I led a workshop yesterday, using The Florilegia Project and the Thin Places Exhibit at Creative Spirits Gallery. I’ve never created or led a workshop before, so two things about this experience that I need to get out of my system and onto this page:
1. Wait, seriously: me? Wow, thank you.
2. Holy heck I enjoy doing this.

The workshop was called Poetry of the Sparkling Phrase. Generally, the intention was simply to play with words, to spark creativity; specifically, to make the creation of poetry simple and accessible. We were going to engage with the words and images of others and create, from those, new poetry.

We did that. And we did more, because my participants were poets already, and they had their own (excellent) ideas. So we flowed with those, too. We had a wonderful conversation, and so did our sparklets. I added some ideas for future iterations of this workshop. Because…

…there will be future iterations of this workshop! Enough folks told me they wanted to come and couldn’t make it today that I (and Creative Spirits Gallery) are prepared to host more Poetry of the Sparkling Phrase. It’ll be after the new year (the Gregorian one, not the Celtic one I think in), and I’ll keep this space updated once I have a date(s). It’ll be free, and open to anyone high school age and up.

Many thanks to my co-artist attendees, to Creative Spirits Gallery for hosting, to West Linn Lutheran Church for creating and supporting Creative Spirits, and to Donna Hertzfeldt-Kamprath and Dayle Askey for their inspiring photography. People are always saying things like this, and that’s because they’re so deeply, inexpressibly true: I’m so privileged to be a part of this community.

In the secret place of thunder
the sky is a roof of slate

Watchful power
as of fire embraced

The empty tomb 
frightens us

It's all written here
we just can't read it

Yet

-Found poem from sparklets and conversation encountered 
during today's Poetry of the Sparkling Phrase workshop.