Fri, Mar 13 · 10:00 AM PDT
CORONA VIRUS UPDATE:
Take advantage of social distancing by focusing on creative endeavors! These workshops are a wonderful way to stay inspired and connected from the safety of your home. They will now be taking place via Zoom and an RSVP will give you the link to join.
If you're curious about writing, now is the time to join our workshops.
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 participants have become published authors, including one 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 foundation in Modernism, and his MFA from Columbia University, have supported a 40+ year career as one of the premier creative writing teachers that is unrivaled. He is among the last writers who lived the experience of the culmination of Modernism and will bring that experience to the workshops. You will be the creator as Clive elicits your response to the prompts that will unleash your own writer’s muse. And you will get feedback and advice with far more understanding and support than is usual in 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."
Phone Clive at 510-508-5149 or email him at clive@matsonpoet.com for more information on the workshops. Check out Clive's website, www.matsonpoet.com to learn more about Clive and his writing.
