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John Fox Upcoming Events
Portland, Oregon
September 26-29, 2013
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Sponsored by the Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies
and the Institute for Poetic Medicine
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 August 19, 2013
A Letter from John Fox: An Invitation and News from The Institute for Poetic Medicine
By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.
Dear Friends of Poetic Medicine,
This is to catch up with you about some upcoming workshops and also to let you know that soon The Institute for Poetic Medicine will publish another full Poetic Medicine Journal for the first time since last summer! That will appear early October.
Poetic Medicine in Portland September 26 - 29, 2013
I wanted to let you know about three upcoming Poetic Medicine events in Portland, Oregon. Please see information about them following this letter! We extend a warm invitation to you to attend and if you would, to share this with anyone you may know who might be interested-especially in the Portland area.
The September 26, Thursday day-long retreat, Poetry's Harvest, offered in collaboration with Birch Dwyer, Peg Edera and Marna Hauk will invite you to dive deeply into areas of particular interest and demonstrate the ways poetry and creativity as healer can weave into the whole of our experience.
The September 27, Friday evening talk and mini-workshop at the Friends Meeting House, At the Bend in the River, will be new material I am working on but will address the ongoing call to discover how listening is a catalyst to creativity. The exploration from that evening will be deepened with a writing workshop on Saturday and Sunday held at Peg Edera's Summerlin House.
I was struck by the simple complexity of these efforts,
of our listening, of our being together,
through self-expression. So powerful!
~ Jill Kelly
Portland, OR
Workshop Participant
www.jillkellyauthor.com
A New Edition of Poetic Medicine Journal
Soon to Be Published On-Line
There is a lot of news and in-depth stories to share about the work of the Institute for Poetic Medicine. In 2013 - 2014 IPM has sponsored/funded programs led by our poetry partners working with people with traumatic and acquired brain injury in Larkspur, CA; people living with mental health challenges in Sellersville, PA; and teens who come to the United States as immigrants and refugees in Seattle, WA.
These inspiring stories will show you the positive and lasting effect of poetry as healer has for people. Our poetry partners: Lisa DeVuono, Krista Wissing and Merna Ann Hecht each bring unique gifts and skills to the application of creativity and poetry as healer. You can learn and be empowered by the stories they will share.
A significant part of each story is the demonstration of the generative power of these programs and their capacity to touch, in expanding circles, other people and the community at large.
Our intention in sharing these stories is to not only inspire you but to give practical ways to show the possibilities for transferring the good from those programs into what you do.
This journal will include a wealth of resources and updates on my activities and ways that poetry as healer is active around the world.
Please look for that journal at the beginning of October!
I hope to see you or perhaps someone you know when I am in Portland.
Sincerely,
John Fox
President, The Institute for Poetic Medicine
P.S. For our new subscribers, or those who missed the Summer 2012 Poetic Medicine Journal on Hospice, you can view that here. To visit an archive of all previous newsletters, please click here.
And for the IPM Web Site, please click here.
...............
"Our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter."
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
from I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World
in honor of the March On Washington, August 28, 1963
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ONE-DAY RETREAT
Poetry's Healing Harvest
with Birch Dwyer, Peg Edera, John Fox and
Marna Hauk
Thursday, September 26, 2013
9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Friend's Meeting House
4312 S.E. Stark St.
Portland, Oregon
Fee: Sliding scale; please see brochure
A day-long Northwest Poetic Medicine retreat to refresh, revitalize, and deepen during autumn's golden light.
What We Intend, What We Will Offer
As collaborators of this day-long symposium weaving together poetry, prayer, sacred body and earth, we will bring to you our rich and varied life-long passions which all have the capacity to evoke, nurture and bolster wholeness. Throughout the day we will use dialogue and spacious listening, poem-making and poem-sharing as ways to learn from and connect with one another.
Breakout Sessions Include:
Poetry as Provision: How Poetry Can Nurture Your Relationship with Your Body
- with Birch Dwyer
Keeping the Flame - Kindling Our Poetic Connections to the Sacred
- with Peg Edera Poetry as Healer - with John Fox
Becoming the Seed - Regenerating Earth Creativity
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in...
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
~ Marge Piercy
Click here for brochure PDF with registration form.
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 FRIDAY EVENING TALK & MINI-WORKSHOP
At the Bend in the River:
The Act of Listening as a Catalyst for Your Creativity
with John Fox, CPT
Friday, September 27, 2013
7:00 - 9:00 pm
Friend's Meeting House
4312 S.E. Stark St.
Portland, Oregon
Fee: $25
We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy
of beauty and life for future generations.
~ David Brower
Founder, Sierra Club
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John's talk and mini-writing workshop will explore listening and the act of
poem-making as ways to help us "think like a river" so that a legacy of
beauty and life can be made real to ourselves and others.
In this evening talk we will gather to slow down "at the bend in the river."
This gathering place when given to listening and creating is refreshing to
our hearts and our minds.
This Friday evening, at the bend in the river, you will experience and write about
how the process of listening/feeling/thinking, when approached with respect,
curiosity and care, with slowing down, helps us to discover our song.
This Friday evening program is also the beginning of the full weekend retreat.
A good river is nature's life work in song.
~ Mark Helprin
Click here for flyer PDF with registration form.
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SATURDAY & SUNDAY POEM-MAKING RETREAT
At the Bend in the River:
A Place for Gathering, Listening, Paying Attention, Slowing Down and Silence
with John Fox, CPT
Saturday, September 28, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Sunday, September 29, 9:30 am - 1:00 pm
Peg Edera's Summerlin House
Fee: $220 (includes Friday)
THIS MOMENT, THIS PERSON,
THIS MEETING, THIS POEM
At the Bend in the River is a place of gathering and flow, community and creativity, a fresh shift in perception and a turning place: a surprise felt in the current. We approach all of these through the process of poem-making. Over the course of this retreat we will:
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slow down, even allow for stillness, listen to our own flow
- place value on silence, in silence, holding silence as much as possible
- open to and connect with the poem and the person making the poem
- write as much as possible, without rush, feeling the river bend
At a certain point you say to the woods,
to the sea, to the mountains, to the world,
Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.
~ Annie Dillard
from Teaching a Stone to Talk
Click here for brochure PDF with registration form.
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