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2024 workshops

Workshops:

• Longer workshops on Friday: $40
• Saturday workshops: $30
• Discounted rate for four workshops, 2 on Friday and 2 on Saturday: $125
• Students are free
• Saturday's Instrument Garden Studio Workshop with Boredom Fighters is free, with no registration required.


REGISTER HERE!
 

All other readings, panels, and open mic events are free and open to everyone with donations deeply appreciated. We depend on our Friends here in Crestone and elsewhere to sustain the Crestone Poetry Festival. Please consider joining with other Friends of Poemfest and donating here.

Risk & Play: Flirting with the Unknown

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Most writing advice is meant to be dismantled, and in this playshop, we take on the adage “Write what you know.” Really? If we are to serve the writing, we must let it know more than we do. Join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer in letting curiosity and uncertainty drive our writing into fresh, resonant new regions—places we couldn’t possibly predict. That’s right. Writing for pleasure. Finding rules and breaking them. Play is a secret weapon for meeting failure, vulnerability, uncertainty and humility. Play helps us fall in love with the world, and with words, too. We’ll read poems that make us laugh, shake our heads, open our hearts and show up, and then in that vein, we’ll write. Gravity, of course, is also invited. There’s always a dark underbelly. Let’s tickle it.

> Friday, 9:00am-11:30am

> Crestone Charter School

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has 13 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine, A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, American Life in Poetry, on fences, in back alleys, on Carnegie Hall Stage and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around town. Her poems have been used for choral works by composers Paul Fowler and Jeffrey Nytch and performed around America. Her collection, Hush, won the Halcyon prize. Naked for Tea was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Other books include Even Now, The Less I Hold and If You Listen, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. In 2023 she released All the Honey and Beneath All Appearances an Unwavering Peace (a book for grieving parents with artist Rashani Réa); a book of writing prompts, Exploring Poetry of Presence II; and Dark Praise, a spoken word album with Steve Law. Photo: Joanie Schwarz

SoulCollage

Judith Oakland

SoulCollage is based on every soul’s innate love of images, as well as the freedom of imagination and intuition. Seena Frost, founded SoulCollage as a process for weaving creativity, spirituality and psychology to support us in exploring healing and evolving our lives.  In the workshop, we will make a few cards (depending on how fast or slowly your own timing allows), 5 x8. Choosing compelling images that call to us, cutting them out and and adding them to a background, we will do this process in silence, letting the cards emerge.


The cards coming through the unconscious, express parts of you and your world… the inner child, the teacher, the organizer, the spirit world, the writer…and if this process calls to you, you will have all you need to take the workshop experience and grow a SoulCollage deck… embracing your many facets… to support your soul journey.

The writing piece that is prompted by your cards will be guided, inviting you to free write, responses that come from the card..
I.e., asking the card,
“Who are you?”
“What are you here to give me?”
“What do you want from me”

And also there will be some other creative writing prompts…
And you have the freedom and time, to let the writing tell you where it wants to go- no sense of needing to follow the prompts!
All materials will be provided, including delicious snacks and teas and coffee…

Come prepared to play.

> Friday, 1:30-3:30pm

> Venue: 1633 Willow Creek Way, Crestone, CO 81131. Go to the studio next to the house.

Judith Oakland, MA, CHP is a graduate of Naropa’s Contemplative Psychothery Master’s program, a somatic therapist for 30+ years, an explorer of 7 decades of life, a lover of silence and beauty, a practitioner of meditation, and a late bloomer to creative arts! Soul collage came into my life joyfully 10 years ago. Wild writing and soul collage have been pathways for a deeper inward dive….Carl Jung offers that midlife is the best time for individuation and transformation — I agree! and I look forward to sharing this process with you!

Writing for the Change You Want to See: Be a Voice for What You Love!

Judyth Hill

Every poem is a thank you letter,
an IOU and a complaint to the management. ~ Alice Waters

Let’s write from a place that allows for the biggest hoop, the largest hope! Be a Voice for the Change you want to see in the world—the time is NOW!


What we name, what we write, (whether for or against) that is what we create in the world. The Saying makes it So. Ever notice when you drive behind a car placarded with stickers: NO MORE WAR, STOP WAR, WAR IS UNHEALTHY, END VIOLENCE, etc., what you are literally, actually, taking in, through your eyes and listening and thinking is: WAR, WAR, UNHEALTHY, VIOLENCE, NO NO NO……?


Let’s RE-LANGUAGE the entire thinking! We will learn the Dharma of Eloquence: how much of the Good can we hold and move forward in our speaking and writing.


Let’s learn to speak FOR, write FOR…that is my idea of the paradigm shift: the way we can truly inspire the Good: so our writing can transform, not describe, not judge, not castigate, or berate.


So many of us now are passionate about using our literary skills to do Good and wondering how best to do this. This class is a clear, concise, and direct, response. Writers who take this class will leave with very exact explanations of how to explore and describe our stance as artists in the world, and with handouts that provide many, many examples of writing – both prose and poetry - that have made a difference, by Speaking For...and bringing about: the Change they envision.


We can be a part of the solution: we can serve what we love with our writing skills!! We can make a difference!


This workshop will give you the tools to write what Supports the Good…the Bad has way enough speakers! And we need your Voice!

> Friday, 1:30-3:30pm

> Crestone Charter School

Judyth Hill is a grateful DharmaSeed of poet Robert Bly, Deep Ecologist Dolores LaChapelle, Jane Cooper, Jack Mueller, storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, and so many more! In her poetry life, she has served as a teacher from pre-K to death and as Poet-in-Residence in schools and prisons. She has developed and sustained teen poetry programs and served as mentor at conferences, festivals, in museums, on mountains...along rivers. She has worked with all ages, writing poems with 2-year-olds on felt boards—(I always wanted little children to meet a poet, so they could know, “o, that is what I am” for themselves!!!)—as well as scribing for elders and getting their work published. She serves as Managing Editor for Wild Rising Press and has edited and published over 180 poetry manuscripts. She has written poetry curriculums for the Georgia O’Keefe, Folk Art, and the Detroit Museums and served as Literature Coordinator for the state of New Mexico. She considers herself a grassroots arts activist who has been empowering the poetry community in and beyond Colorado and the Southwest. Her own poetry has been widely published.

The Poetry of Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Ben Bentele

Hike / Meditation \ AI.  Let's listen. What is foreign?  What is familiar?  How can the cadences of Persian poetry inform our own voice?  When does the artificial become natural?  The world is mutli-modal, and ever more so, so is AI.  In this workshop, we will explore the merging of traditional poetry forms with AI tools for translation and generation. It need not create something beautiful - just reveal something of the creative process. What creative capacity is within us / what creativity lies without?

> Saturday, 8:30-10:00am

> Crestone Charter School

Ben Bentele. Fruit-fly / Hay-hand \ Ex-physicist | Translator & Odd-jobber in Hotchkiss, CO. Somewhere between American Folk & Persian Classical /\ birdsong & streamflow.

Roses are Blue, Violets are Red: Turning a Cliché on its Head

Madison Gill-Silva

Oftentimes as writers, when expressing big emotions, we rely on clichés in the moment to get our point across then scold ourselves afterward for not being more original. News flash: nothing we’ve ever felt is original! Someone somewhere already felt it first and put it in words. Thus the reason clichés exist and persist. But the way we describe those feelings, the thoughts and emotions and images we evoke in the process - that is how we make it uniquely ours. In this workshop we aren’t going to turn our backs on clichés, especially in the generative phase. We will embrace them, examine their universality, analyze how other writers have used them. Then we will practice inverting and transforming them in the editing phase. Maybe even invent some new ones in the process.

> Saturday, 8:30-10:00am

> Crestone Charter School

Madison Gill-Silva (she/her) is a poet from Colorado. She received her BA in English from Colorado State University-Pueblo. Her debut chapbook, Casualties of Honey, was the winner of the 2022 Fledge Chapbook Prize awarded by Middle Creek Publishing. She was also previously selected by poet Donald Levering as a recipient of the Cantor Award. Her work appears in print or online with such publications as Tinderbox Poetry Journal, South Broadway Press, and Snakeskin Poetry among others. She and her husband and their cat live in a tiny house on Colorado’s western slope. Find her on instagram @sweetmint_poet

Portolano: A film and conversation about the life and work of Jack Mueller

Danny Rosen

Jack Mueller was a poet, educator, organizer, sailor, climber and cultural leader in the arts. In the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, Mueller gained a reputation among the post-Beat poets in the Bay Area literary scene with his readings and cultural performances. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, renowned poet and co-founder of the landmark City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, said, “Jack Mueller is the biggest-hearted poet I have ever known.”

The film, Portolano, directed by Kyle Harvey, weaves together interviews with literary icons such as Neeli Cherkovski and Jack Hirschman, archival photographs, audio recordings and ephemera of the legendary North Beach, San Francisco scene of the 70’s and 80’s to create a vibrant, poetic portrait of Jack Mueller.

Following the film, we will read and discuss the extensive and varied work of Mueller which illuminates a life lived in the service of Poesy.

> Saturday, 10:15-11:45am

> Crestone Charter School

Danny Rosen started Lithic Press in 2008 and opened Lithic Bookstore and Gallery in 2015, in Fruita, Colorado. He has worked in geology, astronomy, construction, and education. From 1995 to 2014, he gave astronomy presentations in schools throughout western Colorado in the portable Western Sky Planetarium. Part of each year between 2003 and 2008 he ran an astronomical observatory in Namibia in southern Africa. In a previous life, he was a climber. His full length collection, Primate Poems, was published in 2016.

Writing the Six to Eight-Room Poem

Julie Cummings

In this generative poetry playshop, you will have the opportunity to explore your creativity by writing a unique six to eight-room poem. The process will involve using several unrelated poems and prompts as inspiration, allowing you to draw from multiple sources and create something truly original. This workshop is designed to  encourage you to think outside the box and experiment with different poetic styles and techniques. By the end of the playshop, you will have the beginning of a poem that you can be proud of, and gain valuable insight into the art of poetry writing. So, get ready to unleash your inner poet and let your imagination run wild!

> Saturday, 10:15 -11:45am

> Crestone Charter School

Conifer, Colorado poet Julie Cummings is the President of Columbine Poets, Inc. as well as the Immediate Past President of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. In addition to facilitating and conducting poetry writing workshops regularly, she hosts a monthly poetry open mic. Her poetry has been featured at several poetry festivals in Colorado and throughout the United States, including the Woodtick Poetry Festival in Minnesota. The Poetry Society of Texas selected her to deliver the keynote address at its 100th anniversary in 2021. Purchase her poetry book, Ride of My Life, on Amazon or directly from her. Her self-published CD, Be Heard, is also available. She has published poetry in several anthologies. She believes there is a poem somewhere that touches everyone, it just has to be found by them. Julie Cumming's website is juliecummingspoetry.com

Free and Open to the Public! Instrument Garden Studio Workshop

Boredom Fighters

The Boredomfighters Crestone Chapter will be bringing their Instrument Garden Studio Workshop to the festival this year and helping the community produce a song from scratch using the sounds of the space, the poetry, and you!


Check them out at @boredomfightersfoundation and be sure to catch them Saturday, October 19, 4:30-5:30 PM at T Road!

#MusicProduction #InstrumentGarden #HelpKidsMakeBeats

> Saturday, 4:30-5:30pm

> T-Road Brewery

Boredomfighters is a nonprofit bringing free music production tools and knowledge to under resourced school districts and communities nationwide. The local chapter is led by @MelodyMonroe and currently building music programs for Crestone Charter, Moffat, and the public via Coyote Mountain and Crestone Performances!

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