Ritual, Magic, and the Ballad Tradition

A deep dive writing salon that draws forth energies of rhythm and magics of syntax. In this class we are reading, thinking, and writing poems told through stories and stories told through rhythms. We write the rhythms told through the body, and the stories of bodies told through their relationship to community... from the iambic pentameter of the heart to the dactyls dropped down into the stomach. The unspoken stories of ancestors teach us so much about loving wrong, loving so right and mourning; we think about connections between revolt and rocking, coocoo birds, refusals, recursions, repetitions, and ways of pushing energy into form. We listen to recordings from early in the last century, and marvel at the ways they can inspire us in this one. .