CORONA VIRUS UPDATE:
This workshop will now be taking place via Zoom. Please phone Clive at 510-508-5149 or email him at clive@matsonpoet.com for more information on the workshops. He'll answer your questions, ask a few of his own and give directions. And perhaps give you an exercise to get you up to speed.
Take advantage of social isolation by focusing on creative endeavors! These workshops are a wonderful way to stay inspired and connected from the safety of your home.
If you're curious about writing, now is the time to join our workshops.
We have openings in two groups, one meeting Wednesday evenings 6:30 to 9:30 pm and the other Friday mornings 10 am to 1 pm. Until this pandemic passes we will be meeting via Zoom. You are invited to come to a meeting, for free, and find out how well it works for you.
These groups have been meeting for forty years. We combine insights from Dorothea Brandt's Becoming a Writer (1934) and Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers (1973). We use inspired guidance from Diane di Prima's "Rant" from Pieces of a Song (2001), which proposes that we, each of us, come into this world with our own cosmology.
This cosmology is a birthright and needs no alteration. Our writer's journey involves finding our view of the world, giving it respect, developing it, and expressing it in its own terms.
Much inspired writing comes from these workshops. Many writers have opened doors into huge arenas of vivid stories, poems, essays, and novels they had no idea exist. Many of our writers have become published, including an American Book Award winner.
Why do these groups work? Because we embrace the creative unconscious as the source of our inspiration, in accordance with Carl Jung's vision. And we give it simple appreciation.
In these groups your first drafts, even very rough drafts, are read as portals into vivid, energetic writing. Our job is to help you go through the portals and gain confidence that you are the right person to do this - to delve into your own creativity. Your unique way is the way that's best for your material.
Clive began his writing career among the Beat Generation in 1960s New York City, mentored by Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Diane Di Prima, who published his first book, Mainline to the Heart. Clive’s understanding of the current template – from earning an MFA at Columbia University in 1989 – plus his foundation in Modernism have supported a forty-plus year career as one of our premier writing teachers. He is among the last writers to experience the culmination of Modernism in the Beat Generation and he brings that knowledge to the workshops. You will be the creator as Clive elicits your response via prompts that will unleash your own personal muse. Clive will give you feedback and understanding far beyond what can be found in other writing classes.
As one participant has written, "Thank you, Clive, for creating and holding the sacred space where decomposition of creative self-doubt can occur, and up-lifting, cultivation and refinement of one’s voice can rise up."
Honoring the Source of Creativity,
Clive Matson
Author of Let The Crazy Child Write! (1998)
