If you are interested, I am happy to plan a visit with your school,
organization, group, or business. Please feel free to refer to my C.V.
and contact me at one of the links in the above right or dennis [dot}
etzel {at} washburn [dot] edu.
In Topeka, I lead poetry workshops
with the Topeka YWCA's Center for Safety and Empowerment, Brewster
Place Retirement Community, Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge, Midland Hospice
(upcoming), and teach classes of poetry, fiction, and hybrid writing
workshops, as well as incorporate both poetry and fiction workshops in
Washburn University composition courses I teach.
I am happy to
speak or lead a workshop on a variety of topics, such as poetic memoir,
poetry as healing and recovery, pro-feminist/LGBT poetics, poetic
writing rituals to help with writing, and more.
Here are possibilities:
Writing Your Life’s Story in Poetry
For
beginning or intermediate poets, we will discover how a poem can unlock
memory leading to another poem. Our lives are rich with metaphor
waiting to be found, and participants will leave with their own poems
and strategies to continue writing for a lifetime.
Poetry as Play, Poetry as Healing
No
poetry writing experience necessary for this workshop as we explore how
writing with poetic elements can be for enjoyment as well as for coping
with grief, loss, or trauma. The facilitator will lead with his own
examples and stories about writing in a friendly, nonjudgmental, and
open environment. Sharing poems is optional, but participants will leave
with poems and ideas for further writing.
Poetry for Mental Health
No
poetry writing experience necessary for this workshop as we explore how
poetry can help with depression as we examine the works of poets open
with their struggles as well as their methods of coping. The facilitator
will lead with these and his own examples and stories about writing
poetry as a means to help cope with depression in a friendly,
nonjudgmental, and open environment. Sharing poems is optional, but
participants will leave with poems and ideas for further writing.
Transforming Trauma with Poetic Alchemy
We
will explore how we can find the lead inside ourselves and transform it
to gold via poetry. Using psychological, mystical, lyrical, and
experimental techniques and strategies, we will explore writing for
empowerment and healing through poetic memoir, while finding ways to not
reinjure the self. This is not mere catharsis, but the beginning of
a.new way of living with writing for a lifetime without “writer’s
block,” doubt, and less anxiety.
Transforming Locally through Poetics of Social Awareness
This
workshop is designed to counterpoint racist, sexist, homophobic,
patriarchal, murderous, and destructive viewpoints —especially in the
writing world—by first asking the question: “What issues are important
in my poetic community?” We will use Corinne Ball’s (Move On) words as
groundwork: “In [the] moment of crisis [in Baltimore], we can learn
something from Ferguson: the most important voices to listen to right
now are local ones. And the most important images and videos will be
captured not by out-of-town professionals but by the people of Baltimore
themselves.” We will reclaim the concept from Conceptual Poetics, and
leave with poems written, as well as work to be done.
Radical Compassion Poetics
We
will borrow from Naropa’s Radical Compassion Symposium statement from
2014: “As a cultural imperative, compassion lays a path to a future free
of some of our society's greatest downfalls. It is the root of
sustainable, positive change, and the key to meeting the challenges of
violence, fear and suffering” We will discover ways to discuss
compassion as a means for change, to move to action, and to practice
radical compassion through vulnerability. To quote a speech the
facilitator heard at a Take Back the Night rally: “Vulnerability is a
strength. If someone puts walls up, they are detached, alone, and
suffer. Vulnerability is what brings us together.” We will seek how to
poetically engage this with the goal to fully express
compassion—alongside the need to change the world to end, as Allison
Cobb phrases, the “patriarchal racist global capitalism . . . system
built from death, bent on destruction. So it seems like the task before
us is to find an entirely new way to be alive.” Poetry renews language,
brings us the deeper figure that makes all associations, and is close
attention. Participants will leave with fresh ways to write—to help
bring a new way of living.
