2012 Upcoming Events

MARCH

SAN RAFAEL, CA

Presented by International Association of Sufism

Songs of the Soul: Poetry & Sacred Music Festival

Of all the valuable things of this world, the word is the most precious.  For in the word one can find a light that gems and jewels do not possess; a word may contain so much life that it can heal the wounds of the heart. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Dates and times:
Friday, March 16: 7:00PM – 9:30PM
Saturday, March 17: 9:00AM – 5:00PM
Sunday, March 18: 9:00AM – 7:00PM

I am so grateful to breathe in, on a daily basis, the living and life-changing truth of this great Sufi Master's statement!  Over four decades, in my own life, and in the lives of thousands of others, I have witnessed that word of light come forth and burst open within.  Each of us is entrusted with a "song of the soul."  It is time well-spent when spiritual work we do on ourselves includes and makes a priority of discovering what that song is.  In my presentation on Saturday, I will offer ways you can hear and respond to that word within, and finding the words to say it. ~ John Fox

Featuring:

• Albert Flynn DeSilver, Marin Poet Laureate
• Renée Owen accompanied by musician Brian Foster

Presenters:

• Coleman Barks
• Dr. Angha Nahid, Ph.D.
• Sharon Mijares, Ph.D.
• Sheikha Azima Lila Forest
• John Fox, CPT
• Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D.
• along with many others!.

Music will be offered from Turkish, Jewish, Mayan, Pakistani, Native American and Sufi Traditions.

Location:
Embassy Suites
101 McInnis Parkway
San Rafael, CA

Fee: Pre-register by March 14th to receive discount
Friday Poetry & Music:  $20/online; $30 at door
Saturday Panels, Poetry & Music):  $70/online; $90 at door
Sunday Panels, Poetry, Music, Sufi Zikr:  $70/online; $90 at door
Sat. & Sunday Panels, Poetry, Music:  $130/online; $160 at door
All Events (Fri-Sun):  $150/online; $180.00 at door

Note:  Partial scholarships are available - Call 415-472-6959

For Registration and Questions:
Phone:   (415) 472-6959 or website. Hotel Reservations

APRIL

AKRON, OH

In Collaboration with the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University

Summa Health Presents

Humanism and Healing Arts Conference: Poetry and Healing

With Keynote Speaker, John Fox, CPT

Date and time:
Wednesday, April 11: 8:00AM – 12:00PM

John Fox is the keynote speaker for this annual conference that focuses on humanism in medicine.  The conference will also feature a poetry reading by Summa Health System care providers who have participated in Wick outreach writing workshops.  There may be an opportunity for attendees to write with John and facilitators from the Wick Poetry Center.  Please contact Wick or Summa to find out more.

Location: Summa Akron City Hospital
Raymond Firestone Auditorium
55 Arch St.
Akron, OH

Fee: This conference is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Please call Summa Connection at (800) 237-8662 to reserve.

SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH

Sponsored by The Peace & Justice Ministry of Heights Christian Church

Poems of Witness: Living with Compassion In a Conflicted World

We must ourselves become the change that we wish to see in the world. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

Dates and times:
Friday, April 13: 7:00PM – 9:00PM
Saturday, April 14: 10:00AM – 3:30PM
Saturday evening, April 14: 7:00PM – 8:30PM

All programs stand alone.  You may attend any one of them or all three.

Saturday evening is a program of celebration. During his visit to Cleveland, John will be working with young people at Fernway Elementary School on poems that reflect upon peace and justice.  At this Saturday evening celebration, some of these young people will join with workshop participants and others attending to read their poems.  People will share ways to bring civility and compassion to a conflicted world through all of the arts.  There will be banners displayed, created by students from Shaker Heights students.

Please join us for this free community event!

Location:
Heights Christian Church
17300 Van Aken Boulevard
Shaker Heights, OH

Fee:
Friday Evening:  $20.00 
Saturday:  $45.00
Both Events:  $60.00
Saturday Evening Only:  This event is free of charge

For Information and To Register:
Phone:  Call Heights Christian Church at (216) 561-4800
E-Mail:  heightschristian@sbcglobal.net
To Register:   Your check may be made out to Heights Christian Church and mailed to:
  17300 Van Aken Blvd., Shaker Heights, OH 44210.

Space is limited, so please register early!
Deadline for registration and payment is Monday, April 9, 2012. Register Online

It is a challenge to find language in American culture that offers a humane and noble way of responding to seemingly intractable problems like injustice, economic disparity, and environmental destruction.  Media and political gamesmanship often focuses on surface issues, controversy and divisive tactics to replace the listening, dialogue and self-reflection that encourages people to truly examine life, discuss issues, open to collaboration and create something new.

From the place where we are right Flowers will never grow In the spring. ~Yehuda Amachai Israeli Poet from The Place Where We Are Right

How can we learn and practice a language that helps us to bear witness to the real needs of the world?  That process often includes the necessity of attending with care to our own wounds.  It may include finding help through a connection to what Quakers call the "still small voice within" or in whatever sacred name and practice is true to your spiritual call.

How can we listen to one another (and within ourselves!) in a way that allows for honesty, deep trust, connection, compassion and playfulness?

Creativity offers a pathway.  John Fox has worked in every area of the United States and in many other countries showing people, adult and children alike, how they can use their inherent creativity through writing to explore these questions.  No experience with poetry is required!

Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. ~Adrienne Rich

But we have only begun To love the earth. We have only begun To imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope? -- so much is in bud. ~Denise Levertov from Beginners

What John Fox brings to this topic of poetry as healer is potentially life-changing. ~ Ralph Day   Cleveland, OH

SAN DIEGO, CA

My Heart Broke Loose on the Wind: Recovering a Sense of Freedom & Surprise In Your Creative Expression and For Living Your life

I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind. ~Pablo Neruda

Dates and times:
Friday, April 27: 7:00PM – 9:30PM
Saturday, April 28: 10:00AM – 5:00PM
Sunday, April 29: 9:30AM – 12:30PM

Location:
Home of Lynn Pollock & Ilan Awerbuch
2546 Deerpark Drive
San Diego, CA

Fee: Full Retreat (Fri-Sun):  $165.00
A deposit of $40.00 will reserve your space
Some partial scholarships are available

For Information, please contact:
John Foos: 
Phone:   (760) 672-7680  
e-mail:  johnfoos1@gmail.com

Poetry is practiced best and is of most optimum use in our quest for wholeness and meaning when it is deeply treasured and respected for its essential wildness.  When your writing is met deeply and allowed to flourish in ways thoughtful people develop - with extravagant permission and genuine support to risk and try things out, when all of your feelings are welcomed - poetry as healer can take deeper roots.

Creativity does not work well when put into a cage; people might pay to visit a zoo animal in a cage, but everyone knows something isn't quite right.  Those cages are, in this sense, usually constructed of self-judgment and diminishment or the judgment of others built upon hierarchies of arbitrary evaluation.

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. ~Rumi

This workshop is not a place to put on display one's literary and analytical acumen - although we will bring to the circle our love for and curiosity about literature, especially poetry.  We will likely meet our doubts about the value of our writing, but as a community we shall help each other to open to the surprise, songs and secrets that emerge from the page.

John Fox will share a holistic vision of poetry as healer that values this wildness and freedom, community and as always, deep listening.

I don't know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. ~Pablo Neruda

MAY

FREDERICKSBURG, TX

My Heart Broke Loose on the Wind
Recovering a Sense of Freedom and Surprise
In Your Creative Expression and
For Living Your Life

Informational Flyer

Dates and times:
Saturday, May 12: 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Location:
Way of the Wolf Retreat Center
458 Wolf Way
Fredericksburg, TX

Fee: $55

For Information and To Register:
Lianne Mercer: 
Phone:   (830) 997-6467  
e-mail:  lmercer5@austin.rr.com

BANGOR, PA

Remembering Your Hidden Wholeness Through the Healing Power of Writing

A Retreat at Kirkridge Retreat Center

With John Fox, CPT  and Sally Z. Hare, PhD

Informational Flyer

Some things have to be believed to be seen. You have to know they exist - or you won't see them. ~ Sally Z. Hare from I'll Meet You in the Field: The Intersection of Education and Community

Dates and times:
Wednesday, May 16: Retreat begins with supper
Saturday, May 19: Retreat concludes with lunch

Saturday evening is a program of celebration. During his visit to Cleveland, John will be working with young people at Fernway Elementary School on poems that reflect upon peace and justice.  At this Saturday evening celebration, some of these young people will join with workshop participants and others attending to read their poems.  People will share ways to bring civility and compassion to a conflicted world through all of the arts.  There will be banners displayed, created by students from Shaker Heights students.

Please join us for this free community event!

Location:
Kirkridge Retreat Center
2495 Fox Gap Road
Bangor, PA

Fee:
$425.00 includes all meals, lodging, and the teaching fee. To Reserve:  Please send $213.00 as a deposit. If we do not receive two weeks' cancellation notice, deposit is nonrefundable.

Register online.

For Information, please contact:
Sally Hare at: 
    e-mail:  coastal.edu 
or
John Fox at:
    Phone:   (650) 938-2717  
    e-mail:  john@poeticmedicine.org   

In this unique retreat, poet John Fox and teacher Sally Z. Hare come together to explore the intersection of their work. They invite you to experience a circle of trust, grounded in Sally's many years of working with Parker J. Palmer's circles of trust theory, and the healing power of writing, based on John's own work in poetry therapy.

Of course, we haven't really lost our hearts, our true selves, our sense of passion for our lives and work. But the pressures and hectic pace of our modern lives too often cause us to stop believing - and we can no longer see what has always been there. Those of us engaged in organizational leadership, teaching, psychology, pastoral care, medicine and other service professions, in community service and social change, know the challenge of sustaining ourselves and our commitment to deeply held values and beliefs.

In this retreat the skilled facilitators will help create a quiet, focused, respectful space, in which the noise within us and around us can subside, and we can meet stillness. In large group, small group, and solitary settings, we will explore the intersection of our personal and professional lives, making use of stories from our own journeys, as well as insights from poets, storytellers, various wisdom traditions - and inviting our own writing and poetry to emerge.  Stillness is where you meet with the essence of things...

In stillness we can begin to let go of external voices, stereotypes, and clichés that crowd out original, personal and internal voices. Those discordant outer voices fade away in stillness. Stillness is a place of rooting oneself in a much larger field of being. ~ John Fox from Poetic Medicine

Sally Z. Hare, PhD, is a teacher and a learner. She is the Singleton Distinguished Professor Emerita at Coastal Carolina University, where she served for many years as Dean of the Graduate School and Continuing Education  and was the founding director of the Center for Education and Community. During her Kellogg fellowship in the early '90s, Sally had the chance to meet Parker Palmer as she was exploring the concept of community. Parker invited her to work with him as he created The Courage to Teach. Since that time, she has worked with the national Center for Courage and Renewal and facilitated COURAGE TO TEACH® and COURAGE TO LEAD® and CIRCLE of TRUST programs in South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Oregon, and Kansas, and leads circle of trust retreats nationally with educators, physicians, community leaders and other professionals.

CANYON DE CHELLY, AZ

The Nature of Poetry: Exploring the Beautyway Canyon de Chelly in Northern Arizona The Eleventh Camping, Hiking and Poem-Making Experience
with John Fox, Tad Gielow and Diné friends Jon and Lupita McClanahan

Dates and times:
Thursday, May 24 —
Thursday, May 31

Location:
Canyon de Chelly in Northern Arizona.

Fee:
$1250. $350 deposit required. Fee does not include travel to and from the Canyon, the first evening in Chinle and a few optional choices.

For more information and to register, please contact:
John at (650) 938-2717 or john@poeticmedicine.org

In beauty may we dwell.
In beauty may we walk.
In beauty may our male kindred dwell.
In beauty may our female kindred dwell.

— FROM A DINÉ PRAYER

During the week, we will weave together sessions of writing and sharing, walking and contemplation. We will visit sacred sites such as Talking Rock & Spider Rock, White House Ruins and the Ye'ibicheii Trail. We will have the chance to appreciate Diné and Anasazi art, from ancient rock painting and petroglyphs to present day artists working with silver and wool. This workshop is a rare opportunity for non-Native people to be welcomed for a long period of time into this sacred place. We will stay with Diné (Navajo) who honor the four elements and directions on a daily basis.

The wisdom stories of the Diné originate in and around the stunning beauty of Canyon de Chelly. Our hosts, Jon and Lupita, will share these stories and their way of life during the day and around the campfire in the evening. The retreat experience is a cooperative camping adventure in simplicity. I guarantee your meals will be fantastic! The light of dawn and dusk, the hum of the wind, will heal, inspire and guide us. This adventure is appropriate for both beginning and more advanced camper and writer!

JUNE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

When Someone Deeply Listens to You Using Poem-making, Creativity, Music, Song, Ceremony and Community Building In an Exploration of Deep Listening

Dates and times:
Thursday, June 14: Retreat begins with in the eveing
Saturday, June 16: Retreat concludes at 5:00 PM

Location:
Vallombrosa Retreat Center
250 Oak Grove Avenue
Menlo Park, CA

Fee:
$410. Does not include travel.

For more information and to register, please contact:
John Fox, CPT, The Institute for Poetic Medicine at (650) 938-2717 or email john@poeticmedicine.org. Maximum registration is 16.

John Fox and Janet Childs have given their adult lives to learn about the practice of listening, to honing it — and they will, for the first time as co-leaders, bring their skills and gifts to bear upon how listening is essential when addressing personal questions and existential issues, to the grief and doubts that people grapple with in their professional practice and personal lives.

We are particularly interested in tapping into the creative and spiritual dimensions of mutual listening in a way that welcomes a transpersonal and self-actualizing awareness that awakens us to a much larger fabric of being. We will consider how intuition, self-honesty and discernment helps us to sense when listening becomes clouded and distracted.

Making listening a priority calls upon our courage and integrity to speak up when we feel someone is not listening and/or to take actions that honor a committment to listening better ourselves.

Working together as a group/community/circle, in deep self-reflection and within dyad and triads, we will explore the experience of deep listening. Some of the themes we will address as essential to the practice of listening are: openness, respect and attention. We will do this through poem-making, ceremony, music and community building.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other ... and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. ~ Brenda Ueland

JULY

SAN RAFAEL, CA

The Healing Art of Writing: A Workshop Exploring Creative Writing and Healing

With Faculty:   John Fox, David Watts, Molly Giles, Marilyn Krysl, Alicia Ostriker, Nina Schuyler, Joan Baranow & Special Guests

Informational Flyer

Location:
Dominican University
50 Acacia Avenue
San Rafael, CA

For Information and To Register:
David Watts and Joan Baranow, Conference Directors
Writing the Medical Experience & Perspectives in Medical Humanities
Phone:  415-485-3264
E-Mail:  joan.baranow@dominican.edu

Prose workshops meet from 9:30 to noon each morning. Participants will meet with a different leader each day. Two to three manuscripts will be treated at each session.

Poetry workshops will meet from 9:30 to noon each morning. Workshop members and leaders change daily so that all may experience a variety of styles and voices.

Daily Talks and Panels with discussion on craft, editing, publishing, ethics and other subjects that address the particular concerns of writers.

The Healing Art of Writing began as Writing the Medical Experience, a conference that first met in 2003 as part of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in the breathtaking Sierra Nevada.  The conference continued for four years on the campus of Sarah Lawrence College, attracting participants from all over the country.

Past faculty members have included notable writers and poets such as Richard Selzer, Frank Huyler, Courtney Davis, John Fox, Ted Kooser, Donald Hall, and Alicia Ostriker.  Now we are pleased to bring WME to Dominican University of California, with a new title intended to reflect more closely its aspirations.

Our conference offers a unique experience in bringing together caregivers and patients who share a passion for writing about the mysterious forces of illness and recovery.  The conference fosters communication between the two worlds we are all born into, described by Susan Sontag as "the kingdom of the well and . . . the kingdom of the sick."  A belief shared among all the participants is that being cured of the disease is not the same as being healed, and that the writing of poetry and prose brings us to a place of healing.  Our subject is the body, our medical experiences widely diverse, our goal to express through literature what happens when a physical or mental anguish disrupts our lives.

Since participants are exploring intimate subjects, the conference fosters mutual support and friendship.  The campus of Dominican University provides a secluded retreat, yet lies within easy distance to San Francisco for those wishing to venture forth.  Wednesday afternoon of the conference is non-scheduled to allow participants to explore the Bay Area, socialize, or take time for quiet reflection

(John will offer early morning workshops throughout the week.)

AUGUST

BOWEN ISLAND, BC

Sponsored by Ray McGinnis & Write to the Heart

7th Annual Retreat at Rivendell

My Heart Broke Loose on the Wind: Recovering a Sense of Freedom & Surprise In Your Creative Expression and For Living Your life

Dates and times:
Wednesday, August 15: Retreat begins at 7:00PM
Saturday, August 19: Retreat concludes at 11:00AM (in time for 11:30AM ferry)

Location: Rivendell Retreat Centre
Bowen Island, British Columbia (Canada)

Fee: $650.00 includes full retreat, all meals and lodging

To Register:
A nonrefundable check deposit for $100.00 is required.
The $550.00 balance is due at time of workshop.

For More Information:
Please contact Ray McGinnis at: Phone:  (604) 408-4457 E-Mail:  writingthesacred@telus.net

Barbara McEnerney, in her wonderful poem As They Are, reflects upon giving her words the freedom and support they need to flourish, as children flourish when treated with curiosity, attention and room to breathe.  She invites herself - and us - to consider those kinds of words:

Instead, could I let them ramble along weedy paths only they know? Lean close to hear them whisper secrets, learn what they need from me? Could I love them as they are, give them room to grow, a chance to shine? ~ Barbara McEnerney

Who Attends Classes or Workshops Presented by The Institute for Poetic Medicine?

Our workshops will inspire and uplift anyone with a desire to express their deeper truth and creativity.  John's work offers "a healing space," especially to individuals living with life altering illnesses.

People in therapeutic, healing, medical, teaching and pastoral professions will benefit deeply and find practical support as they reconnect to the inner impulse that drew them to their professional calling while discovering inner resources that will sustain them in their daily lives.

We believe poem-making is something that every person can have access to, at virtually any time or place.  John's expertise is in providing a safe environment and the skillful means to claim that right for yourself.  We believe this process is healing when shared in a community of others.  

If you are just beginning to explore writing or have been writing for a long time, this work will encourage and refresh you.

• Poetic Medicine:  The Healing Art of Poem-Making
• Edges, Risks & Connections
• Poetry, Community and the Flourishing Heart
• The Soul's Language:  A Workshop on Sacred Poetry
• Poems of Witness:  Living with Heart in a Conflicted World
• The Nature of Poetry - Annual Canyon de Chelly Retreat