Oct 10-12
"Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?" Mary Oliver*
Great poetry is the essence of love and wisdom distilled from some of the more luminous minds who have lived down through the centuries. It is a universal language that can speak to anyone's heart, of any creed or race. It embraces everything that is human, from the most intimate and personal, to the loftiest of spiritual revelations. If you know where to look, poetry can be the perfect mirror, the necessary guide for your own journey of transformation. If your own experience of poetry was required high school reading that seemed stiff, formal, and removed from your life, you might be surprised to learn that poetry is very much alive , an accessible, popular art with more people reading, writing, and reciting poetry than ever before. People often turn to poetry because it expresses their spiritual longing and the wisdom they are seeking in a way that's beyond the texts of institutional religions. This workshop is not only for poetry lovers, it's for anyone who senses there is more to life.
Roger Housden has been giving public recitals of ecstatic poetry for 10 years. He was inspired by Robert Bly's versions of Rumi and Kabir, in which he could see many of his own aspirations, joys, and sadnesses revealed. In the midst of his relationship with such poetry, Roger uprooted his life in England and moved to America, sure that it was what he was called to do. Poems such as Mary Oliver's "The Journey" confirmed that he was on a path with heart that met the demands of his soul, whatever the external difficulties of following it might seem. Swept along on the path of ecstatic poetry, he has discovered new vistas in his life both personally and professionally, as his work and his life are increasingly intertwined.
Roger will begin this workshop with a poetry recital, allowing us to feel the power of some of the world's great poetry, both ancient and modern. We shall ponder the words of the Sufi masters, Rumi and Hafiz, present day voices like Mary Oliver, Galway Kinnell, Naomi Shihab Nye, and many others. The rest of the weekend will be spent living with these poems, sifting through their messages, reading them aloud to one another, memorizing one or two of them, and throughout this process, reflecting with each other on the ways the poems speak to us about our own life journeys. For as Walt Whitman famously said, "There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done.... Every man shall be his own priest." Come share a special weekend of intense love for words that have the power to speak directly to your heart and shake up your habitual thinking. The glories of New England's fall foliage provide the backdrop.
*From her poem "Have You Ever Tried to Enter The Long Black Branches"
Roger Housden moved to the United States five years ago from his native England to begin writing Sacred America: The Emerging Spirit of the People, inspired by his belief that America holds the seal of the sacred for the new millennium. He has lived here ever since, first in northern California and now in upstate New York. His work and his life are about the universal experiences of alienation and belonging that characterize human existence. Roger's most recent books are the best selling Ten Poems to Change Your Life; Chasing Rumi: A Fable About Finding The Heart's True Desire; Ten Poems to Open Your Heart; and the anthology, Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation (April 2003). We welcome Roger on his first visit to Rowe and are delighted to offer this rare opportunity to experience a weekend workshop with him.
"Great poetry happens when the mind is looking the other way and words fall from the sky to shape a moment that would normally be untranslatable. ...When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be." Roger Housden,Ten Poems to Open Your Heart
"Housden offers a unique map for the Soul's journey and encourages us to begin. Accessible, elegant, luminous and wise, this book [Ten Poems to Change Your Life] is soul food." Rachel Naomi Remen author of Kitchen Table Wisdom