Theresa's recent workshops at Esalen
In addition to teaching literature and creative writing courses at Bowling Green State University, Theresa Williams has taught workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
Esalen has strong ties to psychology and the arts. Abraham Maslow and Fritz Perls were early influences in the Esalen concept. Visitors and leaders of Esalen include Joan Baez, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Alpert, Paul Tillich, two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, Carl Rogers, B.F Skinner, Ansel Adams, Michael Harner, and Timothy Leary.
Here are descriptions of Theresa's recent Esalen Workshops:
Creating a Spark. Making fire once took practice, patience, and time. Similarly, there is no shortcut to good writing. Before your imagination can burn with energy and desire, you must work hard to create a spark. We will find that spark of truth in ordinary things. Participants are asked to bring with them at least three ordinary objects, such as keys, stones, apples, shoes, etc. The less complicated or personal the objects, the better.
Nurturing the Fire. All writers have rituals or routines that get us in the mood for writing and create a sense of order, which we need in order to feel ready to put words on a page. We will get ready to write by reciting chants, songs, and poems from world mythology — ancient word patterns that have a calming effect and serve as gateways to the metaphoric world. We will then use these forms as templates for our own creations.
Igniting a Fire in Others. The personal lyric is one of the oldest art forms and often comes out of personal anguish about love or death. When done well, it has the power to heal, yet the personal lyric is one of the hardest forms to master and often falls prey to obscurity, cliché, or angst. When this happens, the lyric fails to pass the fire from writer to reader. We will learn how to avoid common pitfalls of the personal lyric and take a stab at writing one.