pen & paper :: a little about susan

a glimpse into Susan's workshop at the Fall 2010 Be Present Retreat

Today, my friend Jennifer Horsman is sharing a bit about how Susan Wooldridge inspires her. Susan is teaching at Pen & Paper with Kelly and me next month, and I thought you might want to know just a bit more about her. There are a few spots left and we hope you will join us!

Jennifer writes:

I first met Susan Wooldridge at a Be Present Retreat in Lake Bay, Washington in the fall of 2010 where she was a mentor. Her books Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words and Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Process had become favorites of mine; both copies highlighted, underlined, dog-eared and often reread. Susan was alive on the page, fully engaged in the world around her through each of her senses. 

Poemcrazy changed the way I thought about words. Words suddenly moved beyond their dictionary definitions and embodied their lyrical form. Words evoked emotion, memory and timespace. Words became playful and acrobatic. I began to see with fresh eyes and because of this I also began to write more.

To my delight I found that Susan in person was every bit as vivid and enticing as she had appeared on the page. Her excitement for poetry was palpable and infectious. Susan was generous with her time and convinced each of us, regardless of writing experience, of our ability to create poetry. She built an atmosphere filled with warmth, humor, encouragement and acceptance. Each exercise expanded our ideas about poetry and what we were capable of creating. We left the retreat with work we felt proud of and a desire to keep writing.

Susan is an alchemist. She is able to elicit unique magic in every student she encounters. She will return to Lake Bay at the Pen & Paper Retreat in March. I will be there and I'd really love to share this extraordinary experience with you as well. If any part of your heart leaps to recognition at the sound of the word writer you won't want to miss it!

"Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet." 

- Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge (from Poemcrazy)

*****

Susan's Pen & Paper workshop description:

In a safe, free setting, we will gather and surround ourselves with words that will be gateways to deeper knowing about who we are, where we come from and where we're going.  

In this workshop, we will forage in a field of words, cast nets and gather what we need to joyfully and safely express the depths of our hearts, souls, spirits. Sleepy orange trust, clock's breath, preach nibbles have all emerged from playful "wordpools" like the ones we'll create together. We will tinker!

We will also create small worlds of gatherings in boxes that reflect our connection to the natural world (as well as to the sparkly world of litter) and write odes to our gatherings and odes to our shadows (and odes to our shadow gatherings). From this we will spinoff and spinoff and spinoff!

Find out more about the Pen & Paper Retreat.

*****

Jennifer Horsman lives along the California coast with her husband and greyhound in a small cottage filled with books, records and loose leaf tea.

She can be found at www.lovelyandimperfect.squarespace.com

tuesday truths (a guest post from geek girl)

photo by geek girl

it is tuesday
and newly fallen snow is
slowly beginning to melt
again...

when liz asked me to guest blog,
i did a little dance of "me? me...someone-wants-me-??"

this is a familiar dance
for me.

and it makes me wonder why...
why can't i see the value in what i have to offer
when i can see it so readily in anyone else?

i have a photo show happening right now
as we speak
and i downplay it to anyone who asks...
"oh, it's just..."
"it's only..."
"it's nothing really..."

i don't want to make money from photography.

i just want to be known for something...
that's all. i want to be thought of as artistic in some way...
and yet, i can't accept it when it is given to me.

does anyone else ever feel this way...
struggling so hard to be good at something
but then,
not sure if you will ever know when you are being good
at something...

will i ever be good enough for me?

*****

AG is a reader, a writer, a picture taker and card maker. She is a
lover of words, a collector of phrases and desperately wants
a treehouse. You can often find her on the side of the road,
if the light is right, taking pictures of weeds...totally oblivious to
oncoming traffic. You can also find her at two of her familiar haunts:
her blog, geek ink, where this month she is attempting a poem a day and flickr.

five (really) really good things (a guest post from kelly b)

clancy and kelly sporting new sharpie tatts, photo by kelly

I thought of doing a cheer to introduce myself, but I wasn’t a cheerleader. Maybe a sorority song...sorry GDI all the way...or maybe a Buddhist style chant, well as much as I like to think I am, I really am not that enlightened. So I will stick with what I know and just give it to you straight:

I am the next guest blogger for my dear sweet miss liz. I have slowly gotten to know liz over the past couple of years, via our blogz and last year I was blessed when I got to finally meet up with her at squam. To say the least I have fallen in love with the girl. I wear her aprons, scarves and mantra necklaces and when I do, they make me feel like I can conquer the world.

Where liz is soft and kind, I am a bit loud and silly. Liz is studious [she edits], I am not! liz drives a bug and I drive a vue. But we meet in the middle sharing our love of vintage finds, pretty necklaces, giggling, a deep love for our grandparents and our home state of Indiana. One day we are going to sneak off and rent a beach house on the ocean..right girlie!!

Since it is good Friday – how about five really REALLY good things:

1) if you haven’t heard of jeremy sweet – his name says it all. he is one sweet artist. Check out his new screen prints and other art work. sueno is one of my favorites…

2) don’t forget to submit your artwork for the squam art show! if you attended last September, then please submit. liz and susan are working so hard to make this happen for us. Plus you get to show in a real gallery…seriously – get off your duff and do it!

3) Looking for something black and white – check out my new find: megan auman. Her jewelry and sculpture objects can be found on etsy. They are bitchin’.

4) Have you seen the little terrariums at made by mavis? The greens of the moss make me drool.

5) …and my last really good thing is not a link. It just a shout out to each of the chicks who rock my everyday. I am so blessed that I get to hang with you whether it is, taking out the tandem road bike, belly laughing through lunch, watching you hold your new great niece, catching up on the phone because I am in the Midwest and well, you aren’t, or just keeping in touch through the blog lines.

On this good Friday, so much goodness in my life! peace. out.

(we would love to hear about your really good things. please share one or two or five in the comments)

*****

Kelly Barton has a warped .crazy .colorful mind, is happiest when she is creating in her attic studio, and truly believes in world peace. She dreams one day of living in warmer lands, listening to the crashing waves, as the sun beams down upon her face. She blogs over at camp indigo and her shop is the happy girl over at etsy. She would love for you to come visit…..seriously – anytime.

a photo series (a guest post from jonny)

for the last few months, jon has been taking photos using his "not so young" cell phone. he turned off the flash and the results are often surprising. they look like old photos taken with a larger camera, perhaps even a polaroid...

here are a few from his ongoing series:

evening sky, photo by jon

diffuse, photo by jon

space needle, photo by jon

march eve, photo by jon

wax moon, photo by jon

Jon says: Since the cell phone is with me most of the time, it is a convenient tool for capturing spontaneous pictures. At first I was disappointed in the resolution of the photos, but then I realized that they have their own sort of charm. I have found myself thinking more about the look of my surroundings when considering picture subjects.

*****

Jon is a teacher and likes to ponder the mysteries of the Universe… He lives in a little house in the Pacific NW with his wife (Liz) and their dog Millie.

See more of Jon's photos (including some "blasts from his childhood past") on his flickr.

notes for the journey (a guest post from kristen)

away, photo by kristen perman

Hello all, sweet Liz has graciously bestowed the honor of guest posting here while she's away. I've always loved Liz's Notes for the Journey. I find some great links and almost always find my wallet a little lighter because of some yummy etsy store or website that I can't resist. Wink.

Liz and I have been reading one another's blogs for awhile now. We share a lot of blogs in our readers and we also have blogs that neither of us visit. It's my intention to either remind you of familiar friends, or introduce you to someone or something you might not have seen yet.

Without further ado...

My crack online, the selby. I love the side links most of all.

Luzie is here in the States for a year from Berlin as a Fulbright scholar teaching at Gettysburg college. Her time here is ending soon; in this beautiful post, she writes about living in the moment.

I'm not much of a cook despite my small love affair with chefs and cookbooks and cooking blogs. The Wednesday Chef is one of those blogs. I bounce a little in my chair when there's a new post in my reader and I plan recipes for the week from the recipe index. Tonight when I go to Whole Foods, I'll pick up the ingredients for gingerbread.

My friend Jen is a bit of a superhero. After years of helping the homeless find housing, her little family of three sold off most of their worldly possessions and packed the car to move to Belize. Her blog posts are compelling and thoughtful and for me, a bit awe-inspiring because I know I could never be that girl.

It wouldn't be proper for me to leave here without a little enabling, I mean a glimpse at a few of my favorites over at Etsy.

These bags are beautifully constructed with a fun interior fabric. Divine. These polka dots would be perfect on top of these coasters, don't you think?

Thank you Liz for allowing me to visit here,

Kristen

*****

Kristen Perman is a coffee-drinking, tea-loving, mama, acupuncturist, and herbalist in love with photography and polaroid, trying to find her way in a suburban oasis. Read more from her at her blog, Sticking to the Point, and visit her etsy shop, Abishag, to see more of her photography.