Writing Poems from Within the Work with Dale Kushner: March 29, 2025
In-person at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in beautiful Placitas, New Mexico.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
10 am - 3 pm
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.
Please bring writing material and a poem or the idea of a poem or a dream image to class.
Suggested reading:
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Jane Hirschfield
The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye, Donald Revell
The Reenchantment of Art, Suzi Gablik
The Art of Description: World into Word, Mark Doty
Recommended: https://bookshop.org/
In-person at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in beautiful Placitas, New Mexico.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
10 am - 3 pm
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.
Please bring writing material and a poem or the idea of a poem or a dream image to class.
Suggested reading:
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Jane Hirschfield
The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye, Donald Revell
The Reenchantment of Art, Suzi Gablik
The Art of Description: World into Word, Mark Doty
Recommended: https://bookshop.org/
In-person at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in beautiful Placitas, New Mexico.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
10 am - 3 pm
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.
Please bring writing material and a poem or the idea of a poem or a dream image to class.
Suggested reading:
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Jane Hirschfield
The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye, Donald Revell
The Reenchantment of Art, Suzi Gablik
The Art of Description: World into Word, Mark Doty
Recommended: https://bookshop.org/
Class limit 10 students.
Lunch break at noon. Bring your own lunch if desired. Plentiful snacks and beverages provided (coffee, tea, water). This is a working/writing lunch on site. Ample time to explore the grounds of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse and walk the labyrinth.
Bring writing materials, free wi-fi if needed.
Hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche.
Author books will be for sale, along with Poetry Playhouse Publications books and art.
Directions and contact info sent with registration. Handouts sent by email and provided in class. Questions? Email jules@poetryplayhouse.com.
Dale M. Kushner is a novelist, poet, and essayist. Her debut novel, The Conditions of Love, published by Grand Central, was nominated for the Texas Library Association Award for Outstanding Adult Fiction. M is Ms. Kushner’s new collection of poetry.
Her study of Jungian psychology and dreamwork informs Transcending the Past her popular monthly online column for Psychology Today. She has been recently honored by the Pushcart Prize 2024 for special mention in the poetry. As well, her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Kushner’s widely regarded writings on the divine feminine, depth psychology, and intergenerational trauma are published in anthologies and collected works including Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance, University of Massachusetts Press, Jung’s Red Book For Our Time: Searching for Soul Under Postmodern Conditions, Volume 4 (2020) edited by Murray Stein and Thomas Arzt, Jewish Currents, and elsewhere. She has recently been filmed for a documentary called Between Two Worlds that is now in production. Dale M. Kushner’s interview with neuroscientist Daniela Schiller about memory and trauma is featured in the documentary See Memory, seen on public television stations in 2025.
Marieke, the Netherlands, 1940
I was seven months pregnant
when troops crossed our border. The dread hours
spelled the end of tomorrows. Evenings
the scent of scythed grass, forest birch
blue in the moonlight. As in a dream
of halted time, an eternity of engine-drone above the clouds.
Wing shadows pinned us to the ground.
Stunned breath, certain death.
Daniel ran from the woodshed, pine dust in his beard
& dragged me from the yard. In the kitchen
I sank to my knees. A rabbit was
braising in the iron pot. The baby jackknifed in my womb.
I saw a vision of my father already in the next world,
watching with pity in his eyes. I saw my mother
wrapped in a shawl on a footstool, her lips twisted
in a bitter smile. Wars aren’t won with prayers, she said.
In the evening the baby arrived in a bath
of blood. Daniel wept between my legs &
carried our dead child into the woods.
The clear night sky fed
my secret hope I would survive, though
along the horizon, flares—the enemy
advancing. Later, I learned the baby
had been a boy. Daniel blamed the Germans
for his death, having forgotten
the ugly nights he slammed his anger
into me, rough lullaby of his hips pounding mine.
I have stopped loving him completely now.
Blame that on the Germans, too, I think,
grief butchering the last tender morsel of hope.
From M, Dale Kushner, available at 3: A Taos Press https://3taospress.com/authors/dale-m-kushner/
Jules’ Poetry Playhouse is at 11 Homestead Lane, Placitas, NM. Directions sent upon registration. No refunds; however, you may apply the fee to another class or merchandise if you need to cancel.
