and therapist, Merrill Farnsworth, in 2013. It is their hope this writing seminar, “Melt the Frozen Core”, will help others as much as Merrill helped them.
