Poetry as Prayer

with Miriam Calleja

a 6-week generative creative lab/workshop over Zoom beginning April 30th
Wednesdays - April 30th, May 7th, May 14th, May 21st, May 28th, June 4th, from 3-4:30PM Pacific

All meetings will be recorded and shared with registered participants for a few weeks afterwards.

Whether we pray or not, it is in our nature to find solace in ritual. This generative workshop focuses on the invocatory touch of poetry, and it serves as an invitation to meditate on those moments when we seek such ritual and solace. Each session focuses on one or two themes: change, gratitude, food, sleep, loss, friendship, nature, the self (strength, courage, satisfaction), healing, pain, fear, near-misses, and others.

The sessions will be held in a secular manner, intending that each participant can either curate a collection of poetry discovered during the sessions, or written during the sessions, or a mixture of both, as their own 'prayer book.'

Each session begins with a visualization, a meditative exercise related to the topic of the day.

Participants are given a poetry pack on the same themes (around 6-8 poems per session). Two or three of the poems will be used during the class, while the others are for further reading and contemplation.

During the first session, we will discuss what place prayer - or our different concepts of prayer - have in our lives. We will discuss expectations and our individual and collective needs for the next 6 weeks.

Miriam Calleja is an award-winning Pushcart-nominated poet, writer, workshop leader, and translator. She has hosted community generative writing workshops in Europe and the US for the past 10 years. She is the author of three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and several collaborative works. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and in translation worldwide. She has been Highly Commended for a translated poem by the Stephen Spender Trust. Her latest chapbook is titled Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 2023). Her work has appeared in platform review, Odyssey, Taos Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Modern Poetry in Translation, humana obscura, and elsewhere. Miriam is from Malta and currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Read more on miriamcalleja.com and Permission to Write (miriamcalleja.substack.com).

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks. 

This course offers two sliding scales based on your relative financial standing. The huge range listed below is meant to reflect the incredible disparity in economic conditions of people living in different parts of the world, and also the historical reality of stolen wealth in many different forms, generally from the so-called Global South to the North. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of how your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$500 Partner

$420 Supporter (Note: this reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$350 Companion

$200 Friend

A limited number of scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.