Let's make a book! Using a traditional Japanese four-hole technique, which is suitable for beginners, we will make a journal or bind a book that you've pre-printed. Materials for blank journals will be provided. If you are pre-printing pages for binding your own chapbook, please reach out to ask about dimensions. You will need an extra half inch margin for the binding. Other tools will be supplied.

How might our performance transform when we become a character or persona other than who we are in our day to day lives? This workshop will bring poets into a full circle experience of generating poetic content, exploring several realms of one's stage presence (intention, voice, and body language), and an opportunity to perform (potentially with Black Market Translation’s “Punketry!”). 

The reflective eye is one of our greatest tools in cultivating our craft into a style that feels most authentic to us; reflection allows us to notice which expressions felt authentic versus which expressions were not aligned with our intention as the performer. Through noticing these details of our performance, we are given full power to alter our stage presence. There is no right answer to the question “how should I perform?” or “why should I perform?”. However, when we ruminate on these questions, we open up the doors of creativity and exploration to the continuous process of developing our stage presence.

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.

Ever been ambushed by one of those clouds of late summer bugs that swirl around you with crazy energy for a moment or two and then disappear? We don’t always see or feel them, but the sources of inspiration for poetry writing and storytelling hover just as thickly around us, waiting to be used, and they don’t go away. Join me for this hands-on workshop that will help you to recognize these incredible sources of writing inspiration and guide you to choose the ones that the one-and-only-you can pursue for meaningful, emotionally powerful writing. I think we’ll have great fun together following prompts that I’m guessing you’ve never tried before.

Exploring the burgeoning world of psychedelics or “Entheogens”, as we veteran psychonauts like to call them, and how breaking down ego structures & reassembling the cracked Humpty Dumpty shells (reintegration) can assist creativity, i.e., seeing (perception), breaking down (deconstruction), and reassembling (using language to unveil the amalgam of one’s deep truth to a world of shifting center stages). We will employ talking head & peer-to-peer learning techniques. Bring a poem or two. Be prepared to speak.   

Offered by Art Goodtimes, performer bard, psychonaut & thaumaturge – veteran of the Psychedelic Sixties; well-versed in eco-politics; editor & journalist; successful Green elected official and founder of the Talking Gourds poetry program at the Telluride Institute. Conceived in war (1945) born in peace. A student of Dolores LaChapelle.

Guided exploration through Encounters Along the Creek, the festival's landart installation with distinct sites conducive for poetic experiences.

We’ve heard the cliché all our lives. Now it’s come to pass. You’ve been stranded on an island that appears to be deserted. There’s abundant luscious fruit, coconuts galore, a freshwater stream, and plenty of dried seaweed for weaving a tent and a few tropical outfits. There are no human signs, other than a waterproof trunk sitting under a date palm. It springs open when you touch it. Inside are the all-inclusive collected works of five poets. You’re saved by this gift of potential Companionship, Solace, Philosophy, Instruction, and the Wisdom of Love. Bring us those five names and a poem from each. (Use of phones is permitted.) Although time on the island is open-ended, our terra firma workshop is limited in length. How many poets and poems can we share in the allotted time? Let’s find out. 

Workshop is capped at 12 people.

Renga is a form of collaborative “linked” poetry, practiced in Japan in ancient times as a social activity, both in a courtly, formal style, and a more playful, humorous and even vulgar spirit. This latter was developed by Basho into a more refined but still playful form that became known as renku. 

In Jimi’s workshop, each participant will begin by writing a 3-line haiku in their notebook and passing it to the next person, who will compose a two-line “linked” verse, followed by another 3-line poem by the next poet, and so on around the circle. After all notebooks have completed their course, everyone will have their own renga that they started and finished. A brief introductory lecture will cover history, poetic terms and applications, and the spirit of linked verse. It’s all for fun, so Let’s Renga!

We’ll be exploring the nature and behavior of language and energy on an atomic as well as subatomic level with an infinite universe of prompts and access points. 

Bring: 

• Something to write with (preferably pen and paper) 

• A multitude of experiences, playful curiosity, and a penchant for entanglement!

Bring your buoyant sensualities and a light-weight outdoor pack with paper, pen, water; for a 2 hr guided excursion through the immersive landart installation, Along the Creek. We'll rotate rounds of short jaunts along South Crestone Creek, sensual awareness baths, and writing drawn from direct experience. Meet at the Conference Center.

According to permacultureprinciples.com, the 12 permaculture design principles are "thinking tools, that when used together, allow us to creatively re-design our environment and our behavior in a world of less energy and resources." While often utilized in the ecological world, these principles can also challenge and enhance the way we think of poetry. 

In this workshop, we will apply a permaculture lens to the review of poems and practice generative exercises to integrate them into our writing. In the anthropocene era, these principles guide us to a more sustainable mindset, where we humbly see ourselves in mutuality with the rest of The Earth.

How can a static text become a truly interactive system that responds to the reader? What is the difference between playing a poem as a game and solving a poem as a puzzle? How can we build worlds that encourage the reader to dive into the unfamiliar and learn to swim? In this class, we will examine some of the fundamental concepts of Game Studies as they apply to literature. Our goal will be to learn together how to create work that engenders for the reader what game designers term “meaningful play.” Have you given the reader agency? Does your poem have replay value? Time to put your game face on!

Each year brings us new (and yet still compelling) variations on classic fairy tales and myths. What makes these age-old stories so popular and relatable today? What are the essential bones of these tales that speak to us on such deep—even subconscious—levels? In this workshop, we will dive into the structure and archetypes of our oral traditions to reveal what makes them so compelling; read examples of modern poetry that use familiar tropes; and generate ideas for our own visit into the wild wood to face the darkness within. This workshop explores how writing about our shared mythologies adds depth to any poet’s work.

It can be challenging to get past the excitement and to articulate the significant connections and wisdom we feel upon seeing a bald eagle nesting in a long dead tree, the dance of a rattler across a dirt road, or the view of glacier lakes below the 14er we just climbed. In this generative workshop, we’ll give ourselves time to wander on the page and in the fresh air while we refine how we can use poetic devices to enshrine the unforgettable paths we promise to house in our memories.