Creative
Workshops 2010
Feb/March Writing
Newsletter
Re-story and re-imagine
your Life and Work
Energy is eternal delight. William Blake
STOP
PRESS:
The Joy
and Call of Stories Find
the Story teller inside R980.00
A practical
4 week Storyshop Series. Beginners welcome
Sat 6 13 20 27 Feb 14:00 - 17:30
Dear writer, storyteller, reader, lover of words, images, silences…
This month I explore a word. Energy… from the Greek - energeia, energos,
(activity, operation, active, working.) Its word cousins are legion – power,
vigour, liveliness, oomph, animation, ardour, verve, zest. Its effects are fire,
movement, transformation. Forms of energy
are often named after a related force – as in solar, kinesthetic, wind. So too
there is writing energy.
We’ve all experienced people who leach our energy. Deplete
us. And those in whose presence we draw from some greater force that energises
us all. The act of reading/writing can be such a dynamic drive that fires our
bodies and brains and sets us aflame like a Biblical burning bush. Or Hafiz’s sun.
Even after all
this time / The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe
With a love like that, / It lights the whole sky.
Many regard the seven Chakras as the hidden energy centres in
our bodies. We receive,
process and transmit energy through their spinning. They transform and
influence change. And they connect to and amplify each other.
Energy jumps the gap between the finger tip of the gods and
of human beings – as in the Sistine chapel.
Since writing has to do with the body’s energy, I imagine where these gaps,
these synapses lie. Perhaps between head and heart... between meaning and sound…
object and symbol… where pen touches paper or fingers play the keys…. the movement of words across the page, whipping
round to begin a new line… a thought sparking. Twixt letter
and space, sound and silence, breath and pulse. Between
childhood memory and moment. Attention and inspiration…. inner resonance
and outer aura.
Here is a recent poem (5th version - still in progress) related
to this theme. Arising from a dream - shared this is the spirit of our
conversation around energy:
Dynamo and GPS Dream
I cycle in the dark,
along a country road,
a breeze blowing
through my shirt.
I find clamped
to the front fork
that simple bit
of bottled physics.
it decked a boy’s bike
with rotating coils,
magnetic fields
and pulsing current.
I flip the dynamo spring.
the head settles, nests
once more on the front tyre.
whirs to pedal rhythm.
pump legs to meet this
necessary resistance
and
speed to
steady this
broad-as-a hand beam.
for I need this bright genie
of the silver lamp,
balanced like a nose
on a handlebar moustache.
yet how to follow the road
through moonless twists
shortcuts left-rights, straight-ons
in this all night saddle ride?
a GPS lights sudden
on the crossbar
like a bird and perches
on the bit that turns the wheel.
this global voice and leglight
in tandem, sing,
shine, hum
direct me through motion
to a dawn destination.
Dorian’s Feb/March Storyshops/
Writeshops/Conversations
If you want to
unsubscribe, return email with x in subject line.
If you want
any of these workshops in your area speak speak.
….To respond to two oft asked questions –
No workshop is
ever the same. No one jumps into the same river twice. “No two trees are the
same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren.” (David Wagoner) And for those who feel they might be ‘put on
the spot’, I invite people to read their writing only if they wish to.
1. Somerset
West
Waking
up to the New Year: A Collage and Writing Storyshop
R395
Sun 31 Jan
2010 09.30 - 15.30 this coming
Sunday
I
said to the man who stood at the gates of the year “Give me a light that I
might step safely into the unknown.”
A
collage is a lamp that sheds light along our path. It evokes as travelling
companions, our creativity and imagination.
In this workshop we search for images to accompany us through the
changes we will meet as we travel through the year. Through this ritual of
beginnings, we set intension, possibility and evoke courage. This work draws
from the deep well of the unconscious.
Bring pen/paper, old magazines, scissors, glue stick and a light
lunch to share.
Venue: Katherine
Ambrose’s art studio
2.
The Joy
and Call of Stories Find the Story
teller inside R980.00
A practical 4 week Storyshop Series to evoke Creativity
and Imagination
Sat 6 13 20 27 Feb 14:00 - 17:30 Kirsten Pearson joins as
co-facilitator
This workshop
will show you how to ritualise and energise your life though engaging with
stories – those of your own and of others. Climb inside
stories and tell them from the inside. Listen to them, Shape them.
Taste them on your tongue. Reconnect to creativity, memory and
imagination. This workshop experience will energize you. You will get a clearer understanding of how we
construct our lives as fiction and how this can release us into a more abundant
life. You’ll emerge with stories in your heart and on your lips.
Week 1: The Why of Stories - Archetypal
Stories
Week 2: Sourcing Stories
through observation - Structure your own Stories
Week 3: Practical: telling
Stories
Week 4: The Circle and the Fire
- A celebration of Story telling
Kirsten is a Dialogue facilitator, poet and the volunteer
Project Lead for the Movement for Sharing Life Stories. She promotes
story telling as a way to support change, create new realities and transform
our future.
Venue: Mystic Cove Holistic Lifestyle
Centre
contact Kirsten on 021 461 3145 or email: kirstenpea@gmail.com
3.
The Great Metaphor Hunt: A Seven Session Writing Course R580
began Wed 27 Jan (6.15 - 8.45 pm) and then last Wed of every
month till 28 July
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there
seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish. (Bernard Malamud)
Metaphors are
everywhere, open to the eyes and ears that seek them. This hunt (rich in story, words, images and
symbols) aims to enrich your writing. Develop
a metaphoric consciousness though reading, writing and story telling.
We consider
how attention to this mytho-poetic world:
·
moves us from stuckness
·
restores our innate creativity and
imagination
·
connects us to the unconscious and an
enlarging process and
·
activates emotional and physical
healing
·
releases energy and creates a more abundant life
Add R10 per session to share a light supper.
4. Ixopo
The Halo & the Noose: The Power of Story
Telling/Story Listening in Professional/ Personal Life (with Graham Williams)
19-21 Feb
bookings brcixopo@futurenet.co.za 039 834 1863
Why stories? Because stories are
origins and origins are places that we walk out from. Because stories have many
feet and travel several roads at once… because the story conjures the
invisible.
At
the heart of this retreat is our belief that once we raise our Story IQ, we
begin to hear and tell our work and personal life in a new and vital way. We
open up to transformation and new leadership paths. Like the lotus flower, we
bloom and seed new beginnings. We reach into what may be murky depths and
produce something of infinite beauty and worth. In so doing, prosperity and
abundance take on new meanings. The retreat title is taken from Graham and
Dorian’s book.
5.
Let us Play: A Writing Playshop
Sun 28 Feb 10.00
-16.00 R395
I sit and play with
similes (Shelley)
This
write and play shop explores how writing as structured play, helps us create
texts that sing with vitality, inspiration and energy. As Jung reminds us, “The creative mind plays
with the objects it loves.”
We play in scale as we did as children and offer that energy to our texts.
The idea of
writing as a game invites us to be present and engage for a specific period of
time. Both our left and right brains are activated. We consider how play calls forth inspiration,
angles a subject, and then we play with the techniques - rhythm, rhyme, echo, metaphor, ambiguity
and word play. And as we entertain ourselves, so we surprise ourselves.
Venue: Folio Books
Come early, browse and buy in this
wondrous bookshop (pre owned books too)
6.
Journal Workshop
9-11
March and 13-15 April
Once
more the generous sponsorship of the Carl Schlettwein
Foundation in
7.
Freewheeling: The Future Thinking Festival http://freewheelingfestival.wordpress.com
– do yourself a favour … come
Greening…
community… wellness… creativity… performing arts… stories
19-22 March - I have a
story slot as part of this extravaganza
Living the Questions Now
Walking
with your Story
.
Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions
themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign
tongue. (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)
What are the great questions of our lives? In this story-shop
we mediate on, consider and explore these questions. Turn them upside out and
inside down, We work in an experiential and
interactive way as we consider our individual and collective stories.
We
rediscover how, when we allow the story to enter us, to weigh and sift us, we
release the magic of the narrative to inspire, energise, engage, entertain and
sing us off on our next adventure. The telling of and listening to stories opens us to
the life of the imagination.
The meaning of my existence is that life has
addressed a question to me … or conversely that I myself am the question (Carl Jung)
8.
Read… Write…
Read…Write
An
interactive evening for book lovers, book clubbers, writers and closet writers R85
- (includes glass of wine and snacks) - space limited
Thurs
25 March 18.30 – 21.00
Discover how to enhance your reading
pleasure and enrich your book club evenings, look at how readers read, and how
writers read other writers. Dorian will provide each participant with a mini
text from an established writer and use this to explore the topic. He will be drawing from Francine Prose’s book, ‘
Come early, browse and buy in this
wondrous bookshop (pre owned books too)
Venue:
Folio Books
{{{{{
9. Somerset West
Sat 27 March 09.30 – 13.00
How to be
at ease with words a U3A (University of the third age) workshop – for U3A members. Elders teaching elders. Free
venue TBA: a private home
Looking ahead into Autumn - April…
May
10. Soutpansberg Leshiba
Writing in
the Wilderness: Natural Heritage and Game Reserve Retreat
Fri 30 April (early eve) Mon 3 May (around noon)
On this retreat atop the Soutspansberg,
we explore our life stories through our connection to nature. We draw images
and symbols from natural life, the landscape and
Lesheba… a holistic space with ancient rock art
sites, wild fig shade for indaba, Venda architecture, white rhino , mist, eco consciousness everywhere. We stay in Venda Village
Lodge 480 ks
ex J’burg
www lesheba.co.za
Do yourself a favour and look up this site – it carries the Fair
Trade label.
Workshop limited to 10/12 folk only... be nimble be quick (cut off
date 31 March)
Cost: R2980 pp sharing … This generous special rate for our group
includes: 3 nights luxury
accommodation, brunch and dinner, a game drive/walk or run, writing workshop,
Sat eve entertainment.
book accommo (R) and writeshop
(R) separately - 50% for each secures
accom: 011 726 6347
leshiba@leshiba.co.za 072 286 7302 (R700
dep: ref Dorian)
workshop: Dorian (*R290 dep)
car
pooling:
Sybbie Barnett 011 440 1021 sybbie@lantic.net 082 794 3363
11. East Cape -
Fri 7 – Sun 9 May 2010
- 4 activities
Bedford…
surrounded by the Kaga
Mountains, Bushmen Koekoe frontier country, 150 km from Port Elizabeth …is calling curious folk, lovers of life, healers, artists, seekers,
coaches, teachers, magicians, tricksters, ecologists, gardeners, come one come all to play. Story
and raise your story and writing IQ.
More
details from Jan Lister (Wrankmore) 082 871 7715 jan@dragonflydell.com
Jan runs Kaleidoscope Kafe and is involved in Kaggaberg
Kraft centre
a . Rekindling the Fire An Evening
to revive our Creativity, Imagination
and Love of Stories
Fri 7 May 2009 18.30 – 21.00
I
know that there is room in me for a second huge and timeless life (Rilke)
During
this interactive evening we enter the world of story to recover our creativity,
zest, energy and passion.
b. Writing
Yourself Alive. A Life Story Workshop
Sat 8 May 2009 09.45 – 15.30
We
are all endowed as story-tellers. There is a mystic in every one of us.
Writing is about a conversation with yourself
and with others. An exchange of energies. It is a
skill drawn from attention and openness – an organic process rather than a
talent. In this workshop we explore our innate creativity and imagination and
find the words to tell our stories… to make them more alive.
c. Bosman
& Boerekos A Fundraising Evening for the Hospital
Sat 8 May 2009 19.00 –
It
is not the story that counts. It's the way you tell it (Oom
Schalk Lourens)
You
are invited to join us for an evening of fun, laughter and great food &
wine, with Herman Charles Bosman stories Listen to ‘Oom Schalk’ narrate
stories of love, leopards, peach brandy, concertinas and psalm singing as
you savour traditional South African cuisine. And sip a farmer’s thumb of mampoer.
d. The Great Metaphor Hunt. A Picnic for all who love Nature
Sun 9 May 2009 10.30 – 15.30
If
you go down to the woods to today ….Picnic time… metaphors are
everywhere, open to the eyes that seek them. Especially in
nature. This hunt
(rich in story, words, images and symbols) aims to enrich your
experience.
Ongoing activities
Speaking Engagements
Be still when
you have nothing to say but when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got
to say, and say it hot."(D. H. Lawrence) I’m building
up this aspect of my work.
Development Work
During 2010 I
will be again be working alongside Dr Laura Campbell of the HSRC facilitating training of home-based caregivers and grannies - - through stories and creative play - who care
for children who are dying.
Bosman and Nasrudin
under starlight
This summer season I will be a story-ing
…an evening, wine, cheese, breads and tales for the telling. This kind of evening
is a bit like the old days - singing around the piano at
home. -Except I use stories and creative activities to get folk
interacting and to prompt conversations. Themes… Chinese, South African,
Mentoring – one-on-one (repeat info)
“You make me sound like myself” (various clients.)
Walk with me in words. You put on one shoe, I wear the other. Memoirs,
mindfulness adventures, work in the word… genres tumbling out of folk on the
one-on-one path. Such a richness of story here.
5-
Email Courses: Writer’s/ Poet’s Voice Course – one-on–one
tuition
Some folks respond to structure, assignments… if so,
ask and it shall be negotiated. Here is one possibility: Do you love reading and writing? This one-on-one apprenticeship
aims to take you further up the writing mountain and offer you a deeper
engagement with your craft. This course is structured in the nature of an
ongoing conversation with a few chosen writers or poets, (ancestral or alive)
with me and with yourself. I encourage you to keep a journal to record your
observations and reflections.
Corporate Work
The Halo and the Noose, the Power of
story-telling and story listening in Business Life R195
Want
to source a 100 plus stories? co-written with
Graham Williams (Graysonian Press). We run corporate
story workshops based on our book. Roma Howard from Training &
Development Practitioners Leadership & Team Effectivenes writes:
I was
utterly captivated by The Halo and the Noose, and now regularly recommend it
when I am facilitating my Train the Trainer & Presentation Skills
courses. I am also experimenting with more use of stories in my training,
and loving the fresh slant it brings to my education role (a real "VitB-Injection" after 20 years of doing what I do !)
For orders:
from the authors or Graysonian Press Inspirational books that change
the world www.graysonian.com 0836101113
CD out: More Stories: Stories from
Some fifty
plus stories to entertain, tease , stimulate
creativity, prompt discussion… … R100 plus postage (cover is more of an olive
green than as it appears below)
Friends at Work and Play
Aneta Shaw:
Creative relaxation in a small group context
Enhance personal growth and honour your soul through creative techniques.
Aneta is a clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist,
has integrated years of experience and life in other countries with ancient
ways of being in this world.
Aneta
082 686 8118 or 021
8555415 aneta.shaw@vodamail.co.za
Peter Fox (Spiritual Care co-ordinator St Luke’s
Hospice and Grief Therapist)
Friday
12 February 2010 9h00 – 12h30 R200.00
Important conversations at the time of life’s final transition
A workshop for Christian
Clergy, Pastoral workers and counsellors
An
opportunity to understand possibilities of healing and transformative dialogue that
can happen with loved ones facing death.
Rev
Peter Fox fulfils a trainer educator function within the Hospice organisation.
He
offers the Grief Loss module at South African College of applied Psychology
RSVP – Olwyne 021 - 7975335 Ext 111 /
olwynek@stlukes.co.za
Venue:
St Luke’s Hospice (Education Room)
Ashley Ramsden
Ashley Ramsden with Sue Hollingsworth ae back in Cape Town Ashley is the founding director of the
The
Skills Of The Storyteller b A storytelling intensive
Jan 27 and Feb 3,10
and17 7.30-9.30 pm R250 for the series.
Sophia House,
Summer Storytelling evenings
Friday Jan 29, Feb 5 12 19 26
Erin Hall, 8,
8pm (suitable for adults/children over 12) Tickets on the door
R60/R45 pensioners, children, students.
topics include:
The Mischief of Men and the Wiles of Women
The Rainbow Princess and other stories
Turning and Returning
Voices of the Heart
The Gift of Story
Booking/info Emma Oliver 073 605 4070 info@erinhall.co.za
From Penny Day: Richard Rohr
May 4th,
5th, 6th
Where you are is where I will
meet you.
Fr.
Richard Rohr, American theologian, will be conducing a three day workshop- an overview of the
spiritual journey, its goals, its traps, its methods, and its reliance on
divine grace. Call Penny Day on 082 77
11 952, or email pjday@iafrica.com Venue:
Schoenstatt Retreat, Constantia,
Here
is my favourite extract from one of Richard Rohr’s books, Hope Against Darkness:
“Imaginal knowing, the only way that the unconscious can
move into consciousness, happens through fantasy, through dreams, through
symbols… and through well-told stories. It happens through poetry… the words
that create the image that in turn creates a new awareness - that is in us
already.”
Writer-sites
and News (see site news on my web. see new web address
dorianhaarhoff.com The longer old one is linked to it. )
Writing
For Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need To Know by Catriona Ross, a freelancer
based in the
So may 2010 be
a dynamo and GPS year for you
Dorian
PS Thank you to all those who
circulate this letter.
Dr Dorian Haarhoff
021 855 3937 / 082 873 6802/ fax 086 511 4751
http://dorianhaarhoffwriter.homestead.com
and dorianhaarhoff.com