Creative Workshops 2009
Nov/Dec Writing Newsletter
Re-story and re-imagine
your Life and Work
Skeins o geese
write a word across the sky (Kathleen Jamie)
Dear writer, re-inventor, storyteller, reader, traveller, lover of words, images, silences…
I'm thinking of
quotation the month – an unsteady time. As a boy and teenager when flung into
panic as the known word reeled and sailing to the edge I saw those monsters in
my mind’s eye, I turned to a list of quotations written in an exercise book. Left hand scrawl. Macbeth (blow wind come wrack at least
I’ll die with harness on my back) the Psalms (though I walk through the valley
of the shadow...) Kalil Gibran
(work is love make visible) hymns (Bunyan’s hobgoblin nor foul fiend shall
daunt his spirit. ) songs (sunny side of the street.)
With a heart
renewed in courage and hope I looked the monsters in the eye. And as Joseph
Campbell mythologist was later to remind me in his writings, if you do that,
the monster befriends you. (Devils are unacknowledged gods)
Quotations
offer a strip of words to throw down so we can cross the swamp. A sword sharp
as words to face the giant. They become mantras... exercises repeated till the
cadences and rhythms knead the shoulders, shift the spasm, slow the heart beat
and deepen the breath. Exorcising fear.
Recited by
heart, quotations strung on the poetic lyre osmotically
entered every cell. As a man they have
in me “gathered to a greatness like the ooze of oil
crushed” (
Standing I stare/ This then’s survival:/ Not passive drift or fear/
But jaunty,
sword-edged joy/ Extempore/ This/ Balancing on air.
Or as in Miguel de Unamuno’s “Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into
your own furrow.” Or
Writers often borrow
quotation essences to title their work – Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men
(Burns) and Achebe's Things
Fall Apart (Yeats)
Perhaps the
quotes that stir in our cells are the ones we have encountered ages/lives ago
and forgotten so they re-member us as we lie down “in the rag and bone shop of
the heart” (Yeats) and we “arrive at the place where we started from and know
it for the first time.” (Eliot)
Dorian’s Nov/ Dec Storyshops/ Writeshops/Conversations
KZN Pietermartizburg
A Story that
could be True: Living
a Larger Life R80
Thurs 19 Nov
17.30 for 17.45-21.15
Who are you
really wanderer?
And the answer you have to give
No matter how
dark and cold
The world is
around you is:
Maybe I’m King
(A story that
could be true - William Stafford)
Jung said we
walk in shoes too small. He also spoke of dreams as the royal road to the
unconscious. This mini workshop explores how we can enlarge our lives through
writing and the relationships it evokes. We also consider how the fictions we
live by can lead to greater abundance and nobility of spirit … as king/queen.
Venue:
Contact: Ronel
Wood ronel@ovation.co.za 033 342 2338
Cape Green Point
Once there was…. An Intro to the Art of
Story-telling R450.00
Sun 29 Nov
10.00-16.00 Kirsten Pearson joins as
co-facilitator
This storyshop is a mini version of the course
we will be running in late Jan/early Feb (see below) the day will help you to:
·
process your
life as a story
·
shape a
fictional story
·
climb inside stories and tell it from the inside
·
find your voice
Kirsten is a
Dialogue facilitator, poet and the Project Lead for the Movement for Sharing
Life Stories.
contact Kirsten on 021 461 3145 or email: kirstenpea@gmail.com
Venue: Greenpoint TBA
Outer and Inner Journeys A Creative Journal Workshop R 75
Sat 5 Dec 9.30 -12.30 (min of 15 folk to run
workshop)
You could travel
into the inner man, or the inner woman.
On a journey of that sort you
find gold. (Rumi)
Journals involve both outward (observation) and inward (reflective) journeys Since journaling
is about listening to inner voices, it has the power to unblock and release
potential in all spheres of our lives. The journal also cultivates the practice
of regular writing which then feeds into fiction, life stories and poetry. This
mini workshop will encourage all who participate to access their creativity and
imagination, engage the discipline and learn writing skills.
The keeping
of a journal will help you to:
·
enter the conversation with
yourself and with others
·
ask the big questions around
identity and purpose
·
explore the power of writing in problem
solving, in offering insights and in creative expression
Venue: Milnerton
Library
Contact: Alison Smith
nyassa@telkomsa.net 021 554 5634
Your Life, your Movie R220
Sat 5 Dec 15.00-18.30
Life is a tragedy
viewed close up and a comedy
in the long shot (Charlie Chaplain)
Imagine
directing your life as a film.
How would you work out the story board/ line? How
would you start it - with what dramatic sequence? What songs and theme music would you include? The
Grateful Dead? Mozart? Who would some of the other
characters/antagonists be? What symbols carry power for you? How would you
represent them? What angles, lighting? What close-ups? How would
you use the zoom? Where would you cut certain scenes? And the ending… and
rolling credits? This workshop
will respond to these questions.
Who should attend? anyone
who:
·
is in the film industry –directing filming scripting
·
has a desire to write cinematically
·
loves the larger than lifeness of film
and spends time at the movies
·
is writing autobiography, biography or fiction
I love the generation film/ that spans the forehead
/of a family line.
the wheel spins hair/ on a ninety minute reel, /forming fluff, now blond
then grey, now silver shade/ sewn on a wintery
head. (Cinematic Speed –Dorian)
Dorian is the purest storyteller I have encountered.
Archetypes cling to his coat tails and hide in his book-bag hoping for a mention
in his next work. Every creative writer should work with Dorian. Like
Pilates for creative spirits, he re-awakens the story loving child within.
(Tess Fairweather)
If the session is well received, Fairweather
Films will facilitate an extended workshop in 2010 where we put this idea into
practice: Telling our own stories in our own films.
Venue:
Runway – unless otherwise advised
Contact: Tess
Fairweather tess@tessfairweather.com 083 254 9589
Coming Early 2010
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 23 30 Jan 6 13 Feb 13:00 - 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 the
potential of our future.
Venue: TBA
contact Kirsten on 021 461 3145 or email: kirstenpea@gmail.com
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself
into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the
currency of human contact. — Robert McKee
Somerset West
Waking up to the New Year A Collage and Writing Storyshop R395
Sun 17 Jan 2010 09.30 - 15.30
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 kind of lamp that sheds light
along our path. It evokes as traveling
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.
We will construct a collage and write about
it. Through this ritual of beginnings, we set intension, possibility and evoke courage. This work draws from the deep
well of the unconscious.
Bring writing materials, old magazines, scissors, a glue stick and
a light lunch to share.
Venue:
Ongoing activities
Development Work
In Nov/Dec I will be soon working
alongside Dr Laura Campbell of the HSRC and Robs (Bereavement NGO) in Pmb facilitating a
needs analysis through stories, creative play and prompts for caregivers,
nurses mothers who care for children who
are dying.
Corporate Work
Graham Williams
(co-author Halo and Noose)
and I are busy during Oct with corporate workshops. We are also offering a
special for the season: contact me for details
Café Table Conversations
and Campfire Chats
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.
Bosman under starlight (repeat info)
This summer season I will be a story-ing
for groups of friends…an evening, wine, cheese, breads and tales for the
telling. An ideal way of spending quality time with friends..
Any rhyme or reason – birthdays, TV fatigue, the art of
conversation. Gather a group for Summer.
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 (repeat info)
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.
CD/ Books
The Halo and
the Noose, the Power of story-telling and story listening in Business Life R180
Want to source
a 100 plus stories? co-written with Graham
Williams (Graysonian Press). We run corporate story
workshops based on our book. Bruce Copley leading aaha educator, sound journey man writes:
The stories are
delightful. I love the skilful way in which you explain and illustrate the
relevance and connection of stories to every sphere of our short earth
walk. Congratulations for a fine and profound gift that will I have no doubt,
weave its magic. I regard as one of the most delightful and totally captivating
reads of my life. (bruce@aahalearning.com)
For orders: from the authors or Graysonian
Press Inspirational
books that change the world www.graysonian.com +27 11 6462956 or 0836101113
new 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 (see previous newsletters on my site:
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
Sonja Wilker
Life is the adventure. Sonja
assists people to enjoy the ride, love life, and live it to the full. “I bring
to my coaching, joy, fun, practical experience, specialist
NLP, and other mind-blowing tools.” Sonja is also an artist.
http://www.coach-coaching-stars.com Tel/fax: 021
783 5303 083 44 999 88
Writer-sites and News (see
site news on my web. see new web address dorianhaarhoff.com The longer old one is
linked to it.
May the quotations you love renew your heart. Quicken you spirit.
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