Queen Califia and Spring Classes

Queen Califia, Nikki de St. Phalle

I spy with my little Tarot eye the sculptures of Nikki de St. Phalle. These are close-ups from the totem sculptures in Queen Califia’s Magic Circle Garden. Have you been there yet? It is tucked away in Kit Carson Park, Escondido, California. I hope these glimpses, these close-ups, encourage you to adventure there yourself. The docent told me Nikki’s wishes were to arrange the garden on the land in such a way that you’d encounter it, stumble upon it, magically.  

Flowers bloomed on the hillside as my daughter and I walked the dusty path along a low stone wall until the entrance emerged. Yes, this could be Tuscany, Italy, the landscape in which Nikki’s larger house-sized Tarot sculptures live. But if you can’t make it to Italy yet, try Queen Califia’s Magic Circle Garden.

It was lovely to be out in nature, in the sun, under clouds of such crisp contour with such vibrant blue blackdrop, as I’ve been writing, writing, writing…I still love to write poetry long hand, but as I experiment with writing longer pieces in prose, it makes for a long process. Everything by hand—then the hours transcribing—hence the need to get out from behind the computer screen and outdoors for art dates more and more.

Harvest of Poems

Thanks to guest poetry editor Robert Lee Brewer, "Hades" is live at Prime Number Magazine. Despite the title, “Hades” is very much an “above ground” poem, Hades figuring as more of a psychological destination visited by brooders (like me). 

I also was able to make a sound file, which can be listened to here: Hades MP3.

And for Neptune-blessed lovers, I have written a poem about abalone diving, marriage, children, and waiting for the beloved to surface. I’m honored that Silver Birch Press published “Kolmer’s Gulch” as part of their Lost and Found Poetry and Prose Series. You can listen to the sound file here: “Kolmer’s Gulch MP3”.

Upcoming Tarot and Poetry Classes

Have you been taking advantage of the prompts offered daily this month at NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month)? Every day during the month of April you'll find a new poetry prompt! Even if you don’t write 30 poems in 30 days, what if by month’s end you draft five new poems? Even one new poem? Each prompt comes with links to the work of other poets participating in the challenge as well as links to interviews with established writers and example poems.

Here are my latest class offerings, starting already April 24.

by Tania Pryputniewicz

Entering the Tarot Garden: An Introduction to the Tarot: Are you ready to explore the Tarot? Go for a gentle tour through the structure of the Tarot? We will go over the basics:

• The four elements (earth, air, fire, and water)
• The daily life cards of each suit and the story they tell as they progress from numbers One to Ten,
• The Court Cards—Kings, Queens, Knights, and Pages
• The Major Arcana

We will use a hands-on approach to studying the Tarot including becoming familiar with the deck of your choice and journaling to prompts.

If you are interested, but have questions, and would like to know more about my particular approach to the Tarot, I am offering free simple 3-card readings over Zoom (video call, or Skype if you prefer). Contact me through the form on this website or IM me on Facebook through my Wheel of Archetypal Selves Tarot page to sign up.

Here’s the full course description for Entering the Tarot Garden.

Poetry Draft, Craft, Submit: I’m so excited about teaching this class, especially on the heels of National Poetry Writing Month. We will be starting right at the tail end of the month, so some of you will likely have a new crop of poems to craft and revise. If not, join us, and write to the prompts I’ll be giving you based on specific calls for submission. This online class is for poets ready to draft, craft and submit work. In addition to weekly craft lessons and prompts, we will support one another in sending work out to live submission targets.

Here’s the full course description for Poetry Draft, Craft, Submit.

I will most likely also be am teaching a version of this on-line class in-person at San Diego Writers, Ink. It will run Second Saturdays of the month, 10 am-12 noon, starting May 13, 2017. Here are the upcoming themes: 
May 13: Spirituality
June 10: Childhood / Children
July 8: Destinations
August 12: Architecture
September 9: Livestock and Pets
October 14: Omens

Here's the link to sign up for my in-person class at SDWI, Second Saturdays: Draft, Craft Submit. Cost is $30 a session for SDWI, and $36 for non-members.

Happy Spring....

Photos were taken by yours truly, all at Queen Califia's Magic Circle Garden.

Where is the Love? March's Virtual Hearth and Poetry News

I’m looking forward to holding Nimrod International Journal’s themed issue, Leaving Home, Finding Home in hand. It comes out shortly this spring thanks to Associate Editor Cassidy McCants (order here at Nimrod's main site). I’m honored to have a poem, “Free Box,” in the issue. “Free Box” gives a look at the transition from the Illinois commune to public school and is set during the years after we traveled to California in the wooden camper my father built by hand (which housed us for a time at Schoolhouse Canyon Campground on the Russian River).

The poem “Hades” is also forthcoming in Prime Number Magazine in April thanks to guest poetry editor Robert Lee Brewer.  It too finds its nexus in Sonoma County but "Hades" explores layers of past memories circling the crossroad of love between siblings and love between friends.

Where is the Love?

The meek inherit nothing, writes Safiya Sinclair, in her poem, “Center of the World.” Kim Addonizio, asks in her poem by the same title, What do Women Want? These are just two of the ideas and questions we will consider in my next on-line writing class, Where is the Love. It promises a fearless descent into love in all of its forms. Join me around my virtual hearth for a tour of the forms of love from the feral to the barely audible quiet voice of self-love we came into incarnation with, a self-love we often lose connection to given live’s challenges.

You'll explore body and soul your lived experiences of love as well as writing towards those forms of love you wish to invoke, dream into being, and invite into your life. All forms of writing are welcome; we will write to poetry, music, Tarot images, and art. Weekly you can expect: writing prompts, a Zoom session to write and share work, and access to our online support-based writing group. Please email me or use the contact form on my site here if you are interested and would like more information about how to sign up. Cost for this six-week session is $290; the course runs from this coming Monday, March 13 to April 21, 2017.

Local Love

Here a few photos from a day trip to one of my favorite places on earth, the Self-Realization Fellowship Retreat and Hermitage Meditation Garden in Encinitas. I must write a new poem in response to the question in last visit’s poem, What sort of crime does one commit / in such a garden? as my friend and I, so entranced and happy to be back in our beloved garden, in laughing freely, drew a rebuke from the garden security guard. She reminded us to lower our voices even as the weed-wacker merrily buzzed and scads of children ran past shrieking at the garden’s perimeter eclipsing her rebuke so we had to strain to hear it. 

Too happy to feel shamed for long, we settled easily into loving the sun-hot lizards doing push-ups on the rocks, the doves fanning their tails in pairs along the ocean trail, and the blooming cacti. What's not to love about the easy visual metaphor of prickled thorny limbs extending to offer clusters of saucy red blooms to the blue blue sky? One can be thorny and bloom, simultaneous, reaching for the sun.

Flamingo Love

I've written here over the years about my adventures with A Room of Her Own Foundation--writing about the retreats I attended in 2011, 2013, and 2015. You've heard me rave too about the women in the desert I've met on those retreats. AROHO is changing its role as an organization; one of the ways they've celebrated their mission of "ending the isolation of creative women" is to support the ongoing ways women continue to write and meet regardless of how the organization restructures itself. Here's an interview about the Flamingos, the writing group I call my home flock, and our story as it relates to how we met through AROHO.

Related Links:

Earlier post on the meditation garden: Self-Realization Koi

Rivers, Daughters, and February 2017 Writing Courses from Feral Mom

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Thank you to Andrew Purcell at The Journal of Applied Poetics for running four poems of mine about rivers and daughters. You can read the poems here:  Thirteen, Russian River, Perihelion, My Daughter By Candlelight, and Graduation.

I'm also very honored to report that poems, some of them from the commune manuscript that is now out in circulation, are forthcoming at Whale Road Review, Nimrod International, and Chiron Review.

I also want to thank Robyn Beattie for the beautiful image featured here. It is a detail from one of her clay boats--you've seen so many of Robyn's photos in my blogposts over the years as well as in our collaborative poetry movies. This month Calabi gallery in Santa Rosa is carrying a number of Robyn's beautiful moon and boat sculptures; do stop by (virtually if not in person) to visit her page in order to see her work and read her bio: Calabi Gallery, Robyn's work.

I’m loving teaching my latest course, Election Blues: The Gift of Agency in Poetry. I hope you are finding a way to peace as much as possible in your heart through whatever action you need to take during these tumultuous times in order to make sure your voice is being heard…witnessing and breaking silence are two powerful ways we are blessed as writers to participate. To that end, I hope to be of service to you in person or on-line. Below you’ll find my upcoming courses.

Artwork by Tania Pryputniewicz

Where Is The Love? An On-line Course: Virtual Hearth

Are you overwhelmed living in the stress of the divisive and fractured state of affairs we find ourselves in locally, nationally, and internationally? If so, my upcoming six-week course may offer what you are looking for: I’ve designed it as an intentionally peaceful and loving  virtual hearth. Each week we’ll draw on love-related themes from the Tarot and you’ll have the opportunity to write to poetry, art, music, and meet over Zoom to write in real time and share writing in the presence of a supportive community.  Writers at every level of experience are welcome and the response to the prompts is wide open—I encourage you to write in the genre of your choice (for example, by free-writing, journaling, crafting blogposts, writing poems, or writing non-fiction essays or short stories).

You'll receive a weekly video introduction to the week's theme and the week's poetry, art, and music prompts. Course will be conducted over a combination of email, Zoom, and private discussion forum. Cost for this six-week session is $290; session runs *March 13-April 21, 2017 (note amended dates). Use the contact form on this blog (below my photo in the sidebar) to email me for sign-up details or visit my Wheel of Archetypal Selves Facebook page to IM me there for more information.

SDWI First Tuesdays: Theme Set Go, February Love

My in-person monthly themed poetry workshop continues at San Diego Writers, Ink over at Liberty Station on Tuesday, February 7th. February's theme is....Love, of course...but I mean love in all forms. Come and write a Valentine's Day poem or two--for your Valentine, your child, your pet, your father, your friend. Or write an anti-Valentine's day Ode--we won't turn you away.

Either way, bring your love weary or love enthralled self out to write with me.  We are a dedicated, intimate circle of poets and always welcome a few more bodies. Contact me if you have any questions. Sign up here: Tania's First Tuesdays Theme Set Go Class

Cover Photo and Design Don Mitchell

March Poetry Workshop with Rizzo and Pryputniewicz:

Lisa Rizzo and I will join forces to celebrate the launch of her new poetry book, Always A Blue House (Saddle Road Press, December 2016). I'm over the moon that she's joining the Saddle Road Press family of authors! We will co-teach a workshop titled:

Everyday Pilgrimages: Metaphors, Questions, and Omens 

• Saturday March 4th, 10-12 am
• San Diego Writers, Ink in Liberty Station
• $30 fee includes copy of Lisa Rizzo’s Always a Blue House

In Always a Blue House (Saddle Road Press, December 2016), Lisa Rizzo’s poems range between the earthbound house of human perception and the limitless plane of soul questions elicited by opening one’s heart to the blue angel of poetry. Whether she is listening in the depths of the Oregon Caves for “what had not yet been unearthed” or asking of her readers, “will you follow me?” Rizzo’s questions linger: “What gifts do I give?” “Does faith remain when memory is lost?” In November Butterfly, Tania Pryputniewicz introduces the reader to the lives of iconic women. Through personae poems, she explores metaphors and offers similar invitations:  “Let us begin with the worm / its translucent omen…”

Join us for a two-hour workshop exploring the ways we can use metaphors, questions, and omens to write the poetry of our lives. Class time will allow for a close look at a few poems from each writer's collection as a starting point for creating your own work, writing time, and sharing time. For a full course description and to sign up, visit:  Everyday Pilgrimages: Metaphors, Questions, and Omens 

Sourcing Siapo and Where Hitler Hides at MWM

Mother Writer Mentor (MWM) is pleased to remain active interviewing writers in our ongoing effort to document the matrilineal lineage of writing, writing scholarship and mentorship between women writers (regardless of where they fall on the public spectrum of publishing). Do you write? You qualify--so just know we are always on the look-out for guest posts especially from daughters of writing mothers, writing mothers with daughters, any possible combination or tangential topic. We are eager to support you getting yourself to the page. In the meantime, check out the latest two interviews we posted below.

Sourcing Siapo: A Poem and Interview with Penina Ava Taesali

Samoan writer, poet, educator, and cultural arts activist Penina Taesali, author of Sourcing Siapo, (University of Hawaii, Ala Press 2016) spoke with us and shared an excerpt from her book. Penina describes here for us part of her process: 

I had a vision of a woman walking wrapped in her siapo cloak and descending into the underground. It is a mythic shamanic story of descending and ascending. When I got home I quickly wrote the first draft of what would become the poem that appears on page sixty-four... 

Read the rest of the interview and the poem here: Sourcing Siapo: A Poem and Interview with Penina Ava Taesali

Where Hitler Hides: An Interview and Trigger Story by Marlene Samuels

We honored International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) at MWM by running an interview with writer Marlene B. Samuels, Ph.D. and publishing an excerpt from her new manuscript, Where Hitler Hides: A Memoir in Short Stories, or actually a Trigger Story as she refers to stories that "stem from an experience that triggered memories whose roots are mired in Holocaust related events or damages." When Samuels learned that her mother was experimented on at Ravensbruck (Hitler's concentration camp for women), she told us, 

I do know from being a writer, that the best--perhaps only, way for me to make sense out of what I learned, how and when, is to deconstruct my reactions through the process of research and writing.

Read the rest of the interview and her Trigger Story "My Father's Sidewalks" at Where Hitler Hides: An Interview and Trigger Story here.